By Andi Li, Teacher, Salesian School of Hong Kong

I am a teacher at the Salesian School of Hong Kong, part of a worldwide network of Salesian schools. The Salesian School of Hong Kong was established in 1951 by the Roman Catholic Salesian Congregation of Saint John Bosco. A key tenet of the Salesian method is cultivation of the whole person—academically, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. To achieve this, Salesian schools emphasize relationships between students and teachers outside of the classroom, and class time often extends beyond the regular school day.

Until Office 365, we had been limited to email messaging for maintaining contact with students and helping them with homework and their personal lives. We really want to create a true e-learning environment, where teachers and students can communicate and collaborate by using technology both in and outside of the classroom. But money is always an issue in education; we cannot afford expensive hardware and software. We wanted a web-based solution that would not require extensive training for staff and students and that would last us for awhile.

I joined the Office 365 beta program to learn more about this new cloud communications solution. Even though I serve as the IT coordinator in my school, in addition to my teaching duties, I do not have a technical background. I found Office 365 very easy to use. Another staff member and I have been using it for a few weeks now and would like to license it for the entire school.

With Office 365, I can sign in once and turn my PC into an online office. I can use Lync Online to talk with multiple students at the same time over a videoconference. Our teaching staff could also use Lync to have after-hours meetings from home, where they are more comfortable and less stressed.

Teachers could use SharePoint Online to share assignments with students and better monitor their progress. Our class periods are only 35-minutes long, which is very limited. We could use Office 365 to restructure our class time and extend learning beyond the school day. Teachers could point to content on SharePoint Online that students could access and learn by themselves. Teachers could be available by Lync to answer questions and stay in touch with students over vacation breaks. And of course they could still send email messages when appropriate by using Exchange Online.

Another benefit of Office 365 is teachers’ ability to access documents after hours, which they currently cannot do because of security concerns. Our documents and exchanges are safe and sound in Microsoft data centers. Also, there are no document compatibility problems using Office Web Apps; moving documents between the desktop and the cloud does not alter document formatting.

Office 365 gives us all of these new capabilities without requiring staff and students to learn anything new. They are already familiar with the Microsoft Office interface, which is also used in Office 365, so they would save time that they can focus on education. Plus, students would be exposed to the latest technology.

Another timesaving benefit that Office 365 delivers is the fact that teachers would no longer need to troubleshoot computer problems. They already spend eight to 10 hours a day at school; they don’t want to spend three or four more hours trying to fix a website or email problem. With Office 365, Microsoft takes care of the whole infrastructure for us and eliminates this extra time drain for teachers. Office 365 would also eliminate the need to buy a server or storage system, add security hardware and software, and organize special training courses.

Office 365 is a great platform for providing the rich e-learning experience our school wants to deliver. It will help us move forward in that direction.

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