Office 365...beyond the transition

   It's been about a month since we adopted Office 365. With that change, all employees and students grades 5-12 gained access to cloud-based email, calendar and document management. After a month, it seems timely to pause and assess the transition.  Keep in mind that all my observations below are anecdotal, gleaned from daily conversations about Office 365.  It's my plan to more formally survey our users, but I want to wait to get past the initial learning period.
   In considering this wholesale move to cloud-based software, I would divide users into three categories: students, teaching faculty and non-teaching employees. Students generally have adapted to the system without much fuss.  I saw some eyes roll with the realization that there was yet another password to create and remember. Many students were also not especially keen about the length of their user names. In this system, the user name is the full email address, and many students have lengthy user names.  Students, as a group, are reluctant email users.  And if they're checking email, their first instinct is to look at an already established personal account. (Personal accounts are generally gmail accounts.) So getting students to check a school account can be a challenge.  But one of the advantages of Office 365 is that it links other functions to email, notably document creation and storage.  The idea that students have 24/7 access to Word docs (and Excel and PowerPoint) is valued by students.  By default, they open the program that also opens their school email.
   Our teaching faculty have quickly adapted to the new system, but not without some reservations.  Email, in general, is considered a very positive part of the change to Office 365.  Previously, virtually all faculty regularly checked email at school and at home. But the two displays were totally different, and the programs acted differently. Now, in Office 365, the interface is identical all the time.  That change is much appreciated.  Faculty seem less comfortable using cloud-based document management.  Creating and working with a new document, like a Word document, is a bit different than in the past. Questions about whether or not to download documents or simply work in Office 365 persist.  Understanding when best to share a document is a work in progress for many users.
   Non-teaching employees have probably encountered more hurdles than other users, and are understandably less enthusiastic about the change. Tasks that formerly might have taken one or two steps might now take two or three steps. Emailing large groups (e.g.: all the parents in the school) required a work-around that was not obvious at first glance. Many of our non-teaching employees are what might be termed "power users" of the system. They are in offices everyday working on their computers. They become masterful at particular software products. When change happens, it's especially challenging to these GSBers because there's no real time to learn the new software. Their work continues every day. so they learn as they work through problems, and in the process lose some short-term efficiency. I'm confident that soon enough, today's challenges will become tomorrow's dim memories, but in the meantime, I'm particularly aware of this group's transition.
   I'd remind everyone that the change to office 365 was done for good reasons. You can review the reasons by jumping to my August 11, 2014 post.  I know that we've gained a rock solid system for GSB that will serve us into the years ahead. But transitions are always challenging, and this one is no exception.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

   Jump back about six years.  GSB was getting ready to roll out an Intranet, a password-protected set of interconnected websites including sites for every class. Though Intranets were standard fare among colleges, they were far less common at the K-12 level.  Edline was our provider.  After a school wide contest, our Intranet had a name: KnightSite.
   Over the ensuing years, we've been charged with learning and using a variety of new web-based systems.  Instant Alert, also about six years old, became the tool we used to notify the GSB community about emergency closings and delays and other announcements of importance. The following year, Pick-A-Time was brought online as a scheduling tool for Parent Conference days.

   As teachers and students increasingly became dependent on KnightSite, its functional limits became more apparent.  At the same time, a decision was reached that it was time to refresh the look of our school's public website. We switched providers to Whipple Hill for both our public site and for KnightSite.

   Over the next couple of years, Whipple Hill was actively engaged in revamping and upgrading the look and navigation of its software.  This meant that annually, teachers needed to learn how to use new features.

   And of course this year, with the roll out of Office 365, there is yet another system to learn. Office 365 will replace our email system with a more reliable system. But it offers far more: a cloud-based set of creation, sharing and storage tools for information.

    Depending on your division or specific job, you may also have had to learn one or several of the following systems over the last six years: Accelerated Reader, FAWeb, Discovery Education, Destiny and Naviance.
    Though we work in a school and call ourselves teachers, it might be more accurate to say we work in a school and we are both teachers and learners.  It is simply impossible to opt out of learning these new software tools. They are part of our profession the way a chalkboard was 50 years ago.
    More than most, I appreciate the way our faculty and staff have taken on the challenges of learning and using new systems. They can facilitate organization and communication, but also require time and perseverance on the part of new users. It might be worthwhile to take a moment and appreciate not only what you've taught to so many students, but what you've learned as well.