Microsoft Higher EducationCustomer Solution Case Study

In the era of smart education, established environment enabling teachers to focus more on their jobs

OverviewCountry or Region: KoreaIndustry: Education Customer ProfileMyungduk Foreign Language High School is located in Naebalsandong, Gangseogu, Seoul. Established in 1992, the school has provided foreign language education like English, German, French, Japanese, Russian and Chinese.

Business SituationSince the internal mail server operation was stopped in the early 2000s for reasons of lack of expert, increasing security threats, etc. the school personnel has used external mail service. Since then, they have felt the limitation to cover the increasing email communication.

SolutionStarting with providing its domain-based email service through Live@edu, it began to use the platform including Sky Drive and Web Apps for data sharing and collaboration in school.

Benefits Established the school identity Run the high-density class Simplified homework

“As a foreign language high school, there are many chances of exchange with foreign nations and sometimes embarrassing situation happened when the name card which the outside domain email was written on was handed out. Now, we can show the Myungduk Foreign Language High School’s brand identity when we take a business trip”

Deokhyung Ryu, teacher of Myungduk Foreign Language High School

Myungduk Foreign Language High School located in Gangseogu, Seoul took its educational administration service a step further through Live@edu. The school drove the website renewal task in late 2000s and then prepared to provide its domain-based email service as a next challenge. In the middle of looking to its proper email service, the school found that Live@edu enables not only communication but also innovation of teaching method through Sky Drive or Web Apps. Myungduk Foreign Language High School first conducted the account transition for 3,000 users of teachers, students and their parents based on its domain, and proceeding with customization for connecting renewal website to services like email and schedule. And it is also using Sky Drive and Web Apps from Live@edu for data sharing and cooperation between teachers and as a tool for efficient documentation.

SituationSince its establishment in 1992, Myungduk Foreign Language High School has provided foreign language education like English, German, French, Japanese, Russian and Chinese to cultivate global talents. In 2011, another milestone was marked in its history. That is, it began to use Microsoft’s Live@edu as a new base to reflect IT technology in the education to cultivate young talents.

Myungduk Foreign Language High School’s information policy was nothing more or less than other school. Its website and email were provided with the server on the premises and it has had trouble for the lack of expert and increasing security threats. To ease these burdens, it switched its domain-based email service which its personnel had used to that of third party firm like portals.

At that time, it was inevitable choice to the teacher managing mail server. As the unmanaged servers in the school were exposed to exploitation of hacking and virus, the mood of prohibition of direct operation was created. Even in the security education of Education office, there was a recommendation for letting the school provide webmail service if possible. And users also preferred simple webmail service to POP3 method which they have to setup and manage the data for themselves.

Both administrator and users showed positive response for the outside mail

account. But it has not gone far. As time passed, problems were revealed. Deokhyung Ryu, teacher of Myungduk Foreign Language High School said, “In case of using only one account, business and private mails were usually mixed, but most users barely sorted them. And even in case they had a separated business mail account, most users didn’t set its forwarding to their frequently used mail.” And he added, “As a result of communicating by email only, a delay or temporary vacuum in their works has occurred against their will.”

There is also inconvenience outside of work. In digital age, the school’s brand identity issue was raised. When the school personnel were questioned by the people why their email addresses on the name card were not based on their school.

SolutionMyungduk Foreign Language High School kept subscription-based webmail service and free service like Google Apps for Education in mind to distribute its school domain-based mail accounts to the personnel and students. Among several services, they were leaning toward Gmail. Some teachers already have communicated and cooperated not only with Gmail but also with Google Docs, a word processing tool. For these early adaptors, teachers good at recent IT technology, Google service was ideal one.

But that’s not the case in a real world. Considering the condition of school

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containing various age and user level, it was not a best way. Especially an user convenience remains as an impediment. Deokhyung Ryu said, “I have helped to use Google mail for the teachers inquiring which male they have to use, but most of them feel unfamiliar with its user preference.” And he added, “For them, Google mail’s labels sorting and management concept wasn’t familiar one.” From POP3 server using, Outlook has been used as client for a long time, and Google’s interface was an unfamiliar one.

Seriously considering other alternatives, the school received surprising news. It was the Microsoft’s Live@edu related news. It enabled them to customize as if it was built in the school despite it is a complete service.

Deokhyung Ryu said, “In a high school, though it seems that general service will be enough, it needs delicate customizing unexpectedly.” And he said, “In case of Google, there’s nowhere to ask in domestic area when we need to ask something about the service.” He added, “In case of Myungduk Foreign Language High School, as e-wut.com responsible for renewal of the school’s website and its operation is the Microsoft partner related to Live@edu, we don’t need to ask around for finding proper vendors.”

