Microsoft Online Services Customer Solution Case Study

School District Implements Hosted Email and Storage, Supports Innovation, Collaboration

Overview “With our Microsoft Exchange Server messaging Country or Region: United States environment … we recognized that creating and managing Industry: Education—K–12 nearly 3,000 accounts … would be a lot easier with Customer Profile The Pittsford Central School District, Live@edu than with Google Apps for Education.” located near Rochester, New York, serves Jeff Cimmerer, Director of Technology, Pittsford Central School District 6,000 students in nine schools. In 2010, the district employed 1,100 people. The Pittsford Central School District is located in western New Business Situation Schools in the Pittsford Central School York state and in the 2010–2011 school year educated 6,000 District struggled with inefficient students. To help maintain a long tradition of academic teacher/student communications and an inconsistent environment for producing excellence, the district wanted to address challenges and managing student assignments. surrounding student-teacher email communication and the need

Solution for greater online collaboration. In response, the district The Pittsford Central School District completed a pilot implementation of Microsoft Live@edu, a free, completed a pilot project involving Microsoft Live@edu and made plans to hosted communication and collaboration service. Based on the implement the service to 3,000 students success of that pilot, the district will pursue an implementation in grades 8 through 12 by the start of the 2011–2012 school year. of Live@edu for students in grades 8 through 12 starting in the 2011–2012 school year. Administrators anticipate using the Benefits Helps teachers maintain focus on service to help teachers focus more on academics and less on academics communication logistics, to help the district cut IT costs by U.S. Saves U.S.$40,000 yearly on storage and backup $40,000 yearly, and to expand opportunities for academic Provides new opportunities for academic innovation and collaboration. innovation Situation Established in 1946, the Pittsford Central The individual approach that stymied School District encompasses two high efficient email communications between schools, two middle schools, and five teachers and students also caused elementary schools in western New York problems in the production and delivery of state. The Pittsford Central School District is student assignments. “Although we try to renowned for academic excellence, with maintain the latest version of Microsoft both of its high schools having been Office throughout the district, students named more than once to the “top 100” sometimes used earlier versions of the listings of U.S. high schools in Newsweek software, or different software altogether, and U.S. News & World Report magazines. to complete assignments on their home computers,” says Jeff Cimmerer, Director of One factor behind the district’s academic Technology, Pittsford Central School leadership is a strong commitment to District. “As a result, file and format providing educators and students with the incompatibility problems were common.” tools they need to maintain a focus on teaching and learning. For example, Versioning conflicts and lost assignments starting in the mid-2000s, Pittsford Central were similarly common. “Students working School District provided email capabilities on an assignment at home might email one for teachers and offered accounts to version to the teacher, and then later students as well. But because federal law update their work but forget to send the mandates that such accounts be internal teacher the new version,” Cimmerer only, most students opted instead to use explains. “Or students might download a their personal email accounts for report to a Flash drive and then forget to communicating with teachers and bring the drive to school, or even misplace delivering assignments. As a result, there it. These problems were even worse when was little email-related work for district IT an assignment involved collaboration personnel, but quite a bit of it for some among two or more students.” teachers. Solution “At the start of each school year, I would Cimmerer and his colleagues began collect email addresses, but would seeking a way to provide teachers and misinterpret some students’ handwriting students with a more efficient online work and have to request their addresses again,” environment. “Because many students used says Karen Smith, Instructor of Gmail [Google Mail] for their personal Environmental Sciences, Mendon High accounts, we briefly considered School, Pittsford Central School District. implementing Google Apps for Education, “Just as often, a student might switch email but decided instead on Microsoft Live@edu accounts without informing me, and I online services,” he says. “With our would have to repeat the process with that Microsoft Exchange Server messaging student. In either case, the paperwork environment and Active Directory Domain consumed time and effort that should have Services, we recognized that creating and been devoted to teaching.” managing nearly 3,000 accounts—for our

