Microsoft Live@edu and Moodle are used synergetically to provide students with a collaborative platform that is highly flexible and user-friendlyIT operating costs are lowered while enhancing communication and collaboration
K. International School Tokyo (KIST) was founded in 1997 with the vision of providing a safe, unbiased and fair environment where students of various backgrounds and capabilities can obtain a high-quality, international education. In April 2011, KIST switched is educator e-mail from a hosted service to Microsoft's Live@edu. This not only allowed the school to extend e-mail accounts to students, but also enables students to access Microsoft Office Web Apps and Windows Live SkyDrive. With the addition of Moodle, an open source platform in use for many years, the school is making a great transformation in the educational scene.
■ Background and Goals
Seeking a highly cost-effective system Introduction of the long-contemplated Live@edu
KIST is a secular, co-educational private school for students from
kindergarten to twelfth grade (third year of Japanese high school).
Founded in 1997, it currently has a student population of about 600
representing some 50 countries.
Regarding KIST’s founding principle, School Director Yoshishige
Komaki says: “It was originally an English school. But, after hearing
from parents and guardians about the high cost and inaccessibility of
international schools in Japan, I began to conceive a system whereby
students could acquire a high-quality international education at the
lowest possible tuition. The result was KIST.” According to Mr. Komaki, providing all students
with an affordable, world-class education that will help them fulfill their dreams for the future
is of paramount importance.
KIST employs the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, whose aim is to let students ac-
quire the skills they will need in society, with a focus on the capacity to “understand,” “think”
and “communicate” by the individual. By practicing this kind of education, KIST has been suc-
cessful in sending many of its students on to prestigious institutions such as Princeton Uni-
versity, The Wharton School of the University
of Pennsylvania, and Boston University.
Mr. Komaki says that while his school uses IT
as a tool to support a well-balanced educa-
tion, it does not engage in IT-reliant educa-
tion. He explains, “IT utilization is restricted in
many parts of the world. Providing education
that is purely centered on IT would result in
people who cannot function without being
connected to some kind of IT environment.
Solution Overview
K . In t e r n a t i o n a l S c h o o l To k yo
ProfileK. International School Tokyo (KIST) is an international school founded in 1997 for the purpose of providing a high level of education in an international setting. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government accredited KIST as an educational corporation in July 2000. Its curriculum is set in compliance with the International Baccalaureate (IB) and its aim is to sequentially provide the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in the global economy. Some 50 countries are represented in its student body, and admissions are monitored to ensure a diversity of cultural backgrounds and to prevent any one nationality from dominating the student population.
Scenario• As part of its efforts to maintain close contact with
students and their guardians, KIST switched from a conventional hosted e-mail service to Microsoft® Live@edu to take advantage of its highly functional e-mail service for multiple accounts held by educators, students and guardians, and to reduce the volume of work related to account management.
• Using Windows Live® SkyDrive® and Web Apps creates an environment that allows access to documents and information by educators and students from anywhere, any time. Thanks to SkyDrive, disk memory capacity was also increased from 100MB to 25GB.
• In order to realize an IB-compliant curriculum, KIST combined the open source software Moodle with Live@edu to improve its learning platform and provide students with an environment that lets them study autonomously, anytime, anywhere.
Software and Services• Microsoft® Live@edu• Outlook Live• Windows Live® SkyDrive®
• Moodle (open source software)
BenefitsAt KIST, the introduction of Live@edu enables the low cost provision of e-mail services to 1,000 accounts, including all students and their guardians. Microsoft® Office Web Apps creates an environment whereby students can have access to digital material and information and store it on SkyDrive. The interaction of Moodle and Live@edu allows for the utilization of multiple tools with a single log-on to improve students' learning environment and promote the practical application of the IB curriculum, giving students the skills they will need later on in life.
User Comments“The combination of Live@edu and Moodle greatly changed the educational scene. For schools, it spurred innovation by customizing education. Letting students study when and where they want--not only at school but also at home--by accessing an online portal is a monumental achievement. Live@edu is a fantastic service, and I want to show the world how great this tool is.”
