Office groups, sharepoint online and students

Peter Gibbs

I'm sorry I don't have answers, just saying that I'm also looking at how one would implement a whole school system with Office 365/SharePoint/OneDrive for Business.

I'm coming from the other end - where I'm not very familiar with SharePoint Team sites, but a little more familiar with Groups. That is because when using Microsoft Classroom, groups are created for different classes. Microsoft Classroom is quite new, it is still in Preview. I got involved with Microsoft Classroom because of OneNote Class Notebook and got involved with that due to being an enthusiastic OneNote user. Ms Classroom is essentially a SharePoint implementation. I've always been avoiding SharePoint per se - its hierarchy and navigation never seemed logical to me. Now it seems that these two are merging - that is Groups and Team Sites. So, in a nutshell, I'm quite new to the whole concept of SharePoint.

The question did come up with a colleague of mine - how do we keep educator groups safe in such a mixed environment where there are educator groups and educator+learner groups? Should we have separate domains or what do we do?

Now the whole issue with Office 365 groups, SharePoint Team sites and OneDrive for Business seems to be in flux, needing IT to rethink its approaches of how data is stored/shared/secured. I'm just an educator who happens to be interested in the application of technology in education, since I also teach computer technology. As an early adopter of new technology I need to provide some sort of direction to our institution when it comes to implementing technology.

I'm not sure if there is a good, well-thought-through model available of best practises of how to implement all the new Office 365 features in an interconnected school/university system. Any pointers in this direction would be welcome.