Tag Archives: Remote Virtual Learning

Moving from a single Microsoft 365 tenant to a central trust tenancy with Sacred Heart Catholic High School

In this podcast episode, we spoke with Martin Edworthy, eLearning Coordinator at Sacred Heart Catholic High School about how they moved from their school’s Microsoft 365 tenant to a centralised tenancy for their trust (The Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust).

“Working between two tenancies was becoming unnecessarily complex as our members of staff needed multiple logins to access the resources they need,” Martin tells us.

“We made the decision to move to the central trust tenancy to make life easier in the long run. As the trust grows, new members of staff will be able to join and instantly have access to resources with a minimum amount of effort.”

The challenges of migrating from one tenancy to another.

Sacred Heart was already using SharePoint and Teams for teaching and learning; storing learning resources in SharePoint and setting work and assignments in Teams.

“We had gradually moved departmental resources from our network drives into SharePoint. And during lockdown, there was a massive uptake in Teams as teachers used it to deliver live lessons and teach their classes,” he explains.

“So, when it came to migrating everything across to the trust tenancy, it required a bit of thinking to make sure everything was moved across seamlessly and permissions and access was set up correctly.”

As our Operations Manager Darren Hemming explains, SharePoint permissions can quickly get messy if it’s done on an individual basis:

“We recommend using groups instead (that’s security groups, not distribution lists). For example, ‘All staff’, ‘All students’, ‘Senior Leadership’. This makes it a lot easier to manage permissions and access to files,” Darren describes.

“The shift in how permissions are managed took time to get our heads around, but we are seeing the benefits of this now. One example where having groups is useful is if a new teacher joins a department and needs to change something on a site, we can just drop them into an appropriate group,” Martin acknowledges.

Teaching and learning with Microsoft 365.

Equally, Martin is impressed with how easy it is for teachers to be able to find and share resources now they’re all centralised in SharePoint:

“One thing that’s caught my eye is the ability to attach resources to assignments without having to look for files in different drives,” Martin enthuses.

“It makes it easier for both teachers and students to have all the resources in the same pool, rather than spread across different storage areas.”

This centralised approach to resources has also given students the opportunity to take control of their own learning.

“We’re moving in the direction of embedding learning journeys for students so they know exactly where they are in their learning. This is to help tackle lost learning due to Covid-19,” Martin continues.

“If they need to have time off due to illness or isolation, they can easily go into SharePoint and for example go to ‘Maths, topic 3, lesson 5’ and catch up with any learning they’ve missed.”

This has also led to keen students looking ahead at what they need to read up on and completing work before it’s even been set in the classroom:

“One or two students have seen something before the lesson and done the work off their own backs – it’s great to see that when it happens.”

Not only does this help students develop independence, but also instils important skills for the future – whether that’s in further education or a job.

If you would like to find out more about our Cloud Box platform and how we can help your school or MAT achieve more with Microsoft 365, book a free demo today.

How to add Teams assignments to the student and teacher calendar

In this quick video, Tony shows you how to add assignments in Microsoft Teams to student and teacher calendars.

When you next go to set a task in Assignments in Teams, look for the option to Add assignment to calendars.

Here you have four options:

None – The default setting and will not add the assignment to any calendar.
Students only – Only adds the assignment to student calendars.
Students and me – Adds the assignment to student calendars and your (the teacher) calendar.
Students and team owners – Adds the assignment to student calendars and any teachers that teach that class.

Once set, the assignment is sent as an event invite to your Outlook mailbox, the same way a Teams meeting, or calendar invite would be sent out.

You can then accept the invite and it will appear on your calendar the day the assignment is set for.

Automatically set up calendar events for assignments.

As it may be difficult to remember to set up calendar invites each time you create an assignment, there is a way to automate this process.

Simply head to the Assignments tab in Teams and hit the cog button to open Assignment Settings.

Under the Calendar section, there is an option to Add future assignments to calendars.

