What is Office 365?

Office 365 is the ‘cloud’ based suite of Office programs students already know and use every day. It is an additional product which compliments Microsofts existing suite of Office programs. Students and Staff can create, access and edit their files from virtually anywhere – PC, Mac, tablets or phones, and they’re always up to date. Started a document in school and want to finish it on the bus journey home? It’s now possible.

The Benefits of Office 365:

• Up to 100GB of online storage – it works like a memory stick that you can’t forget and you can’t lose. Choose to upload all your files and access them virtually anywhere.
• Access, create and edit documents on a multitude of devices: tablets, phones, laptops PCs and Macs.
• The ability to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents in a browser, giving a rich editing experience.
• Share and Collaborate on documents with other students or share with staff.
• Integration with the new Virtual Learning Environment.
• Entitlement to install the latest suite of Office for PC or Mac to personal devices for free.
• Using a tablet? Download iOS and Android apps in the respective app store or use the built in access to OneDrive for business built into Windows 10.
• Whilst a student or staff member at Ferndown Upper School the software remains licensed and students can use these programs on up to 5 devices.
• Students and staff continue to use Office 2016 in school but now have the option to save to their OneDrive location. As an example, students using their own device such as a laptop could save to OneDrive whilst logged in to a school PC and then later on access Office 365 via the student WiFi to continue working on that document.

A few things to take note of:

• An Internet connection is required to access the Office 365 site and services.
• Office 365 is a service operated and run by Microsoft and not Ferndown Upper School.
• Ferndown Upper School only provide the ability for students and staff to log into Office 365 using their Ferndown Upper School email address and network password, all other parts of Office 365 are operated by Microsoft.
• Users of the Office 365 service and the OneDrive storage must abide by all relevant laws regarding the storage and sharing of illegal content.
• Ferndown Upper School can make no guarantees regarding the safety of any documents created on the Office 365 platform, Microsoft do backup documents and there is also a recycle bin in case of accidental deletion of files. Microsoft also guarantee 99.9% uptime.
• Ferndown Upper School recommend students and staff always maintain a backup of their files (wherever they are stored) on a different storage medium, for example to a USB memory stick, an external hard drive or a recordable CD / DVD.
• Ferndown Upper School are unable to guarantee the availability of the Office 365 platform at all times, there may be periods of unavailability due to maintenance or loss of Internet access during any part of the day for example. Students must plan for any eventuality and ensure any homework / coursework is submitted or printed in sufficient advance to any deadlines set.
• Before leaving Ferndown Upper School, students and staff must ensure they move any documents they wish to keep from their OneDrive storage to a suitable storage medium as their Office 365 accounts become inactive as soon as they leave. There is a 30 day grace period where documents could still be retained but the IT services department must be contacted and your account reenabled for a short time. After 30 days of leaving Ferndown Upper School, documents on OneDrive will no longer be accessible and will be deleted by Microsoft.
• Ferndown Upper School may decide to not provide all Office 365 services, we don’t currently provide students with access to Skype for Business or the OneDrive for Business sync tool on school computers.