Coos Bay Public Schools

Oregon School District Offers E-Mail and Collaboration Solution for Students

To help prepare its students for future education and careers, Coos Bay School District in Oregon wanted to offer high school students an e-mail service with administrative features that improve online safety. It chose Microsoft® Live@edu to provide hosted communication and collaboration services, avoiding annual costs of up to U.S.$10,000 for an in-house solution. The district uses the Web-based tools to enhance its IT instruction and learning environments, and students use them to improve study skills.

 

Business Needs

Coos Bay School District is located on the central Oregon coast in Coos County. It has approximately 3,500 students. The district has three elementary schools, an intermediate school for grades five and six, a middle school for grades seven and eight, and Marshfield High School. The district also provides alternative educational programs.

Coos Bay School District has a forward-thinking approach to establishing a technology-enriched learning environment to prepare its students for post-secondary education and the workforce. However, while the district has 17 computer labs, 13 laptop carts, and 25 “mini labs” and supports 900 personal computers, it did not offer an e-mail service for students.

“This was a missed opportunity for our students to experience the communication technologies that they will be using in the future,” says Fred Hunt, Senior Technology Instructor for Coos Bay School District. “At Coos Bay School District, we aspire to match the Educational Technology Standards from the Oregon Department of Education.” These standards emphasize the importance of introducing students to e-mail and using collaborative technologies, such as blogs, for team projects.

“Given our students’ ages, we had to have complete control over setting security policies, naming conventions, and domains for inbound and outbound mail,” says Fred Baker, Technology Director for Coos Bay School District. The district considered adding a server running Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 e-mail messaging and collaboration software for students but quickly realized that the solution would exceed its limited IT storage budget.

Initially the district evaluated two hosted e-mail services: an open-source option, called AtMail, and Gmail from Google. After a short trial, it dismissed AtMail because of its high maintenance requirements. “We decided against Gmail because it didn’t have the administrative and security controls we required to protect our students,” says Baker. The district felt that if it had chosen Gmail, it would have had little administrative control over naming conventions, meaning students could use false information about their identities or choose inappropriate or poorly worded login names.

Solution

Baker and his colleague Kevin Wilhite found the right e-mail service for Coos Bay School District when they learned about the Microsoft Live@edu with Outlook® Live hosted communication and collaboration solution. With Live@edu, Baker can create e-mail accounts for Coos Bay students and assign login names and passwords so that they can access a range of collaborative services. These include Web-based e-mail, Windows Live™ SkyDrive™ storage technology for 25 gigabytes of online storage, and Windows Live Spaces for creating personal spaces and writing blogs.

With Live@edu, we have leading-edge, integrated communication and collaboration services that raise the quality of instructional technology and learning at Coos Bay School District. Fred Baker Technology Director, Coos Bay School District

“Live@edu offers the administrative control and privacy that we needed for our student e-mail service, helping us conform to the Children’s Internet Protection Act,” says Kevin Wilhite, Server Administrator for Coos Bay School District. “We are confining student inbound and outbound e-mail messages to our district domain and other .edu domains.”
 
Baker and Wilhite also liked that Live@edu interoperates with the district’s Microsoft environment. “We extracted the students’ data from our eSIS student information system and created accounts in Active Directory® Domain Services based on students’ e-mail addresses,” says Baker. “Then we uploaded the contact information to Live@edu and created approximately 2,900 mailboxes.”

In September 2008, the district offered Live@edu as an optional service to students from grades 5 through 12. Before any student used the service, the district required written permission from a parent or guardian. Baker and Wilhite are promoting the new collaboration services throughout the district. “We have posters in the halls and updates on our student-led TV announcements in the morning,” says Baker. “It’s generating a lot of interest.” To date, half of the high school, roughly 500 to 600 students, is actively using the Live@edu services.

Benefits

Today, Coos Bay School District is the first in Oregon to deploy Live@edu with Outlook Live. “With Live@edu, we have leading-edge, integrated communication and collaboration services that raise the quality of instructional technology and learning at Coos Bay School District,” says Baker. “Compared to the in-house alternative, we’re avoiding annual storage and maintenance costs of up to U.S.$10,000, or 10 percent of our annual hardware and software budget.”

Enriching IT Instruction

Hunt uses Live@edu to meet Oregon State’s Educational Technology Standards and to deliver a unique IT learning opportunity to high school students. “I asked the students to send me an introductory e-mail, and one student said, ‘I’ve never sent an e-mail to an adult before.’ This is a chance to present e-mail as an official communication tool used in the workforce. Some students had never attached a document to an e-mail message. Now, I’m getting students to post their assignments to their blogs. We are breaking new ground.”

Fostering Online Communication Skills

Today, Erika Mauer, a high school junior, communicates with her English teacher using Live@edu services. “He showed us how to log on to Live@edu on the first day, and it was really easy,” she says. “He posts all our assignments on SkyDrive so we can check if we miss a class. I also e-mail my yearbook advisor, and he sends me documents that he wants in the yearbook.”

Improving Study Skills

“I love SkyDrive because it’s helping me keep organized and stay on top of my school work,” Mauer adds. “If I’m halfway through an essay at the lab, I can upload it to SkyDrive and work on it from my computer at home. Or I can download homework I did last night and print it at school. Now I never have to worry about forgetting my papers. As long as I can access the Internet, I can get to my work.”