Microsoft 365 and Cloud Teaching Seminar
Schneller School teachers and trainers attended
a three-day seminar on using Microsoft 365 and Cloud teaching to bring
their skills to the 21st century.
Leading this seminar were Imad Shmaitili and Mazen Sheikh of Information
Technology Leading Services-ITLS. Mazen and Imad stayed in the Schneller
Guesthouse for the duration of the training from Tuesday 4 until
Thursday 6 September 2018.
JLSS was working on shifting to Office 365 for the last two years. This
seminar was planned for last summer but due to the disaster of the new
salary scale to teachers, it was postponed to this summer.
17 teachers from the academic department and 12 trainers from the
vocational department attended separate workshops running in parallel.
Imad and Mazen shifted from one group to the other as necessary.
The workshops were adjusted to the needs of each department. Mazen and
Imad did an excellent job. All teachers and trainers were highly
appreciative of their knowledge, skills in training, and
especially
their patience.
There were many challenges and obstacles the first day due to
connectivity issues and some technical limitations because of the
unsuccessful migration of emails from the JLSS domain to Office 365.
This was extremely frustrating, but Imad and Mazen promptly made the
necessary adjustments to continue with the seminar and provide training
as planned.
All participants had a coffee break and lunch every day on campus to
make the seminar enjoyable and provide additional time for
person-to-person interaction.
At the end of the seminar all participants received certificates of
Completion of training of Office 365 tools issued by Tablet Academy MENA
- UK which ITLS partners with. The aim of Tablet Academy, like ITLS, is
to bring the advances of Information Technology to schools and teaching.
The seminar was kindly supported by our
partners, Embrace the Middle East - UK, who sent us a kind grant to
cover the training charges.
We also needed a reliable high speed internet connection which is very
expensive in Lebanon. Our partners LBMS, Lutheran Board for Mission
Support - USA, kindly sent us a grant that covers the cost of this
microwave connection for six months.
WISE Internet provider installed the necessary hardware in time for the
seminar. WISE also boosted the speed temporarily for three days to help
JLSS cope with the high bandwidth needed for the seminar.
We express our sincere gratitude to Embrace the
Middle East and LBMS for their generous support that made this training
possible.
We thank Imad Shmaitili and Mazen Sheikh of Information Technology
Leading Services-ITLS for the excellent training they provided our
teachers and trainers.
We also thank WISE Internet Provider for temporarily boosting the speed
of the Internet, free of extra charges, for the seminar.
We look forward to the new academic year with our teachers and trainers
ready to use their newly acquired skills in teaching.