Christian Thompson Education Technologies IntegratorK. International School Tokyo
Yoshishige KomakiSchool DirectorK. International School Tokyo
K. International School Tokyo
K . I n t e r n a t i o n a l S c h o o l To k y o
Therefore, we teach students to use IT merely as
one tool among many others.”
According to IT Manager Toshiyuki Naito, “IT
plays a very important role” in the IB curriculum
offered by the school. For KIST's education to
work seamlessly, the system and network have
to be readily accessible to any student at any
time. This is the mission of the IT Team, headed
by Mr. Naito, which set up a wireless LAN
environment accessible by PC anywhere in the
school in 2010.
However, at KIST, whose founding principle is to
keep tuition as low as possible, a recurring issue
is what to get and in what order of priority in
light of a limited budget. Education Technolo-
gies Integrator Christian Thompson had the
following to say about IT costs. “The student
is our highest priority. After we have provided
for them we think about our other priorities,
such as teachers and staff. That's the pecking order when it comes to
the IT budget. Whether certain software is cheap or free is not what's
important. The question we ask when deciding whether to purchase is,
whether or not it will prove useful to students. However, if a free ver-
sion will provide the same results and there are no negative impacts on
the end user, then our preference is for freeware.”
Although KIST formerly used a hosted e-mail service, it switched to
Live@edu because of its wider range of applicability and ease of ad-
ministration and operation. IT Software/Hardware Coordinator Robert
Whittaker says “I read about Live@edu in an American IT magazine
before it was available in Japan. I thought it could work really well at
KIST. Its highly functional e-mail service and ability to provide students
and staff online access to their digital material 24/7 and the single
data store synced to multiple devices model is what caught my eye.”
■ Benefits of Introducing Live@edu
Accounts provided to all students and guardians Integrated administration lowers costs
The conventional e-mail service that KIST used
previously only allowed accounts for educa-
tors, and using e-mail to communicate with
students was problematic, explains Mr. Whit-
taker. “Students would send files to their own
e-mail address in order to do homework, and
then send the homework back again by e-mail.
Students would often create e-mail addresses
using free mail services, and keeping track of all
these addresses was a constant headache. This
was especially so for students in grades 8 to 10 (second year of junior
high to first year of high school), where there are a great many classes
and students.”
Managing the e-mail addresses of guardians for communications with
educators also proved a big headache for Mr. Whittaker. According to
him, guardian e-mail addresses would vary from providers to mobile
phones to free Webmail. Some people would change their e-mail
frequently, while others would not be able to receive or view attach-
ments, and some had problems with school messages going into their
spam mailboxes. Such barriers blocked communication in many cases.
“I thought that if we used Live@edu, we could provide e-mail address-
es to every student and guardian free of cost and, since it’s managed
on a shared platform, any problem that arises could be handled and
quickly resolved by ourselves.”
Presently, KIST provides accounts to educators as well as to students
in 5th grade and 11th and 12th grades (second and third years of
high school) on a pilot basis to gauge the need for Live@edu at each
grade level. In the future, the school plans to increase the number of
accounts to about a thousand. Mr. Naito says, “when considering the
enormous volume of e-mail from students and their guardians, as
well as educators, the cost of on-premise or hosted e-mail service is
unimaginable. An on-premise system would also entail costs for man-
agement, operation and maintenance, making it out of the question.
Live@edu is the only viable service for students.”
Before its eventual introduction, KIST also deliberated on the merits
of other competing services made for educational organizations.
However, as Mr. Whittaker explains, Live@edu won out for the fol-
lowing reasons. “The school needs to provide access to a massive
amount of existing information and documents created over a period
of ten to twenty years. Other Web applications are often incapable of
maintaining the format of documents created with different or previ-
ous versions when attempting to open them. In contrast, Live@edu's
Office Web Apps allow document viewing without any problem and
assure backward compatibility. Since we have been using Microsoft®
Windows® for years, Live@edu was naturally able to link the school's
infrastructure to the Web.”