Select your preference from the dropdown menu (None, Students only, Students and me, or Students and team owners).

From now on, all future assignments you set will be sent out as calendar invites to that selected group.

Not only is adding calendar events for assignments a great way to remind you and the students of upcoming homework deadlines, but it can also be useful when planning workloads and help you avoid setting multiple big assignments for the same dates.

If you would like to learn more about how we can help your school or MAT achieve more with Microsoft, please contact a member of our team today.

Lost learning – How teachers can identify gaps in learning with Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms can help teachers to identify gaps in learning and keep track of students’ progress on specific topics.

Over the last few years, many students have inevitably lost hours of learning due to higher absences, adjusting to learning from home and dealing with abrupt changes in restrictions.

On top of this, some individuals have struggled to access learning remotely due to a lack of access to devices or internet connectivity.

This major disruption has caused a huge problem for schools as teachers battle to clearly identify gaps in individual students’ learning and keep track of progress.

In Forms, we can quickly create quizzes and surveys to gauge how confident students are feeling about specific topics.

Forms are a great tool to use when catching up on lost learning because teachers can:

Easily duplicate and reuse forms – which saves teacher time as it removes the need to create new forms for each class and they can be shared within departments or across the entire school.
Quickly create engaging surveys with a range of options and tools.
View data, graphs and charts on individual students or whole classes – so you know exactly who needs more support with a specific topic.
Download raw data in Excel for records and in-depth analysis.

Here’s how to create a quiz in Microsoft Forms to tackle to problem of lost learning:

Create a quiz in Microsoft Forms.

Select New quiz to create a new quiz. From here, you can add a title and description.

Tip: Create a template quiz that can be reused for all your classes.

2. Select Add new to add a question. You can pick from either Choice, Text, Rating and Date. Or, alternatively, select the down arrow to bring up advanced question options like Ranking, Likert scale or File upload.

You can be as creative as you like, but to create a form for the purpose of addressing lost learning, we’d recommend using the Choice, Text and Rating questions to effectively gauge students understanding of a topic.

Add a Choice question to your Microsoft Form.

Choice questions are versatile and can allow students to communicate their understanding of a topic or be set up as a comprehension task with right/wrong answers.

Select Add new and then Choice to add either a multiple or single choice question to your quiz.
From here, you can type out your question and add different options.
Choose whether it’s multiple or single choice by toggling on/off Multiple answers.
Toggle on/off Required to decide whether students are required to fill out this question or not (we’d recommend selecting required if you want all students to answer a question as they may skip it).
Add a subtitle for extra context by selecting the three dots (…) and then Subtitle.

Add a Rating question to your Microsoft Form.

Rating questions allow students to rate their understanding of a topic.

Select Add new and then Rating.
From here, you can type out your question.
Select how many rating levels you would like from the drop-down menu.
You can also choose whether to use numbers or stars from the Symbol drop-down menu.
Toggle on/off Required to decide whether students are required to fill out this question or not (we’d recommend selecting required if you want all students to answer a question as they may skip it).
Add a subtitle for extra context by selecting the three dots (…) and then Subtitle.
Add labels to the rating scale (I.e. 1 = Not confident at all and 5 = Completely confident) by selecting the three dots (…) and then Label.

Add a Text question to your Microsoft Form.

Text questions give students space to write their own answers, instead of relying on pre-written answers.

Select Add new and then Text.
From here, you can type out your question. You can also add an image or video to support your question.
You can choose how much space a student gets to answer the question by toggling on/off Long answer.
Toggle on/off Required to decide whether students are required to fill out this question or not (we’d recommend selecting required if you want all students to answer a question as they may skip it).
Add a subtitle for extra context by selecting the three dots (…) and then Subtitle.

Change the theme of a Microsoft Form.

To make your quiz look more visually appealing, you can change its theme.

Select Theme to open up the theme options.
Choose from a pre-set theme or customise your own theme with a specific colour or image.

Change the settings of a Microsoft Form.

