Top 5 Education Posts of 2017

The year has rushed past and I've been looking through the statistics of this blog and found some interesting trends. I've decided to collate the top five posts (by number of views) to share what you, the reader, have found most interesting and useful from this year.

One:

Autopilot – Even Easier Device Enrollment & Deployment In Windows 10 Out Of The Box

I am not surprised this post has come out top as at the time of writing it offered a sneak preview into the simplest way ever to deploy Windows 10 devices.  As more OEMs get on board with the programme, IT managers will have increased options to simply drop-ship the devices they procure directly to the end user who will have a seamless set up experience.

If you are responsible for device procurement, deployment and ongoing management then understanding how Windows 10, Intune and AutoPilot work together is vitally important for you.

Two:

Device Based Activation for Office365 ProPlus – Great For Education

In very close second, this was another reasonably technical blog that shows IT Admins how they can easily deploy Office365 ProPlus to ensure their students and staff have the latest features in the best productivity suite in the world. This is particularly aimed at school computer lab or staff devices, as opposed to BYOD and can streamline the setup and management of Windows 10 and Office365 ProPlus significantly.

Three:

Microsoft Teams For Education Is Here – And It Is Awesome

Microsoft Teams was probably the biggest announcement from an Education perspective this year, so it's no surprise it proved to be a very popular blog post, coming in third most clicked of the year.

Teams replaces the previous Microsoft Classroom which had been in public beta for a long period of time and was being used in a lot of schools. What excites me the most about Teams is that the core code base and product is also in the commercial Office365 Tenants. What this means, practically speaking, is the product is going to receive a lot of updates and third party plugins because it is not exclusively an educational niche product.

Four:

OneDrive Files On Demand – Perfect For BYOD

The return of "files on demand" as a selective sync option in OneDrive For Business is something that many users have been clamouring for since it was added, then subsequently removed, from Windows 8. It was nice to see it return in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update recently and this adds a huge amount of value to students, particularly those operating on devices with smaller, 64GB SSD storage.

It comes default as part of the Fall Creators Update and is super intuitive to use - definitely worth checking out.

Five:

Great Example Of OneNote Class Notebooks In A School

Everyone loves a great case study and infographic, so it's reassuring to see that rounding out the most popular blog posts of 2017 is this one about the success of Klein Forest High School in Houston, Texas, with using OneNote Class NoteBooks across their secondary school students.

My Thoughts:

It's interesting that the two most popular posts are technical, suggesting that readers of this blog are possibly IT Admins or teachers that are wanting to get the "tech issues" out of the way and adopt more streamlined and automated deployment of Windows 10 and Office365. The other thought that occurred to me is that there may have been views from non-educational readers who are searching the 'net and coming across this blog. It highlights the fact that education is a pretty progressive sector and are usually quick to adopt new technology practices and features when they are released.

I hope you have a great Summer Break (or Winter Break for our northern hemisphere readers!) and look forward to your contributions and ideas to the blog in 2018.