Letter from Microsoft – Kevin Marshall Head of Education
Dear school leaders,
We hope that you and your school community are doing well during these uncertain times. We wanted to update you on the support available from our Microsoft Education team here in Microsoft Ireland.
Use of Office 365 for teaching and learning
As you may know, Office 365 is a secure and suitable platform for teaching and learning, whether in-person, hybrid or in a remote capacity. For any school leaders, IT coordinators or school personnel who are looking for support and resources that can assist in the use of Office 365 for teachers, parents and students, please do not hesitate to contact our team at mseduirl@microsoft.com.
We want to share important information with you to ensure that Microsoft Teams for Education is set up safely and securely for your organisation. Please review the documentation to ensure you have the right policies set up for your organisation. The attached document will outline the Best Practice for Microsoft Teams for both administrators and educators to help you set up safety policies and to administer meetings and channels with the recommended controls.
Microsoft Education Ireland have created a dedicated & customised page to support all parts of the education community in Ireland. The contain resources to support educators with all parts of Office 365 to enhance teaching & learning in all settings as well as supports for parents & guardians. These can be accessed at Remote learning support in Ireland – Microsoft Educator Center
To learn from fellow school leaders, you can also access our “Education Spotlight” webinars that features both a primary and post-primary school leaders and their journey to date, including the use of Office 365 for remote learning. Visit https://aka.ms/eduspotlight to register and receive your link for on demand viewing.
Events to support for teaching and learning
– To support teaching & learning we are engaging in several webinars that are being hosted by the ESCI, for further details please see your local ed centres.
• February 9-11th Wriggle Learning, in association with Microsoft will be hosting a practical, interactive, online event will share best practice, tools and experience with guidance from Ireland’s top educators and thought leaders. To register for this event please click here.
• Feb 24th There will be a webinar “Using Technology for Reflective Practice & Wellbeing to enhance Student Engagement” in this webinar we will look at the overall importance of social emotional learning. We will look at examples from schools showcasing how they are using technology to enable reflection and measuring student wellbeing to increase the levels of student engagement and create a positive learning environment. Registration information will be available on our Twitter channel (@MS_eduIRL)
DreamSpace ResourcesOur DreamSpace team has developed specific resources for secondary schools that are useful for all possible learning situations (in person, remote or hybrid).
• DreamSpace TV for secondary schools is our teacher led and on demand video content that has associated teacher guidelines and resources for students to use. The series brings students on a computer science learning journey with micro:bit, teaching them about AI and prepares them to enter the global micro:bit do your:bit competition. Partnering with RTÉ, we will celebrate the Irish winners and this is being heavily utilised already by TY groups. Gain access to DreamSpace TV for free at: https://aka.ms/DreamSpaceTVSecondary .
• DreamSpace Teacher is a community of practice with associated schemes of work for DreamSpace activities. Teachers can read more about the resources available and register here: https://aka.ms/DreamSpaceTeacher
We hope that by sharing this information with you, that you can relay them onto your school communities. School communities can also find out more and see all the latest updates through our Twitter channel (@MS_eduIRL). These may include future online tutorial and information sessions.
Stay safe and stay well.
Warm regards,
Kevin Marshall
Head of Education
Microsoft Ireland
Important information for keeping students safe while using Microsoft Teams for distance learning[6]