Select the three dots (…) in the top navigation bar of Microsoft Forms.
Here you can alter the settings of your quiz, for example, whether you wish to show results automatically, who can fill out the form and options for responses.

Share a Microsoft Form with your class.

Select Share in the top navigation bar of Microsoft Forms.
From here, you can create a link to your form to share your response.
You can also share the form as a template, which is great if you want to use the quiz across multiple classes or share it with colleagues for reuse.
Forms can also be collaborated on – you can create a link to your form for colleagues to view and edit.

Here’s an example of how you can get your class to fill out the quiz:

Once students start to fill out the quiz, you can see their answers in the Responses tab on the form.

Here you can see an overview of everyone’s responses:

Or, alternatively, you can click through to each individual student to see their responses and even how long it took them to fill out the quiz.

Finally, you can export the data to Excel – which is great for combining with school-wide data and creating in-depth reports.

Microsoft Forms is a brilliant tool for creating quizzes and surveys that can quickly identify gaps in student learning.

If you would like to find out more about how Microsoft 365 and Cloud Box can help your school or trust overcome the challenges of lost learning, book a demo with a member of our team.

Lost learning – How schools and trusts can encourage students to catch up with SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint can help schools and trusts overcome many of the lost learning challenges they face in 2022.

Over the last few years, many students have inevitably lost hours of learning, due to higher levels of absences, adjusting to learning from home and dealing with abrupt changes in restrictions.

On top of this, some individuals have struggled to access learning remotely due to a lack of access to devices or internet connectivity.

This major disruption has caused a huge problem for schools as teachers battle to clearly identify gaps in individual students’ learning and keep track of progress.

Using SharePoint as a central storage hub for all learning resources, schools and trusts make catching up on learning accessible to students anytime and anywhere.

Students can catch up on missed learning on their own terms and take ownership of the gaps in their knowledge.

Meanwhile, sharing resources in SharePoint encourages staff to work together to create learning resources and share them across departments, schools and the trusts.

This not only cuts down the number of hours wasted re-creating resources that already exist, but it can also drive up quality as the resources can be reused, recycled and built upon year after year.

Below are some tips on how to use SharePoint in a way that enables students to catch up easily on lost learning.

Structure folders around student needs.

It’s essential to keep the student’s point of view in mind when creating and structuring your SharePoint folders.

Choose clear names for folders and documents and consider numbering them so they appear in a specific order – for example, by term, week or lesson number.

This makes it so much easier for students to revisit lost learning and reduces the chances of them needing to contact you to find specific documents.

In the example in our video guide, Joe breaks down learning into terms, weeks and lessons and then numbers worksheets and tasks so that students can access the right files.

Search for keywords.

Encourage students to use the search function in SharePoint.

The clever tool allows you to search within the selected folder – keywords can be used to search the titles of folders and files and even words within documents.

This is great when students need to access something quickly or revise a specific topic.

Tip: Take this one step further and use the Find tool (Ctrl + F) to drill down into documents and search for specific keywords.

Connect it to Teams with Cloud Box.

With our Cloud Box solution, you can automatically connect your learning resource folders to the respective Teams channel so students can access everything they need without leaving the Teams app.

The resources folder can be accessed in the top navigation bar and documents can all be opened up within the Teams app.

Share resources quickly.

Resources can also be easily shared outside of SharePoint.

Simply select the file, document or folder you wish to share and click Share.

A pop-up appears with multiple sharing options:

You can email a student (or multiple students) the selected file directly so that they can access the folder.
Or you can create a sharing link that can then be copied into a Teams message or email.

From here, you can also alter the editing permissions to prevent students from editing the resource.

Note: You’ll get a notification as soon as students open your link.

SharePoint makes it easy to share resources with students who may have lost learning, but it also makes it very easy for staff to collaborate and work together on creating documents. If you would like to find out more about how Microsoft 365 and Cloud Box can help your school or trust overcome the challenges of lost learning, book a demo with a member of our team.

