Tag: Single Pane of Glass

Categories
Microsoft365 Windows 11

iOS Support Lands In Intune For Education

4Intune for Education is a school focused MDM (Mobile Device Management) tool that makes the set up, deployment and management of Windows 10 devices incredibly easy for schools and their IT partners. I’ve probably completed a few hundred demos of it we featured it in our Trial in a Box programme in May and June of 2018.

I’m super excited to see that now iOS support has been added to Intune for Education, allowing a “single pane of glass” for management of both Windows 10 and iOS devices for schools. This has been one of the most requested features from school leaders and IT partners over the last 12 months. The full version of Intune has supported iOS for a long time and I’ve previously written a five part blog post series showing how to set up and configure DEP, VPP and Custom Profiles for iPads. With this announcement, however, the interface has been simplified and the process made easier as it can all be done via the Intune for Education Portal here.

Get Started Instructions

I strongly encourage you to go to the above link to get started and read the instructions, but if you want to skip straight into your iOS Device Management in the Intune for Education Portal then click here.

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Portal Configuration for iOS in Intune for Education

Note that the above screenshot (from the official documentation) shows all three sections configured and ready to “manage”. If you’re setting this up for the first time you will need to:

  1. Log into the Intune for Education Portal
  2. Select “Tenant Settings” on the left hand menu
  3. Click the new “iOS Device Management” settings (below the “General” menu)
  4. Click “Configure” for each of the three sections before you can start to manage your iOS devices.

Therefore, your screen will probably look more like this:

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Note the “Configure” buttons in blue – once configured these will change to “Manage”

The overall instructions are pretty good and quick links include:

There is also detailed instructions on how to get iOS apps via VPP and some important reminders when it comes to free iOS apps. Even though you can add them directly to devices, it’s strongly recommended that you add them via the Apple School Manager and VPP because this will allow for silent installs of the apps being pushed to the devices (rather than prompting for an Apple ID on the device before installation).

Something to note: Intune for Education will only allow you to manage devices enrolled via Apple’s Device Enrollment Program (DEP). Whilst most schools are purchasing iPads from authorised Apple resellers, keep this restriction in mind when you’re planning a deployment and check that the iPads you have will be supported via DEP.

One of the nice features is when adding a free app from the iOS App Store you can search for apps directly from within the Intune for Education portal, meaning a teacher or IT manager does not need to leave the “single pane of glass” to add apps. A small, but super convenient, feature.

iOS Settings & Restrictions:

This is one of the key areas that is added to the standard Intune For Education console once iOS is configured and you can read the instructions for this here.

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Note how the Win10 device settings have been collapsed at the top and iOS settings are visible

It’s worth noting that the Intune for Education for iOS is optimized around the functionality available in Apple School Manager and deployments into school scenarios. It does not add any additional features that are not already available in the full version of Intune. To that end, what I wrote about late last year still applies, however my hope is that now there is a specifically education focused version of Intune for Education with iOS management that some of these features will rapidly be added – watch this space for now.

My Point of View:

I see this as a critical step forward for Intune for Education. In my previous role as the Director of ICT at St Andrew’s College, I was constantly looking for tools and reporting that simplified the experience for my system administrators and seeking that elusive “single pane of glass” for reporting and administration.

The addition of iOS management to Intune for Education adds a critical step towards that (keep in mind the full version of Intune also supports Android and MacOS). With many schools running a mixed environment of both Windows 10 and iPad devices, this provides an even easier interface for the configuration, deployment and management of their devices – which can only be a good thing.

Categories
Microsoft365

Harvest: Making Marking Easy in OneNote Class Notebooks

Harvest2OneNote Class Notebooks remain one of the most popular features in the Microsoft Office365 Education offerings and teachers love the simplicity of seeing all of their students’ work in one place. This is especially important when it comes to quickly and efficiently marking the work of students and providing feedback.

The One Education team, creators of the Infinity One laptop for students, recognised the power and popularity of OneNote and created a brand new product called Harvest to supercharge marking and sharing of student work for teachers. This is hosted entirely in the Azure cloud and harnesses all the power of Office365 API and OneNote Class Notebooks, demonstrating innovative thinking by helping teachers reduce the time consuming work of marking and collating student work.

I’ve created a quick six minute introduction to the product where I walk through some of the key features and you can see this below:

As you will have seen in the video, teachers can install the plugin into OneNote Online (note that for now OneNote desktop does not support the addition of third party extensions, so Harvest only works in the browser version of OneNote Online) and can get started marking student work immediately:

Harvest1

Currently, Harvest supports a database of both New Zealand and Australian curriculum standards/strands meaning teachers can easily search for the standard they wish to mark student work against. This, in itself, streamlines the marking process for teachers as they do not need to manually enter the curriculum details that the student is studying.

Here is a simple example of marking a student’s Year 13 Calculus work:

On the left you can see the student’s Maths–>Calculus section in the OneNote Class Notebook has been selected and on the right the teacher has clicked “Browse” to identify the curriculum strand they’re assessing against. Mathematics and Statistics is selected.

Harvest Maths1

The teacher selects the curriculum level / year level to narrow down the selection of curriculum strands to choose from:

Harvest Maths2

The teacher then selects the most appropriate curriculum strand(s) they are assessing against:

Harvest Maths3

The teacher can now see the curriculum strand, give it a grade of “Below / At / Above Level” and can even add a comment of up to 255 characters (visible only to the teacher currently)

Harvest Maths4

Harvest Dashboard
Harvest Dashboard Link

What really sets Harvest apart is the use of existing API within OneNote to collate all of this work (essentially, these grades are Tags within OneNote) and then display them in a “single pane of glass” interface. This assists the teacher to get an overview of either a single student or an entire class based off the marking they have completed. To view this dashboard the teacher simply clicks the “Harvest” menu item and then “Dashboard” and it loads for them in a new tab in their browser:

Harvest Dashboard1

Some things to note in the above screenshot:

  • Teachers can select from multiple different OneNote Class Notebooks on the left hand menu
  • Teachers can also select from multiple curriculum areas within the same Class NoteBook which obviously makes a lot of sense for primary school teachers, or cross-curricular class environments.
  • Students are all listed in a grid (the columns), with a colour coded system showing whether they are Below / At / Above The Level based on each curriculum strand marked (the rows in the grid). Where a student does not have work marked against a particular curriculum strand it is grey indicating “No Rating”
  • Harvest will also generate a thumbnail of the student work when hovering over the grade in the grid – note at this stage thumbnails of digital inking is not available.

It’s not hard to imagine how beneficial the above view would be for a teacher when it comes to writing school reports or preparing for parent/teacher interviews – they would literally have ALL graded work collated into one place and able to show the parent at the click of a button. This is harnessing all the power of OneNote Class Notebooks, the associated API’s and the Azure cloud to streamline marking and reporting for teachers.

Harvest Dashboard2
Viewing larger thumbnails of student work in Harvest Feed, where the various grades are easily recognizable through consistent colour coding.

To top it off, teachers can choose to share selected student work directly to parents with a shortened URL (something Microsoft recently added to Class Notebooks):

Harvest Share
A teacher must first select “Student Feedback” along the top to make it publicly visible, and then simply copy the link to share with a parent.

I am really excited by the prospects of Harvest because it seems like a product that understands the challenges teachers have managing large amounts of assessment and aims to simplify the reporting process. With many schools moving to increasingly digital and paperless environments, leveraging the existing power within OneNote to support assessment and reporting is a smart move and something I’d imagine many schools will be very interested in.

For schools that are wanting to get started with Harvest straight away, check out these comprehensive set up instructions.