25 target population of students in grades 8 because our Active Directory resides in a through 12—would be a lot easier with [Windows Server 2008 R2] 64-bit Live@edu than with Google Apps for environment. Thanks to CGS, we were able Education.” to move ahead with the pilot instead of having to wait for that release.” According to Charles Profitt, Systems Administrator for the Pittsford Central The team began hands-on work on the School District, team members also were Live@edu pilot project in April 2011 and impressed by Live@edu services beyond completed the project in four weeks email. “Microsoft Office Web Apps and “without a single snag and meeting all Windows Live SkyDrive seemed ideal for benchmarks,” according to Cimmerer. helping us address compatibility and Based on the success of the project, the versioning problems,” Profitt says. “We also district will implement Live@edu for its saw future collaboration opportunities with target students by the start of the 2011– Microsoft Office 365, the successor to 2012 school year. Live@edu, as well as near-term collaboration opportunities for teachers As Profitt explains, the implementation will who were using Microsoft SharePoint involve no formal promotion or training, Server 2010 and wanted an email solution because student adoption of Live@edu will that they could integrate into that be entirely voluntary. “We are not environment without a lot of effort.” mandating the use of Live@edu, because we’re confident we won’t need to,” he says. In early 2011, Cimmerer’s team selected “Based on the enthusiasm of staff members Smith, who was one such teacher, and two who participated in the pilot and of other staff members to participate in a pilot students whom we recently polled, we implementation of Live@edu that included anticipate a 90 percent adoption rate by Office Web Apps, Microsoft Outlook Live, our third year of having implemented and SkyDrive online storage. The team also Live@edu, and following it, Office 365.” engaged the services of Computer Generated Solutions (CGS), a member of Benefits the Microsoft Partner Network with Gold Cimmerer and his colleagues are looking competencies. forward to significant benefits once Live@edu is fully implemented. These As Cimmerer explains, CGS played an benefits include a more productive essential role in the project. “CGS communication environment for teachers consultants helped provide access to and students, a more reliable way for unreleased code that we needed for using students to maintain and organize their Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 work, significant cost savings on file to synchronize passwords between our storage, and expanded opportunities for Active Directory Domain Services and academic collaboration. Outlook Live,” he says. “We needed this code, later released as an add-in to Less Logistics, More Academics Outlook Live Directory Sync for Live@edu,

35 With Live@edu, Pittsford Central School students at different grade levels, as well as District teachers will have a full-featured projects involving other academic messaging solution without the struggle of institutions, without exposing our students keeping up with students’ individual email to the entirety of the web.” addresses. “Thanks to Live@edu, I’ll worry a lot less about the logistics of email For her part, Smith envisions bringing communications with my students, and students into a fully collaborative focus a lot more on the content of those environment that she is already planning, communications,” Smith says. based on her experience with SharePoint Server 2010. Students, too, will have less to worry about when it comes to producing and delivering “I have long wanted to use SharePoint their assignments. “File incompatibility, Server for collaboration in subject areas versioning conflicts, work left on the home where field projects are key,” Smith says. computer or a misplaced Flash drive— “Through a common SharePoint site, for Live@edu will put out all those fires,” example, students will be able to post Cimmerer says. “That’s because students photographic and video-based data of will work in the same desktop-productivity environmental phenomena along with their environment and save their work to a reports, analyses, presentations, blogs, and single, reliable storage environment that is whatever other content applies. This is the equally accessible from home and school.” kind of innovative learning environment that encourages student creativity, problem Yearly Savings of $40,000 solving, and active participation, and As a bonus, the Live@edu storage having Live@edu—an email solution that environment will be far more cost-effective seamlessly integrates into that environment than what the school has traditionally —will make it all possible.” offered onsite. “On our onsite servers, we provide one gigabyte of storage per student, but through SkyDrive, we’ll provide 25 times that volume while saving [U.S.]$40,000 yearly on storage and tape back-up systems,” Cimmerer says.

Stronger Innovation and Collaboration With the implementation of Live@edu, the Pittsford Central School District also will be able to enhance academic innovation and collaboration. “With Live@edu, we’ll have a controlled environment that enables learning to take place outside the walls of the classroom and regular school hours,” Profitt says. “We’ll be able to pursue projects involving collaboration among

45 Microsoft Online Services Microsoft Online Services are business-class communication and collaboration solutions delivered as a subscription service and hosted by Microsoft. With these offerings, customers can cost-effectively access the most up-to-date technologies and immediately benefit from streamlined communications, simplified management, and business-class reliability and security features. For IT staffers, Microsoft Online Services are backed by strong service level agreements and help reduce the burden of performing routine IT management, freeing up time to focus on core business initiatives.

For more information, visit: www.microsoft.com/online

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