Mr. Whittaker goes on to say that, in addition to the above, Windows
Live SkyDrive offered by Live@edu is another one of its appealing
features. “Before, our file servers could only provide 100MB of storage
capacity per student. Now, thanks to SkyDrive, each student can have
25GB, or 250 times more storage, at no cost. This is a huge advantage.
Further, USB memory devices were sometimes used to store files, but
students would sometimes lose them, or they would suddenly become
inaccessible. The ability to store everything online is a great help.”
In the future, KIST plans to provide not only students and guardians
but also alumni with e-mail accounts. This will allow alumni to keep
in touch with educators on the one hand, and have the dual effect of
enabling communication between those alumni and current students.
An example of this would be a current student receiving advice from
Toshiyuki NaitoIT Manager K. International School Tokyo
Christian ThompsonEducation Technologies IntegratorK. International School Tokyo
Robert WhittakerIT Software/Hardware CoordinatorK. International School Tokyo
an alumni of KIST who already has gone on to a university where that
student wants to go after graduation.
■ Live@edu Collaborative Effects
Accessibility from anywhere with a single log-on Successful transformation of the educational scene
Yet another reason for the adoption of Live@edu was the ability to
expand its functionality through combination with Moodle, which KIST
has used since September 2010 as an open source free study platform
for students. Moodle, whose many users include large universities is an
open source e-Learning system that allows instructional Web pages to
be created on the Internet.
Live@edu's Microsoft® Live Services Plug-in for Moodle allows func-
tions such as e-mail, scheduling, instant messaging and Web searches
to be used in Moodle. Mr. Whittaker explains that “although there are
other services that are compatible with Moodle, what convinced me to
get Live@edu is Microsoft support. Microsoft® Education Labs (http://
www.educationlabs.com/) features a ’Live Services Plug-in for Moodle‘
page where questions can be answered by the Moodle user commu-
nity. This is an extremely important feature.”
The Microsoft Japan Education Team peeked
into a 5th grade class and saw students draft-
ing documents using local Microsoft® Publisher,
Microsoft® PowerPoint® and other software,
then save them on SkyDrive and manage them
on Moodle. This particular lesson had students
decide on their own study topic, then assemble
in groups to pursue that topic. Although they
only started using the system a month be-
fore, students were already familiar with all the tools. Here are some
student comments we heard: “I show what I wrote to other members
of my group, get their opinions and then make corrections by check-
ing facts online without ever using the printer,” “it's really convenient
because I can use all kinds of tools just by entering my password and
logging in once,” and “material stored on SkyDrive can be accessed
with just a click!”
Suzanne Astrop, who is in charge of 5th graders, had this to say. “I can
upload the documents and videos I want students to see on SkyDrive
and then create links in Moodle. Students are getting used to shar-
ing documents, collaborating, swapping ideas and working together.
Raising their consciousness as team members and sharpening their
communication and collaboration skills will undoubtedly come in
handy after they graduate and get a job. I always tell them how I envy
them for having all these great tools that I never would have dreamed
of having when I was their age.”
Uploading an edited document on SkyDrive and creating a link to
that document on Moodle makes it accessible by any student just by
logging on from any terminal anywhere. Ms. Astrop explains that “with
Live@edu, students can continue at home the lessons they did in class.
Constricting a student to only classroom time would just create stress.
By letting him or her work at home, there's no time pressure and the
things learned in school can be expanded at home with family mem-
bers.”
