How to use M365 in Education

If you do any work with educators or education groups, check out what the Puyallup (don't try to pronounce it) School District is doing with Microsoft 365.

My team has been working closely with the team leading this project, and you can read all about it in this case study published today.

There were four big things I learned reading this:

Lesson #1: Total value of ownership is measured by educational gains

• “Most apps improve learning. We believe in the concept of academic grit: note taking, analyzing, summary, how you synthesize information. That's where the Microsoft education tools really are outstanding,” explains Vetter. “They provide our students with the skills they need at the university level, military or vocational school, or the workplace. It's not just about quick reward. It's about being that self-actualized learner. So no, we're not app-based; we're platform-based and curriculum-based.”

Lesson #2: Cost-effectiveness increases with stack integration

• According to Vetter, Puyallup is “using the Microsoft stack as much as we can. Cost-effectiveness comes from taking full advantage of everything we pay for. Whether it's the servers, the applications, single sign-on, and everything we’re doing with Intune—pulling it all together as a comprehensive package has enabled us to be very cost-effective. From a budget standpoint, our goal is to always improve learning. Improve efficiency. Our transformation to the cloud, Azure Active Directory, and Intune has increased learning while decreasing costs, by using the entire stack effectively. Educators get the apps they require in the classroom while balancing security and policy management from a central location.”
• Hinkle echoes Vetter’s sentiments, “I talk a lot with the nearby districts and we kind of live in a hub where all nearby districts are Google districts. they're working with Chromebooks, it just works. And that's why they stick with it. With the work we've done with Intune and all the functionality, it works better than ever. And that has saved us time, money, resources put elsewhere.”

Lesson #3: Accessibility shouldn’t be an afterthought

• Dictation tools have helped students who face stuttering and dyslexia. Now, these same students no longer feel like their learning experience is different from the rest of their peers. Universal Print, which is on the roadmap, will save the district thousands of dollars by replacing licenses they will no longer need to acquire and renew. This is the cost savings potential of a more integrated platform: efficiency of cost paired with equality of learning.

Lesson #4: Not all costs are financial

• This has been a core part of Puyallup’s approach to any TCO calculation. “When we did our total cost of ownership comparison of platforms, you look at Google, you look at the Chromebooks, you look at the initial licensing fee, you look at the fact that you are either paying for an app or monetizing each individual app, which is where those apps are going to have to go and you're paying in terms of student data,” explains Vetter. “A core value of our district is we will not sell our children's privacy. Period. We appreciate Microsoft’s security and data privacy stance. Personally, I've done many parent presentations over the last five years, and when I look at my community and I say, ‘we will not sell our children's privacy,’ you see the relief in their faces.”
• According to Vetter, if you analyze tech levies in the surrounding districts also pursuing the 1:1 device to student ratio, and analyze that cost per student, Puyallup is significantly smaller. “We are,” Vetter notes, “at $250 per student, the lowest cost one-to-one district in the South Puget Sound. That's Apple districts, that's Chromebook districts, that's Windows districts. So, we are very cost-conscious, and it’s in the utilization of the entire stack that we make happen.”