A fortnight ago we posted the first in a series of blog posts from Microsoft in Education partner Learning Possibilities. Earlier in the year we explored the work they have been doing with Office 365 in Wales through the Hwb+ platform, and now we are looking ahead to the launch of the LP+365 app in December.
That first post saw a Q&A style conversation with Stephen Heppell, Executive Chairman at Learning Possibilities while this second instalment gives us a view from inside the classroom, as Learning Possibilities enlist the help of a teacher from Southampton to shed some light on what it has been like to use LP+365 in her school.
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A catch up with Townhill Junior, on the new LMS – LP+365 from Learning Possibilities and Microsoft.
The following is a guest post from Denise Phillips, Maths & Computing Logical Thinking Lead at Townhill Junior School, Southampton, and looks at her experiences with LP+365 from Microsoft Education Partner Learning Possibilities Ltd.
We are also hosting an event with Learning Possibilities on Tuesday the 1st of December at Microsoft HQ. Register your place here for FREE.
When you get wind of a product like LP+365, it’s actually very difficult to ignore! As the Maths and Computing Logical Thinking Lead, I’m always looking for ways to incorporate educational value into industry leading technology, and so I was more than happy to pilot this product before its release.
The ability to use Microsoft products is a transferable skill that our students will be able to carry through with them into secondary school, further education and finally into employment. We’ve all seen how our favourite Microsoft tools like OneNote Class Notebook, Discussion forums, Wikis, Blogs, Surveys and so forth can support learning in an educational setting.
One of the things that I love about LP+365 is that the colourful and engaging interface eases access and simplifies use for all of these valuable tools. This is especially important to me being that we’re a Primary school, and for some of our students the Office365 and LP+365 LMS features are fairly new.
A Visual of a class site on LP+365
Since the last blog, we’ve now been provisioned on LP+365. The team at Learning Possibilities were on hand to support, even though the provisioning is made up of a handful of CSV files that can easily be filled in with reports from the school’s MIS. The CSV’s are then uploaded into the App, and classes, user accounts, and permissions are all set up and ready to go! I would suggest to anyone who is apprehensive about provisioning their own App to take a quick look at the LP+365 Help guides via the Support tab, as these clearly demonstrate how to get everything set up – and you’ll soon find that it’s not half as difficult as you’d think.
I’m really looking forward to getting everything going now. I plan to be rolling LP+365 to my classes after half term, and will be getting the students to login as soon as possible. I have a very exciting Wiki project planned with my Year 6 groups, and I’m really glad to have the opportunity to base this project on LP+365.
To find out more about Denise’s project, adding educational value to Office 365 or for more information on turning Office 365 into your schools learning management system, join Learning Possibilities, Townhill Junior school, Stephen Heppell and more at Microsoft HQ in Reading on Tuesday the 1st of December. Register here for FREE.