News & updates during the school closure

Dear members of TES community,

The third week of distance learning touches its end. Despite everybody’s indisputably hard work, commitment and engagement, the signs of weariness begin to emerge. Fortunately, the next two weeks will be a bit shorter as we make the bridge between these two weeks with a long weekend.

Over the current week, the school administration has worked intensively with the deployment of Microsoft Office 365 and I would like to thank all colleagues involved for their dedication. I am therefore happy to announce that starting from next week all pupils will be granted access to Office 365. The process of sending the credentials will take place gradually starting from S7 and finishing with Nursery pupils. The package of Office 365 includes a series of online applications and services. Parents will receive their child’s identifiers by e-mail from the IT-administrator of the school and will need to communicate the login credentials to their child, apart from Nursery age children who will not access to Office 365 personally, but only together with their parents. Although in the “TES Office 365” document attached it is indicated that “Before activating the 365 account, parents and pupils are asked to sign the ICT charter at the end of this document and send it to their class teacher.”, I kindly ask to disregard this directive of the procedure and access to Office 365 as soon as the codes have been received. This in order to ensure the smooth transfer from the platforms currently used by teachers to Office 365. The signed consents (TES Office 365 document page 7) should be sent to the class teachers as soon as possible during the two following weeks. All teachers are asked to start using the tools offered by Office 365 as soon as the groups have been created and transfer the content gradually to the platform offered by the school.

You will find in the attached documents a description of e-learning tools offered by Office 365, schools’ policy documents, the consent to be signed and sent to the class teacher, as well as the policy documents and the last communication sent from the Central Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools.

I am completely aware that the timing for the deployment of Office 365 to pupils is not perfect and happens during these exceptional circumstances. The necessity relays in the need to use more school offered centralized e-learning tools, to follow the data protection policy and to have a common approach to the e-learning. I am however sure that with the positive efforts and patience of all parties we will make it work in order to ensure the continuity of learning at a distance. Together Everybody Achieves More – TEAM.

Parimate soovidega / Meilleures salutations / Kindest regards / Ystävallisin terveisin / Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Documentation related to Microsoft Office 365 and e-learning recommendations to pupils, parents and teachers

• TES Office 365 guidelines and ICT Policy
• TES Microsoft Teams Netiquette
• Microsoft Learning Tools Availability

Documentation and communications from the Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools:

• Recommendations to Parents on how to support learning at home during the temporary suspension of obligatory regular attendance of Pupils
• Pedagogical use of online video, audio and chat meetings: guidelines for the European Schools
• Communication regarding the COVID-19 outbreak – 3 April 2020
• Letter of appreciation to the European Schools’ community / Message de remerciements à la communauté des écoles européennes