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Digital Tools

SharePoint, Microsoft Copilot, Teams and Outlook — the essentials, explained simply.

SharePoint Copilot Teams Outlook Student Devices BI Tool

📁 SharePoint

Add a short overview of how Sophia College uses SharePoint (staff intranet, faculty document libraries, forms, this onboarding hub's "real" home, etc.).

Steps + link to your SharePoint hub.

Steps.

Steps — emphasise not sharing student data externally.

🤖 Microsoft Copilot

Add your college's guidance on acceptable use of Copilot/AI tools with student data — this matters a lot for a school context.

Replace with your AI use policy: what staff can and cannot put into Copilot (e.g. never paste identifiable student information), and where the full AI Acceptable Use Policy lives.

  1. Where to find Copilot

    e.g. in Word/Outlook/Teams sidebar, or copilot.microsoft.com with school account.

  2. Good starter use cases

    e.g. drafting parent emails, summarising meeting notes, generating lesson activity ideas (not final content).

  3. What not to do

    e.g. never input student names/results, always fact-check outputs.

💬 Microsoft Teams

Add guidance on staff Teams channels, meeting etiquette, and how Teams is used for staff comms vs parent comms (which goes through Engage instead — see Engage).

One confirmed use: in extreme weather (heat, wind, rain), College Leadership alerts staff to changes in break/duty procedures via Teams. Staff are expected to remain at their duty area until told otherwise.

✉️ Outlook & email

Add expectations for professional email use, signature template, and response-time expectations.

📱 Student devices in class

Dell laptops

Every student is issued a college Dell laptop. In your classroom:

  • No student is to take out or use their laptop without your permission
  • When in use, it must sit flat on a desk — never carried around open, and never carried by the screen
  • Students moving around the room while carrying a device must close it first
  • Devices are to be confiscated if a student doesn't comply — this is per college policy, not just a suggestion
  • All schoolwork should be saved to OneDrive — that's the only thing IT can recover if a device fails

SMART devices (phones, smart watches)

SMART devices are banned school-wide from 8:00am–3:00pm, including in the Learning Common. Devices must be off and in the student's locker — the only exception is with your explicit permission for a specific class, in which case you notify the Pedagogy Companion and other staff teaching that group.

If a student won't hand over a device when asked: inform their House Companion — this escalates quickly (via the Assistant Principal – Engagement) and can result in internal or external suspension. Don't attempt to physically take a device from a student.

Add where/how a routine phone infringement gets recorded (a shared spreadsheet is used, monitored by House Companions) if staff need to log it themselves.

📊 BCE BI Tool

The Brisbane Catholic Education Business Intelligence tool is used for school data and reporting — e.g. attendance trends, academic results and NCCD data.

📊 Open the BI Tool ↗

Add who typically uses this (e.g. leadership/HoDs vs all staff) and any common reports classroom teachers should know about.

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