Microsoft New Zealand has announced that its business social networking platform Yammer Enterprise will now be available to all educational institutions in the country as an extension to its free Office 365 for Education plans.

Office 365 for Education provides staff and students at New Zealand schools with free email, sites, online document editing and storage, instant messaging, and web conferencing, at no cost* (A2 plan). Previously, it only offered Yammer Basic to New Zealand schools and universities.

With Yammer Enterprise, schools will now have access to an even more sophisticated version of the social networking platform which can provide seamless, open sharing, and cross collaboration opportunities within a school’s internal online environment.

Microsoft describes Yammer Enterprise for schools as “a transformational technology which has changed the way students and staff work. It promotes sharing ideas, thoughts, finding information and asking questions to innovate and collaborate.”

Its applications within a school environment are many. It can be used for making school announcements, linking up with Alumni students, and even providing a platform for external collaboration with researchers, companies, or other universities and schools.

Paul McClean, who teaches Information Technology at Avondale College in Auckland, says that Yammer is playing a vital role at the school as part of its Innovation Programme, as it helps students get used to collaboration as a key part of their learning process.

“Yammer is fundamental for how we transition practitioner and student behaviour from old paradigm education into a new paradigm of creativity, with agile, project-based learning processes,” he said. “We are looking forward to Yammer Enterprise, as a more advanced tool for communication, student and practitioner support, event coordination and success profiling, to forming an integral role with our ongoing Innovation Programme.”

For more information about how Yammer can be used in your school, visit: http://blogs.technet.com/b/nzedu/archive/2014/07/10/yammer-enterprise-now-included-in-office-365-education-plans.aspx

*The School’s Academic Reseller and IT Partner may apply an administration or deployment fee.