How to create topic notebooks in OneNote

OneNote can be used to create and organise digital learning content for students – that can be shared in a centralised area. Teachers can create a mini-website/digital topic notebook for each topic that can then be shared via a link or in Teams.

Important: This is not a tutorial on creating Class Notebooks. For more information about Class Notebooks see this guide.

In this guide, learn how to:

Create a new OneNote file.
Add and edit pages and sections.
Edit the colour coding of your OneNote.
Break sections into subsections.
Add and format text in OneNote.
Insert images, tables, links and other resources to a OneNote page.
Change the appearance of a OneNote file.

Create a new OneNote file.

Head to the student resource folder in which you want to create your new OneNote notebook.
Select New and then OneNote Notebook.
Add a name for your new OneNote notebook and select Create.

Note: You can edit your OneNote in the browser view, but some features may not be supported. Access the full range of features by selecting Open in the desktop app.

Add and edit sections/pages in OneNote.

A OneNote notebook consists of sections and pages, just like a traditional ring binder folder.

Rename a page/section by right-clicking and selecting Rename Section/Page.
Add a new page by selecting Add Page at the bottom of the page list.
Add a new section by selecting Add Section at the bottom of the page list.

Edit the colour coding of your sections in OneNote.

Alter the colour coding on your sections in OneNote; simply right-click the section and select Section colour.
Choose which colour you wish to set for the section.

Break OneNote sections into subsections.

Sections can be broken down into subsections, which is excellent when you need to split up chunkier topics and make them more digestible for students.

Right-click on Add Section and select New Section Group.
Name your new section group.
Add sections into your section group by selecting your section group and Add Section.

Add and format text in OneNote.

Tap the place you want the text on your OneNote page and start typing to add text.
Format the text – change the size, colour, font etc. – with the text toolbox at the top of the screen.

Insert images, tables, links and other resources into a OneNote page.

The Insert tab – found on the top navigation bar – allows you to insert a range of resources to a page, including:

Tables
Pictures
Links
Video
Audio
Files
And more!

Change the appearance of a OneNote file.

The View tab – found on the top navigation bar – allows you to alter the appearance of your OneNote file. From here, you can:

Set a page colour.
Insert rule lines.
Check accessibility.
Use the Translate tool.
And more!

The final result is a fully interactive, read-only topic book for students to use and revise from. Students can use the colour-coded sections to find the information they need or use the search bar to type in keywords.

Additionally, with our Cloud Box solution, long-term learning resources like this one can be easily shared across departments and even entire schools and trusts and be reused for future academic years.

Book a demo to find out exactly how we can help your school, academy or multi-academy trust today. Give us a call on 01482 688890, or send us a message.

Updated Guidance for Starting Online Lessons in Microsoft Teams

We have recently updated our video guide on how to start online lessons in Microsoft Teams. As January approaches, many schools will be forced into full or partly online lessons due to sickness and self-isolation. Microsoft Teams as evolved to become easier to use for teachers over the past year and the video below reflects this:

You can also read/watch our previous guides for more in-depth information.
Office 365 User Adoption Podcast Episode 10 – Virtual Lessons using Microsoft Teams

Teacher Guide to Presenting Remote Lessons using Microsoft Teams

How to get students more engaged outside of the classroom

Getting students engaged outside of the classroom can be difficult. While most students understand that they must complete homework and assignments for their classes, creating homework assignments that are engaging helps to reinforce learning and development.

Below, we have some ideas on how you can use some of the tools in Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint to create brilliant and effective homework assignments.

Use the Reading Progress tool.

The Reading Progress tool in Microsoft Teams is a great way to liven up reading tasks, comprehension and language learning.

Students can record video or audio of themselves reading a passage and submit it to their teachers for feedback or grading.

What’s more, Microsoft picks up on any mispronunciations, omissions and repetitions – which is great for saving teacher time when marking.

Students are also likely to feel more comfortable reading a passage in their own home, rather than aloud in front of their classmates.

