Microsoft Education Cloud Solution: End To End Guide For Deployment
2017 has been the year that has seen the various pieces of Microsoft’s Education offerings come together in a more cohesive, end-to-end offering that can now be deployed very easily by schools or their ICT partners.
Naturally, this is centered around Office365 and the power of the Azure cloud identity with Azure Active Directory, combined with the recent Creators Updates in Windows 10 providing a great overall solution for educators and students alike.
To the make the process of deploying this even easier, Microsoft have released a great step by step guide, with accompanying videos. The overview article, and the best place to start if you’re new to all of this, can be found at the following link:
Deploy & manage a full cloud IT solution with Microsoft Education
What is Microsoft Education?
Microsoft Education consists of these new and existing services and tools from Microsoft:
- Microsoft Intune for Education for simple set up, control, and management of the resources for your school including apps, devices, and settings
- Office 365 for Education provides online apps for work from anywhere and desktop apps for advanced functionality, built for working together and available across devices, and it’s free for schools, teachers, and students
- School Data Sync to help automate the process for importing and integrating School Information System (SIS) data that you can use with Office 365
- OneNote Class Notebook to organize course content, create and deliver interactive lessons to some or all students, collaborate and provide private feedback to individual students, and connect with major LMS and SIS partners for assignment workflow
- Microsoft Teams to bring conversations, content, and apps together in one place and create collaborate classrooms, connect in professional learning communities, and communicate with school staff
- Learning Tools are moving beyond the OneNote desktop app and is now available in Office Lens, OneNote Online, Word Online, and Word desktop
- Whiteboard to create interactive lessons on the big screen, share and collaborate real-time by connecting to Class Notebook and Classroom
- Windows 10, version 1703 (Creators Update) which brings 3D for everyone and other new and updated Windows features
- Minecraft: Education Edition which provides an open and immersive environment to promote creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving
I’ve collated the following video guides from the individual instruction pages which are all worth checking out, with the goal of having a “one stop shop” for school IT admins to be able source all the help they need to deploy and maintain Microsoft Education.
In the following walkthrough videos, we’ll show you the basics on how to:
- Acquire an Office 365 for Education tenant, if you don’t already have one
- Import school, student, teacher, and class data using School Data Sync (SDS)
- Deploy Microsoft Teams to enable groups and teams in your school to communicate and collaborate
- Manage apps and settings deployment with Intune for Education
- Acquire additional apps in Microsoft Store for Education
- Use the Set up School PCs app to quickly set up and provision your Windows 10 education devices
- Log in and use the devices
So, let’s get started with the setup process!
Set Up An Office365 Education Tenant
Use School Data Sync To Import Data
Enable Microsoft Teams For Your School
There is no video for this one, but the step by step instructions on the link above are very easy to follow along with.
Configure Microsoft Store For Education
Use Intune For Education To Manage Groups, Apps, and Settings
Set Up Windows 10 Education Devices
There is no video for this one either, however the above link shows you how to use the free Set Up School PCs App to quickly deploy new devices and join them to Azure Active Directory (AAD) – this process usually takes less than 5mins for a brand new device out of the box.
Finish Windows 10 Device Setup & Other Tasks
Conclusion
It’s now easier than ever before to quickly set up a feature rich educational environment using the Microsoft cloud offerings of Office365 combined with Windows 10 devices.
I hope the above guides help but if you have further questions, drop them in the comments section below.