The selection of case studies below highlights how schools have enhanced teaching
and learning while also improving efficiency, frequently lowering costs and providing
better management and administration solutions in the process.
From children using technology to study interactively, to teachers and students
sharing classroom materials online, to the savings that flow from virtualisation
and IP telephony, read on to see how schools across Australia are pushing the boundaries
in education with extremely positive results.
School centralises all communication, resources and data with Microsoft SharePoint
Abbotsleigh transformed their school communication, see how:
We can now communicate with our whole community –
instantly
Judith Poole, Headmistress, Abbotsleigh
Abbotsleigh is an independent Anglican School for girls in Sydney. Abbotsleigh strives
to create the leaders of tomorrow and technology is key to achieving this. Faced
with the challenge of many data sources and disparate communications, they were
looking for a unified solution to centralise all the school services. With the help
of Microsoft Sharepoint, they developed an intranet called Abbnet consisting of
4 portals: Parents, Staff, Students & Alumni. This provides complete connection
between parents, staff and students – with full access to all aspects of the school.
Combined with a Microsoft identity management solution, user accounts and appropriate
services are seamlessly managed as required without the nightmare of managing individual
accounts one at a time
Register your interest now to explore solutions to transform your school
Contact Microsoft Certified IT Specialists for help with implementing Microsoft technologies.
Save and get more for your money on software and tools
The New South Wales Department of Education and Training evaluated - and is now using - Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 to find ways to make it easier for teachers, administrators, and students to share best practices and work together to create materials.
When Cranbrook School in Sydney wanted a new intranet to make teachers and administrators
less reliant on paper-based systems and advance communication between staff and
students, they chose Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007. With its new intranet, Cranbrook
School has improved access to teaching material for teachers and students, as well
as enabled teachers to deliver more sophisticated lessons and enrich students’ learning
experiences. The portal now serves as a base for the future development of media
in teaching.
Previously, uploading documents to the old intranet
took about 10 minutes. On SharePoint Server, it takes less than 10 seconds – it’s
just fantastic.
Mark McAndrew, Director of Teaching and Learning, Cranbrook School
Read the full case study
St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School is an independent day and boarding school located
near Brisbane, Australia. Their existing Internet portal was unstable and it was
inaccessible to third-party vendors. IT staff also required external support if
they wanted to make new internal applications available. In 2008, the school’s gateway
failed completely. Within a matter of days, Data#3 had installed and configured
Microsoft Intelligent Application Gateway 2007 as a temporary solution, restoring
remote access to off-site parents, staff and students. St Margaret’s decided to
purchase the product and has suffered no outages since. The school has rapidly published
new extranet services that promote more sophisticated and transparent communication
within the St Margaret’s community. A dedicated vendor portal has also drastically
simplified third-party application support.
Throughout Christmas and New Year, staff were coming
back to me and saying how delighted they were...
Tony Leyland, IT Manager, St Margaret's
Read the full case study
John Septimus Roe Anglican Community School in Western Australia wanted students
to be able to access course material and collaborate with other students online.
The school also wanted to help broaden the education experience and ensure that
parents are fully engaged. In 2008, the school deployed the Kaleidos Learning Platform.
Developed by education specialist RM using Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft SQL
servers, the platform is an information-sharing portal and virtual learning environment.
Teachers are beginning to develop digital course content and have learned how to
set, mark and record student progress online. Parents are now able to use the school
portal to get access to their children’s results or for news on school events, and
students will begin to use online spaces to collaborate with classmates.
All schools are looking at ways they can embrace technology
to improve the teaching and learning process.
David Hill, Deputy Principal, John Septimus Roe
Read the full case study
Leading Australian private school St Leonard’s College wanted to expand the services
it offered to students and staff. To avoid the time and expense required installing
more hardware, St Leonard’s implemented Windows Server 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V
virtualisation technology. With Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
2008, St Leonard’s IT staff can deploy virtual servers in less than half the time
it previously took to deploy physical servers.
To expand our services in the past, we would have
spent a lot of time planning and budgeting for hardware. Implementing Hyper-V gave
us a shortcut, and we expanded exponentially in six months.
Mark Blake, Information Services Manager, St Leonard's College
Read the full case study
Scholaris Learning Gateway is a Web-based learning solution used by schools and
colleges in Australia, New Zealand and around the world. Scholaris helps teachers
offer their students a rich learning experience through use of a virtual classroom,
using the Microsoft Learning Gateway framework. This framework integrates knowledge
management, collaboration and communications technologies for teachers, students
and parents as well as allowing teachers to provide students with individualised
curricula.
Now teachers with minimal IT expertise are able to
quickly develop rich student collaboration opportunities that are engaging and interactive.
Justin Cantrill, United Kingdom General Manager, Scholaris International
Read the full case study
To increase efficiency and improve communication, Scotch College implemented a new
phone system based on Internet Protocol (IP) telephony. The school deployed Microsoft
Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, the Microsoft
Office Communicator Mobile client for Windows Mobile phones, and Microsoft Exchange
Server 2007 Unified Messaging. As well as offering staff easy access to fast and
cost-effective communications tools such as instant messaging, the solution will
also reduce mobile phone costs.
Office Communications Server 2007 is an excellent
product for reducing expenses while improving our communications.
Carlos Sinay, Network Engineer, Scotch College
Read the full case study