Add audio clips into Class Notebooks and Assignments.

It’s easy to add audio clips into Class Notebook and we know that some teachers have been using this feature to set learning objectives and instructions for homework tasks.

Not only does this save the teacher time, but it also injects a bit of life into homework tasks.

A new feature in Teams allows you to add video instructions directly to Assignments, while students can submit videos of themselves speaking a new language, practising a presentation, reading a passage or playing an instrument.

Create revision videos that can be used again and again.

Video is a great way to engage your students outside of the classroom as it’s a lot more engaging than sending over blocks of text and worksheets to revise from.

You could keep a library of revision videos in SharePoint for your classes to access, or even embed videos into Class Notebook to compliment revision guides.

As an additional bonus, when it comes to the end of the year, you can reuse the content you’ve created for your new classes – so there’s no duplication in work.

Get creative with whiteboards for assignments.

A relatively new feature to Assignments, the whiteboard allows you to integrate a virtual board into Assignment tasks.

You could either assign a previously created whiteboard (i.e. one that you created during a lesson) or add a blank whiteboard with students to work on.

Another great idea is to create a whiteboard where students fill in the blanks. It gives your class something different to do than work in Word or their Class Notebook.

Source: Microsoft Tech Community

Test knowledge with quizzes and forms.

Quizzes and forms can be easily set up in Microsoft 365 and work great in and outside of the classroom.

One idea is to use a form to quiz your students on their understanding of a previous lesson. Or, you could incorporate a quiz into a reading comprehension task.

Not only are quizzes and forms more engaging than filling out a Word document, but it also gives you as a teacher an almost instant overview of whether the learning has been understood and what areas you may need to recap during the next lesson.

If you would like to learn more about how we can help your school or trust achieve more with Microsoft 365, please contact a member of our team today.

How teachers can save time creating learning resources with Microsoft 365

We know that time is precious when you work in education; whether you’re marking, planning, or delivering a lesson, it can be tricky to find the time to get back to what you love about teaching.

While we can’t increase the number of hours in your day, we can give you some ideas on saving time when creating learning resources with some essential tools and features in Microsoft 365.

Centralise resources.

Create a centralised, long-term resource bank in SharePoint for teaching resources, policies and other documents that can be reused and repurposed every academic year.

With Microsoft 365, you can create designated areas in SharePoint that only users with the correct permissions can access. For example, only one department, only certain classes or students or only staff members.

Not only does this save time each year by not having to replicate or re-upload resources, but it also means that everyone has access to everything they need to work – whether that’s a student or staff member.

We provide automation services to create centralised resource areas automatically from your school’s MIS data. Find out more by chatting with a member of our team.

“Everything we need is in the cloud, so we don’t have to worry about losing paper worksheets. Pupils can also use SharePoint and Teams to download assignment tasks, refresh their memories, take quizzes and be in touch with the teacher in between lessons.”

Whitely Bay High School

Co-author documents with colleagues.

Word Documents, PowerPoints, Excel Spreadsheets, and more can be co-authored in real-time with your colleagues.

Co-authoring is excellent if you need another staff member’s import on a document or if you’ve agreed to share the workload by co-creating learning resources for your department.

Why spend hours creating a resource from scratch that your colleague has already spent time making?

Instead, easily and securely share, edit and co-create documents with others in your school, academy or trust.

Sharing is caring.

By centralising your resources and co-authoring documents, you can begin to build a powerful library of learning materials that can be shared across an entire department, the whole school or even your trust.

So, instead of ten teachers creating ten versions of the same document, you can pool together your resources and free up time to spend on other areas, like grading, working with students or professional development (or even just taking a break!).

“Cloud Box has been transformational in the way we work and create learning content. We are now beginning to create revision resources that can be accessed by our pupils at any time on a connected device. Not only is this brilliant for the students, but also for staff who can dedicate more time to sharpening their message and delivery.”

The Ashcombe School

Rollover resources to the next academic year.

