Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365

Microsoft Office is a suite of office-related applications, each one serves a specific purpose and is designed to help with productivity and completing common tasks.
Office is a one-time purchase, Office 365 or Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based service to Office applications, powered by Microsoft cloud.
Office 365 includes more collaborative (and up-to-date) features than Office software does. The applications that Office 365 includes depend on the plans for users: Home, Business and Enterprise.
Most popular applications of the suite are:

• Microsoft Word: full-featured word processing program.
• Microsoft Excel: spreadsheet program that features calculation, graphic tools, pivot tables, and macro programming language.
• Microsoft PowerPoint: presentation program for Windows and Mac operating systems.
• Microsoft OneNote: free-form note-taking program.
• Microsoft Outlook: email program.
• Microsoft Publisher: desktop publishing program.
• Microsoft Access: database management solution.
• Microsoft InfoPath: program that allows you to design, distribute, complete, and submit electronic forms.
• Microsoft Teams: for real-time collaboration and communication.

Students and educators at eligible institutions can sign up for Office 365 Education for free, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Teams, plus additional classroom tools.

RESOURCES CREATOR

Pedagogical background

With the programs offered by the suite it is possible to create multiple useful resources for teaching. For example, documents for notes or practices, spreadsheets for the analysis of results, presentations for the exposition of concepts or results, videoconferences, etc.
We could consider these resources as being key elements to favor the teaching and learning process.

This kind of tool can be effectively used in educational contexts for many purposes:

• Elaboration of materials for the exposition of contents, whether documents or presentations.
• Preparation of presentations by students.
• Analysis of results by means of graphs.
• Video conferencing.
• Creation of contents through collaborative work.
• Organization of teaching materials with the option of collaborating with students.
• Create virtual workspaces and groups.
• Offer direct communication channels between students and teachers.

Assessment

It can be used for summative assessment or for formative assessment, it permits the preparation of documents (projects, tests, reports, papers, group activities, end-of-class projects, presentations).

Use cases/examples of usage: (tutorial)

Strenght: Popular, cloud based services, easy to use software, collaboration is easy.

Weakness: It is a big software, most people only use 20% of the functionality.

People opinion about the tool: https://www.softwareadvice.com/collaboration/office-365-profile/reviews/

Similar Tool: Google Wokspace; iWork; Apache Open Office; WPS Office; Dropbox Paper; FreeOffice; LibreOffice.

Technical and operational requirements: Device with web browser and Internet connection for the online version.

For the on-premises version:

• Computer and processor:
  • Windows OS: 1.1 GHz or faster, 2-core.
  • MacOS: Intel or Apple Silicon (As supported by the three most recent versions of MacOS).
• Memory:
  • Windows OS: 4 GB RAM.
  • MacOS: 4 GB RAM.
• Hard disk:
  • Windows OS: 4 GB of available disk space.
  • MacOS: 10 GB of available disk space.
• Display:
  • Windows OS: 1280 x 768 screen resolution (64-bit Office required for 4K and higher).
  • MacOS: 1280 x 800 screen resolution.
• Graphics:
  • Graphics hardware acceleration requires DirectX 9 or later, with WDDM 2.0 or higher for Windows 10 (or WDDM 1.3 or higher for Windows 10 Fall Creators Update).
• Operating system:
  • Windows OS: Windows 10 or Windows 11.
  • MacOS: Office for Mac is supported on the three most recent versions of macOS. As new major versions of macOS are made generally available, Microsoft will drop support for the oldest version and support the newest and previous two versions of macOS. Product functionality and feature availability may vary on older systems. For the best experience, use the latest version of any operating system specified above.
• Browser:
  • The current version of Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, or Firefox. Get more details.
• .NET version:
  • Windows: Some features may require .NET 3.5 or 4.6 and higher to also be installed.
• Other:
  • For Windows: For Microsoft Teams requirements, see Hardware requirements for Microsoft Teams.