What’s the big deal about Live@edu? It’s more than a free email account

Offering your students free email will get you about as much mileage as offering them free brussel sprouts for lunch. It's just not a big deal anymore to have an email account, with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, and Facebook mail all competing for young minds as an advertising audience.

However, there may be very good reason for your school to offer Live@edu services for students. Here are a few advantages of doing so:

• Increased collaboration and communication among students and teachers
• Security and control of your email environment
• Brand and community building with customized logos, color schemes, and campaigns
• Real world training for your students to communicate in a 21st Century work environment
• Reduced infrastructure costs

So, it’s not really just free, it actually pays you significant dividends! Let’s dig a little deeper.

 

Increased collaboration and communication

 

By giving students the ability to email, instant message, video chat, share documents, and store homework assignments in the Live@edu system, you give them a powerful set of creative tools. They can collaborate on project documents using Microsoft Office Web apps, free online companions to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and One Note.

 

Security and Control

 

Because the Live@edu is centrally managed by your internal staff, you have complete control over access to the system. And with Microsoft’s advanced email security you significantly reduce the risk of phishing, virus, and malware attacks on your internal systems. And in the event of a disciplinary matter, you have access to email communication and message archives.

 

Brand and community building

 

Think about every email sent outside of your organization as a small advertising snippet. As your students communicate around the world and across the community, your institution becomes more visible, relevant, and cutting edge. Your Live@edu email and workspaces are branded with your logo and school name.

 

Real world training

 

Live@edu services are built upon the same technology as Microsoft Office 365, a powerful and widely used business communication and collaboration system. Your students will gain valuable experience in real world communication by using Live@edu. And they can plug into the Live@edu from anywhere and on any device.

 

Reduced costs

 

How much are you spending for student servers? Maintaining shared drives, keeping track of student documents, managing student access, securing other student’s work, and keeping ahead of student hacks is a significant IT management cost. With 25GB of storage per student and access control by Live@edu account, you can eliminate a great deal of administrative expense.

 

Summary

 

Building a communication platform for students to email, instant message, video chat, share documents, and store homework assignments seems like a lot of infrastructure – and it is. An equivalent cost to build and manage such a system internally would be thousands of dollars, not to mention the administrative time diverted from more strategic initiatives.

 

Showcasing your school as a leader in technology and forward thinking will generate interest and improve your recruiting efforts.

 

K-12 institutions have a very specific set of requirements for cloud-based messaging and collaboration solutions. No one brings a richer set of free hosted solutions to the K-12 space than Microsoft Live@edu. Not only are our enterprise-grade services cost effective and flexible, but they also prepare students for the next step with professional tools used in higher education institutions and businesses the world over.

 

Let us help you implement a Live@edu solution on your campus.