This new eBook, Office 365 Education in the Classroom, concentrates almost exclusively on how Office 365 Education can help the teacher and the student in their day to day work.

We look at a whole list of teaching and learning scenarios, describing some of the ways in which hard- working teachers might be dealing with them now and going on to show how one or more of the functions within Office 365 Education can make things easier and better.

The full eBook can be viewed/downloaded below:

We will be posting additional complementary content, such as demo videos, to the blog over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, we would love to hear what you think of the eBook. Leave us your thoughts in the comments below.

Student Advantage is a volume licensing benefit where students get Office 365 ProPlus at no additional cost, provided institutions meet the following criteria:

1. Institution has an EES agreement or an OVS-ES agreement

2. Licenses 100% of Faculty/Staff organization wide for Office (i.e. Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Education A3 or A4, or Office Professional Plus 2013)

3. Institution places an order for Student Advantage licenses through their reseller

Since various institutions order licenses for Office 365 for Education differently, we have produced a handy ordering and deployment guide for you, with details of how to assign your licenses to your Students.

So, if you are an existing Office 365 for Education customer (either through EES or directly through our web site) with single or multiple tenancies or if you are a brand new Office 365 for Education customer please take a look at this deployment guide and FAQ to find out more about how to get up and running quickly

Any questions, please get in touch with your reseller.

I was asked by several customers what are some of the new SKU names they can use and where can they find some licensing sample PowerShell scripts. I put together a few matrices covering these along with links to several sample scripts.

You also need to create a session to connect to Office 365 PowerShell. See my post here for those steps.

Here are some SKU names and PowerShell names (updated 11-17-14 to reflect several new SKU name changes):

If you want to enable or disable service plans within a particular E1 or E3 suite SKU:

Sample approach to Office 365 Education licensing:

1) Create an Office 365 PowerShell login script to use for all of your Office 365 PowerShell usage scenarios.  Please see my other blog post on creating a Super Office 365 PowerShell script here.

2) Create a global admin account which is not synced via Dirsync and does not have an expiring password. Steps to create non-expiring password on a global admin account.

3) Obtain a CSV file of your faculty or students with DisplayName, UserPrincipalName headers. You can also dump users from Office 365 which may have been dirsynced using this script:

#Export all O365 users to CSV File
Get-msoluser -all | Sort DisplayName | Select DisplayName, UserPrincipalName | Export-CSV o365users.csv

Sample script to enable E1 and Student Advantage for students:

#Import CSV File of Student Accounts
$CSV=Import-csv students.csv
foreach ($line in $csv) {
write-output $line.UserPrincipalName

#These are plans we will not enable - e.g. MCOSTANDARD = Lync Online - remove -disabledplans section from script if you want to license all of A2 for students
#Refer to SKU blog for SKU and license plan names: http://aka.ms/licensescript
$disabledPlans = @()
#$disabledPlans +="MCOSTANDARD"

# Create variable for student A2 standard (no Lync)
$StudentPlan = New-MsolicenseOptions -AccountSKUId tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT -DisabledPlans $disabledPlans

# Set usage location
Set-Msoluser -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -UsageLocation "US"

#License using Student A2 standard
Set-msoluserlicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT -LicenseOptions $StudentPlan

#License Office 365 ProPlus Student Advantage
Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:OFFICESUBSCRIPTION_STUDENT

#Import CSV File of A2 Faculty Accounts
$CSV=Import-csv faculty.csv
foreach ($line in $csv) {
write-output $line.UserPrincipalName

#These are plans we will not enable - e.g. MCOSTANDARD = Lync Online - remove -disabledplans section from script if you want to license all of A2 for students
#Refer to SKU blog for SKU and license plan names: http://aka.ms/licensescript
$disabledPlans = @()
#$disabledPlans +="MCOSTANDARD"

# Create variable for Faculty and Staff A2 standard (no Lync)
$FacA2Plan = New-MsolicenseOptions -AccountSKUId tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_FACULTY -DisabledPlans $disabledPlans

# Set usage location
Set-Msoluser -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -UsageLocation "US"

#License using FACULTY A2 standard
Set-msoluserlicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_FACULTY -LicenseOptions $FacA2Plan

#Import CSV File of faculty and staff a3 Accounts
$CSV=Import-csv facultya3.csv
foreach ($line in $csv) {
write-output $line.UserPrincipalName

#These are plans we will not enable - e.g. MCOSTANDARD = Lync Online - remove -disabledplans section from script if you want to license all of A2 for students
#Refer to SKU blog for SKU names: http://aka.ms/licensescript
$disabledPlans = @()
#$disabledPlans +="MCOSTANDARD"

# Create variable for Faculty and Staff A3
$FacA3Plan = New-MsolicenseOptions -AccountSKUId tenantname:ENTERPRISEPACK_FACULTY -DisabledPlans $disabledPlans

# Set usage location
Set-Msoluser -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -UsageLocation "US"

#License using FACULTY A3
Set-msoluserlicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:ENTERPRISEPACK_FACULTY -LicenseOptions $FacA3Plan

For other more advanced sample scripts on Office 365 licensing I linked to 5 very useful licensing sample scripts:

TechNet Office 365 licensing here and here. (replace Enterprise SKUs with Academic SKUs listed above)

Bulk Enable Office 365 license script samples here and by CSV file here (replace Enterprise SKUs with Academic SKUs listed above).

Assign Office 365 licenses based on Distribution Group membership found in the ‘Office 365 Helper Scripts’ here (replace Enterprise SKUs with Academic SKUs listed above)

You can also check out a new GRAPH API sample code for Education licensing here – this has been used for very large bulk enablement scenarios e.g. more than 60,000 students, etc.