With our Cloud Box solution, there’s no need for you to start from scratch when a new academic year rolls around.

Instead, everything – your resources, classes and student information – is cleaned up and rolled over automatically, ready for the start of term.

We use Microsoft School Data Sync (SDS) to start a rollover and clean-up process; our centralised resource areas allow you to reuse resources year on year, while the Class Dashboard enables students to easily access archived Teams from previous academic years.

Already have Microsoft School Data Sync? Talk to us about how we can extend this to provide central resource areas, SharePoint intranets, Class Cover tools and much more.

Not set up with Microsoft School Data Sync? We can help you get started and future-proof your Class Teams setup. Contact us for a friendly chat with one of our Education Experts.

Free webinar – A strategy to adopt Microsoft Teams successfully in a school or MAT

We are hosting a free webinar for schools, academies and trusts focusing on how you can successfully adopt and roll out Microsoft Teams, without wasting time or money.

One of the main challenges we see schools and MATs face when rolling out new technology is user adoption.

There’s a central group of tech-savvy staff who pick up the new software straight away and begin using it in their classrooms, but there’s always a section that gets left behind without proper support or training.

This results in a disjointed situation where learning resources are scattered across different platforms and servers and there is no cohesion in how students are being taught across their subjects.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a lot of schools to move to Microsoft Teams or other digital platforms to provide blended learning to students whether they were working in the classroom or at home. This has only added to the number of schools that now lack a long-term strategy to get real tangible benefits that reach far beyond the pandemic.

In an upcoming free webinar, we give you a tried-and-tested strategy to adopt Microsoft Teams successfully in your school or MAT.

During the session, we’ll run through the key steps we take with schools across the UK to help them roll out Teams successfully; everything from communicating your initial vision and setting milestones to delivering training and measuring user adoption.

“I don’t want to exaggerate, but I think this is a revolutionary moment for us. Cloud Design Box is exceptionally good at working with a range of people. They can speak to the technical roles within the school, but what makes them stand out is their ability to explain it to teachers, like myself, who aren’t that technical.” – Chris Panting, Headteacher at The Ashcombe School.

The webinar takes place on Microsoft Teams from 2pm – 3pm BST on 21 October 2021.

Everyone is welcome to join in, whether you’re already using Microsoft Teams or considering rolling it out across your school or trust in the future.

Sign up to A strategy to adopt Microsoft Teams successfully in a school or MAT right now.

Extend Microsoft Teams in independent schools with Cloud Box – demonstration

We are hosting a free webinar for independent schools, focusing on how you can successfully extend blended learning in Microsoft Teams with our Cloud Box solution, without compromising your high standard of teaching and learning.

One of the main challenges we see independent schools face when rolling out new technology is achieving seamless user adoption.

Typically, there is a central group of staff who are confident with technology that embraces the new software straight away. However, there’s always a percentage that gets left behind due to a lack of proper support, training and guidance.

Students are left with learning resources interspersed across several different platforms and mediums and little-to-know cohesion in how they’re accessing learning across different subjects.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this problem, especially after the UK government announced that all schools needed to provide digital learning resources to students. This led to schools signing up to platforms like Microsoft 365 with no real long-term plan or strategy.

In an upcoming free webinar, designed especially for independent schools, we give you a strategy for adopting and extending Microsoft Teams successfully.

During the session, we’ll run through the key steps we take with independent schools across the UK to help them roll out Teams seamlessly; everything from communicating your initial vision and setting milestones to delivering training and measuring user adoption.

“By working with Cloud Design Box, we were able to make a smooth transition to the platform, as well as make navigation and provision of Teams and SharePoint sites easier for teachers to get on board with.” – The King’s School, Canterbury.

Our webinar takes place on Microsoft Teams from 1pm – 2pm GMT on 26 November 2021.

Everyone who works in an independent school is welcome to join, whether you’re already using Microsoft Teams or considering adopting it in the future.

Sign up to Extend Microsoft Teams in independent schools with Cloud Box right now.