Office 365 for Education

User Scenario:
Using a Lync meeting for educator professional development

As an educator, Lync can offer you the experience of having all your colleagues available in one place at the same time.

• In your colleague group contacts list, each person has a colour next to their name that indicates whether they are available online or away.
• Colleagues can take over your shared desktop for explanations. This is useful, for example, if you need help with installation or maintenance from tech support.
• If you share the PowerPoint presentation you are working on for a team project, colleagues can annotate your slides with suggestions and talk you through them.
• Teacher professional development opportunities are increased as virtual meetings and presentations are easier to arrange and attendance maximised.

Mrs de Bruyn has read about some fantastic teacher development activity using video conferencing and decides that she would like to try and arrange this using Office 365 Lync for her colleagues in the school.

One of the other school leaders she regularly networks with is an expert on using technology in the classroom. She thinks her colleagues would benefit from the opportunity of a training session with her friend using Lync.

Her school Office 365 account has been set up to allow external users to take part in Lync conferences. Mrs de Bruyn logs into Office 365 and proceeds to set up her meeting using her calendar, sending an email to notify her staff colleagues and her friend Thembi Khumalo who will deliver the training session.

• Her meeting starts as everyone clicks on the link they received in the email. They are guided through the materials by Mrs Khumalo, the presenter, using PowerPoint as well as video material on her shared desktop.
• The controls for the different types of shared materials are all on the bottom left of the Lync meeting screen.
• At the end of the meeting, Mrs Khumalo uses the Q&A Manager function to answer questions from the participants in a structured manner. This automatically turns off IM for the duration of the Q&A.
• As questions come in from the participants, Mrs Khumalo can answer them immediately below each question.
• The Q&A session is recorded and will be made available to participants along with the rest of the meeting materials.
• Mrs de Bruyn then uses the Poll function to get feedback from her colleagues about the Lync meeting and online professional development activity, before closing the session.

Using Lync to bring in external experts to work with your colleagues and students is a really powerful boost to professional development and for learning activity.

Lync and instant messaging - Further Reading

» Using Lync in your school or education institution
» Scenario: Scheduling a Lync meeting
» Scenario: Student revision session
» Scenario: Using a Lync meeting
» Scenario: Using IM for out of school help

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