TAFE goes live with Microsoft email

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 17 November 2009 12:01

IT Industry - Deals

The South Australian Government today announced a three-year contract with Microsoft to deploy a new hosted email service, making instant messaging, an online calendar and the ability to share online documents, available to more than 80,000 students and staff at TAFE SA from next year.

The South Australian Employment, Training and Further Education Minister, Michael O’Brien said today that  Microsoft’s ‘Live@edu’ email service and collaboration platform has won the contract and will be available across all TAFE SA campuses ready for the start of classes in 2010.

“Live@edu will give students and staff access to multiple online communications, anytime, anywhere over the internet. Students can chat live to one another or to a lecturer via the instant messaging service, they can collaborate on group assignments by being able to view and edit documents online, and they can use the hosted email service, accessible by logging onto the internet.”

The Minister said the contract with Microsoft is underpinned by the Skills Strategy for South Australia’s Future, which recommends greater use of online technology to complement traditional methods of course delivery, “thereby ensuring TAFE SA continues to meet the needs of students into the future.

“TAFE SA will now be able to participate more in this space through Live@edu, which also includes student or lecturer’s blogs or social media, such as forums and photo sharing.”

According to the Minister, implementation costs of around $250,000 will be met by the State Government and carried out by ICT services supplier, Dimension Data.

Microsoft Australia’s public sector director, Pip Marlow, said today that the company is seeing an “accelerating take-up of cloud based solutions in the education sector that is being driven by student and teacher demand to have world-class ICT tools and services at their fingertips.”

“TAFE SA and the State Government have recognised that the needs of students and staff are evolving and have adopted an innovative strategy to keep South Australia at the forefront of quality education service provision.”
 
The three-year contract with renewal includes a licensing for all relevant Microsoft products at no charge, with full services of Live@edu including email and calendar, Office Web Apps (Word, Excel PowerPoint and OneNote), Blogs, File / document sharing, photo publishing, video conversation, forums, message boards and shared study areas.