IT Pro Parents Unite

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IT Pro parents, take the information below to your school and implement this free solution from Microsoft that will make everyone's lives easier and dramatically improve the quality of your child's education (and teacher qualtiy of life).

The https://get.liveatedu.com/Education/Connect/FAQ/ provides institutions of higher education and K-12 with a set of free hosted and co-branded collaboration and communication services for students, alumni, and applicants, leading with an offer of Windows Live™ Hotmail®, a hosted e-mail service, and Office Live Workspace, an online space to collaborate on Microsoft Office documents.

The offering, from the university perspective primarily includes hosted, branded e-mail, but once a student/alumni has an active ID they have access to the whole set of Windows Live services. For example, if my institution issues Joe Student the e-mail address joe.student@panthers.contoso.edu, Joe can use that e-mail address to authenticate on a number of Windows Live services, all of which are opt-in and free unless noted otherwise. Here are just a few:

  • Office Live Workspace: English language for now, additional languages in mid 2008. https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officelive/FX102412601033.aspx?ofcresset=1
  • Windows Live Messenger: Great for audio and video conversations with friends, family, and colleagues; multi-user IM functionality for study groups, and so much more… For more info, please visit https://get.live.com/messenger/overview.
  • Windows Live Spaces: So many ways to use this within a higher education environment. For example, students can create e-profiles for prospective employers. Students, alumni, faculty, clubs, and departments can use spaces to share information, photos, blogs, and more. For more info, please visit https://get.live.com.
  • Windows Live for Mobile access to IM and e-mail: Students can access their .edu e-mail on virtually any web-enabled phone. For more information, please visit https://mobile.live.com/GoLive. Carriers may charge for wireless data service.
  • Windows Live Expo: Buy and sell stuff within your campus and alumni community. Post an ad for free, and control who can see it.Browse for jobs, housing, and just about anything else. For more info, please go to https://get.live.com and view the Windows Live Expo demos.
  • Windows Live SkyDrive™ : 1 GB of password-protected online file storage https://skydrive.live.com/
  • Access to Windows Live APIs to build your own custom apps: https://dev.live.com/
  • More new stuff coming all the time: https://get.live.com/betas/home