“Staff members also save time and effort thanks to the integration of
multiple tools,” says Mr. Thompson. “The educational scene has been
greatly transformed thanks to the combination of Live@edu and Moo-
dle,” he goes on, “KIST uses them as an innovation that customized
its education. Letting students study whenever they want, not just at
school but also at home by accessing our web service, is an enormous
step forward. Whether during school holidays or even the overseas
Children using the serviceMoodle screenshot
StudentsComputer class at the school
StudentsPC at home
TeachersPCs at school and at home
Multiple services accessible with one user ID
and password
Windows Live ID
Internet
Hosting using a server
SkyDrive Messenger Outlook Live
Microsoft Live@eduMoodle
Suzanne AstropElementary School Faculty Grade 5A K. International School Tokyo
K . I n t e r n a t i o n a l S c h o o l To k y o
evacuations we saw after the March 2011 earthquake, students were
able to continue learning just by logging on anywhere. Live@edu
is a tool that is changing the way we teach. Before, educators with
exclusive possession of knowledge would convey that knowledge to
students in a one-way flow. However, we are now living in an era when
students are using online tools to create knowledge themselves. We
believe that the tool we should use for that purpose is Live@edu.”
Ms. Astrop added, “this year, after we added Live@edu to Moodle, I
started seeing my job change drastically right before my eyes. My role
now is more than just teaching. I expose kids to various bits of knowl-
edge, bringing to their attention different matters and asking them
how they feel about them. The educational environment is changing
exponentially.”
Mr. Komaki explains that this evolution is in step with KIST's phi-
losophy. “One of our founding principles was to provide a place for
children. A place that is a source of peace-of-mind engendered from
the constant support we give them, both while they are with us here
at school and after they have gone home, by answering all their ques-
tions using Live@edu and Moodle. This tool is not just about educa-
tional support, but also psychological support. Live@edu and Moodle
are becoming extremely important tools that allow for unprecedented
communication with students.”
■ Future Outlook
Utilization as a communication network in times of disasters Desire to broaden the benefits of Live@edu
KIST would like to see the Live@edu service it introduced after the
March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami be utilized as a communica-
tion network in future emergency situations.
Mr. Whittaker states that “the recent large-scale disaster reminded us
of the importance of rapidly communicating the status of students
and other vital information to guardians immediately after such an
event occurs. For example, we are now thinking of establishing a
system whereby emergency e-mail addresses would be set up by the
school and guardians would set up mail rules to ensure that any e-
mails from those addresses would be forwarded, assuring that emer-
gency communications could be received anywhere, anytime. Such an
arrangement would be simple and easy with Live@edu and our job
gets even easier when we teach guardians how to manage the system
and use it depending on the situation.”
“Live@edu is a fantastic service that I want to continue using and
expanding,” proclaims Mr. Thompson. KIST has great expectations for
Live@edu's successor “Office 365 for Education” and it is also very
interested in interfacing with Microsoft® SharePoint® Online and com-
munications via Microsoft® Lync™ Online.
Looking towards the future, Mr. Thomson explains that “there are
many schools that want to have some kind of IT system, but are
constrained by their limited budgets. Live@edu is a great solution for
such schools because of its compatibility with other tools and strong
support network. I would like Microsoft to promote this tool widely,
and we'll do our part to tell the world just how great it is.”
Mr. Komaki passionately asserts that “KIST's goal is to be number 1
in the world. Not in name recognition, but the number 1 school for
students. Presently, the IB curriculum is creating a type of education
that fosters students’ ability to think and make choices for themselves.
However, times change rapidly, and we will be careful not to sit on
our laurels, but continually strive for education that is founded in the
future. Our mission is to constantly provide education that will benefit
our children, while taking appropriate advantage of IT capabilities.”
This case study can be viewed online at the following URL: http://www.microsoft.com/japan/showcase/Please note that the information appearing in this case study is based on information available at the time of preparation (July 2011) and may be subject to change.This case study is intended for informational purposes only. Microsoft does not guarantee any of the statements made herein, either explicitly or implicitly.For product inquiries, please refer to the following.■URL: http://www.microsoft.com/japan/■Microsoft Customer Information Center: 0120-41-6755(9:30am to 12:00pm and 1:00pm to 7:00pm except weekends, national holidays and company-designated holidays)
Microsoft, Lync, Outlook, PowerPoint, SkyDrive, Windows Live, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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A typical class