After choosing Live@edu, the school first begins with activating mail service. And they make an

incremental sophisticating plan with the consultation to e-wut.com.

First, it made staffs and students use the mail based on the school domain, mdfh.or.kr, from the spring semester 2011. In a long-term plan, the school will issue the mail account for all registered users including staffs, students and even parents, and it expects that almost 3,000 accounts will be moved to the mdfh.or.kr.

On the customizing task, e-wut.com first implemented the feature that makes it possible to check new mail when the user log in to the website and then to access the mailbox immediately. And the company has driven the next challenges including SSO (Sing Sign On) support between the website and Live@edu account, group mail feature which enables sending mails in a group by applying various sorting criteria on integrated account information, and unification of a number of points for posting and sharing schedules to the homepage into the Outlook. Besides the customizing, the school keeps experiments to use SkyDrive and Web Apps actively in the real educational process.

BenefitsEstablished the school identity Myungduk Foreign Language High School can establish its brand identity by using Live@edu. Deokhyung Ryu recalled, “As a foreign language high school, there are many chances of exchange with foreign nations and

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sometimes embarrassing situation happened when the name card which the outside domain email was written on was handed out.” And he said, “Parents’ recommendations of using school domain-based email also getting increased.” “Now, we can show the Myungduk Foreign Language High School’s brand identity when we take a business trip” he added.

Run the high-density class How can teachers show various contents in a limited class? It will be the eternal concern of teachers. In the Myungduk Foreign Language High School, by virtue of Live@edu, communication can be possible even before the lesson to make it better. Deokhyung Ryu said, “When the lesson-related materials were distributed on a sharing folder on SkyDrive before the class, better lesson is possible.” And he added, “Now we can cut the time wastes for connecting TV and computer to show power point documents.”

Simplified homework management All the school has to make accomplishment evaluation for all subjects according to the recommendation of Education office. The problem is that if paper-type homework is submitted, it is very difficult to manage it.

In the past, there have been teachers feel pressured about homework keeping and managing. Deokhyung Ryu said, “For instance, we set

homework like searching the news reports about comments on the pros and cons of using Chinese characters to show personal opinion about it, then we have to evaluate hundreds of students’ reports”. And he added, “As the evaluation is carried on throughout entire semester, total amount of each 2 to 3 pages of report is too huge to keep and review.”

Myungduk Foreign Language High School doesn’t worry about the homework management any more. After using Live@edu, many teachers are sorting emails on Outlook by the criteria like title style when they sent emails for homework. And reports were stored in CD by quarter or semester and utilized as evidence materials.

Free from a variety of surveys Like other schools, teachers conduct numerous surveys from the beginning of the semester to the vacation. In the beginning of the semester, they make a name list to collect the personal information like email, cell phone number, etc. This is only the beginning. There are endless things to survey like school lunch, school trip, after school program, etc. Until now these works have been done by teachers manually.

Deokhyung Ryu has been made effort to solve these inconveniences through his own test. He used to make forms by using Google Docs’ Form service to distribute it by email. It did work but the problem was it couldn’t be spread out to entire

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teachers. However, Live@edu provides a tool can improve total work efficiency with a few efforts. For instance, teachers good at word processing make a form with Office’s InfoPath, and it can be shared with teachers through SkyDrive. And then, teachers have only to send group-email to their students on the Outlook.

Collecting and entering results from class survey also are streamlined. A teacher in charge of management has only to upload Excel document to be filled on SkyDrive of Live@edu. And by using Web Apps, each teacher has but to enter his or her own results in it without opening the Excel.

Established a standard of data management and backupBy virtue of Live@edu, the school can have a common standard of backup and managing the resource which is a core asset of the school. Deokhyung Ryu said, “Though there was a difference between people, they usually backup data by using 2 to 3 exterior storage devices or cloud storage services provided by portals or telecom carriers.” He added, “Unlike the past way of using email, we can work under our own common standard like SkyDrive or Live Mesh.”

Microsoft Live@eduMicrosoft Live@edu offers education institutions free, hosted, co-branded communication and collaboration services for students, faculty, and alumni.

Provision cloud-based email. Provide enterprise-class

tools. Enable online document

sharing and storage. Help improve alumni

communication.

www.microsoft.com/liveatedu/

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, visit the website at: www.microsoft.com

For more information about Myungduk Foreign Language High School, call 82-2-2665-8818 or visit the website at: http://www.mdfh.or.kr

Partner InformationThe e-wut.com specializing in educational information field was founded in 2000. The company is focusing on website and contents business and providing web hosting service for 2,127 schools across the country. If you need more information about e-wut.com, please call to us or visit our website below.

Contacts:Phone: 02-542-2015Website: http://www.e-wut.com/

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published October 2011

Software and Services Cloud Services

− Windows Live@edu− Office Web Apps− SkyDrive