Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. It’s a people-centric mission and we want to make a difference in the lives of individuals and their communities with a diverse range of skills, cultures, and backgrounds. This is why Microsoft has partnered with various education systems and leaders to help improve our world through education. We provide free professional development learning opportunities through Microsoft Learn to help students gain valuable in-demand skills to prepare them when entering the workforce.

By upskilling students, we empower individuals to increase productivity, which in turn helps create a more competitive labor market and develop economic growth in countries around the world. 

Keeping up with the pace of change for in-demand digital skills

A difficult challenge faced by educators and leaders with future workforce skilling is keeping up with the pace of change for digital skills. Year over year, the skills in demand evolve. It is estimated that 85 million jobs will be displaced by 2025 because of the fast automation of the workforce. However, it is also estimated that the robot revolution will create 97 million new jobs, only there likely won’t be enough skilled people to fill the roles¹. Furthermore, studies show 68% of students don’t understand what skills are needed to start their career, and 80% of employers believe graduates do not arrive fully equipped with skills necessary for their job². Pinpointing the specific digital skills that will be the most in-demand in the future can be difficult, which is one reason many employers place non-technical skills high on their list. These skills, such as analytical thinking, creativity and flexibility, communications, and content creation are skills education systems can focus on building in their students today, regardless of the path of study.

There is also a proven set of digital skills, both consumptive and productive, that is showing to have earning power no matter the chosen career path. Consumptive digital capabilities are skills that enable learners to use existing digital tools and systems, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Office 365. For students, these are vital to ensure their workplace productivity and support further studies

Productive or creative, innovative digital capabilities are skills that enable learners to use tools like cloud, data and AI to create solutions and processes for themselves and others, including training and developing AI, analyzing and understanding data and databases or creating digital materials using coding. A foundational aptitude in these areas is increasingly important in every type of job.

Digital skills are needed in every job

An example of how digital skills are relevant to every student comes from Milton Keynes College in the UK. Its health and social care students will one day be responsible for caring for patients, a role which is traditionally associated with face-to-face contact. But as part of their course, they were shown how augmented reality technology was being used in a COVID-19 ward to help healthcare teams experience what was happening with the patients, without having to expose themselves to infection. This is a great illustration of how digital disruption is empowering healthcare professionals.  

Every sector is getting closer to the center of that digital vortex. Is every nurse going to have to be a data scientist? Absolutely not. Is a nurse going to have to be able to read the warning signs, because actually the data that is informing their ward is saying that patient X is going to need more care than patient Y today? Yes.”  

Alex Warner, Principal, Milton Keynes College, England

Planning for digital transformation and addressing the skills demand is just one step; implementation is an equally daunting hurdle. Based on feedback from discussions with vice chancellors, provosts, principals, and various university senior leaders from across the world, there are significant barriers to facilitating digital capabilities. However, it’s a whole team effort and you don’t have to do it all at once. A first step can be as simple as an educator looking for curriculum, program officers looking for certification, students looking for cloud credits, or institutions looking for transformation. Shai Reshef, Founder and President of the University of the People said, “When you educate one person you can change a life, when you educate many you can change the world.” With the transformative power that education can bring, we must reach students at every level, every background, and every skill level.

Microsoft an ideal partner for future-ready students

Microsoft is partnering with education systems and school leaders across the globe to ensure learners are as prepared as can be. Future-ready students are ones that are certified smart and certified capable. Microsoft is an ideal partner with scalable and up-to-date learning paths, digital products, solutions, and resources customizable for every system and for every level. This is an important step in how we can improve our world through education with skilling—building skills that open doors in everyone’s career with Microsoft Learn.

Microsoft Learn focuses on three main areas to drive employability skills and connections to careers for students across education. Microsoft is committed to expanding our partnerships and collaboration with secondary schools, colleges, and universities in these three areas to help increase relevance, bolster the industry alignment of academic programs, save educators’ time, save schools on costs, and assist students with better preparation for careers of the future.

• Flexible, on-demand Learning Paths and Credentials
• Emerging and relevant content and experiences
• Access to industry-leading developer tools

In this fast-paced digital age, COVID-19 has reminded us that we must move rapidly to fill any digital skills gaps and ensure our faculty researchers have access to the newest tools in the industry. We’re proud to welcome Microsoft into the Cincinnati Innovation District. Their partnership on this very important initiative will be transformative.”

Neville Pinto, President, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Microsoft Learn can help students and educators to:

• See new possibilities in technology to help you achieve your goals and reach your potential no matter where you are in your career or learning journey.
• Learn by doing through interactive learning experiences and technical resources that help you build skills and solve problems.
• Showcase your skills with certifications and achievements that demonstrate your expertise.
• Connect and engage with a community of other learners for inspiration, resources, and networking.
• Connect universities and leading commercial partners and governments in skills consortia to provide practical educational opportunities for upskilling and reskilling the technical workforce. A fine example of bringing together the employer demand with relevant technical education leveraging Microsoft Learn launched this month with the latest skills initiative in New South Wales, Australia, via the Institute of Applied Technology – TAFE NSW.

Here are our top resources to help in developing the most in-demand skills for the future of work:

• Microsoft Learn & Certifications – Learning resources to best prepare learners with skills development for in-demand jobs and Microsoft industry-recognized certifications. And for educators and schools, the Microsoft Learn for Educators Program (MSLE) includes access to Microsoft official courseware, teaching and learning resources and study materials for integration with existing institution degrees, certificates and diplomas.
• Career Coach – Career Coach is a Microsoft Teams App powered by LinkedIn, designed to help students discover their unique career path, grow real-world skills and build their network in one place.
• Azure Education Hub – Helps academic users provision and manage cloud credit across many different Azure services and supporting cloud-based student projects.
• Linkedin Learning – With over 16,000 courses taught by industry experts, LinkedIn Learning provides online training to supplement an institution’s existing curriculum and help create more career-ready students across multiple different disciplines.

Read more about the students in Hong Kong who leveraged Azure cloud skills to solve real world problems, attracting recruiters and global awards.

It’s especially important for students to have knowledge of cloud computing to be able to complete their daily tasks. To do something in IT, you need to practice. Employers want someone to do it—not talk about it.”

Cyrus Chun Yin Wong, Senior Lecturer, Department of Information Technology, Hong Kong IVE

Learn more how University of Lincoln worked with Microsoft to equip students with in-demand skills. 

We really view cloud computing as one of the pillars of skills that students need. We offer students Azure Fundamentals as part of their academic degree programme because it demonstrates competencies and skillsets in a very valuable industry context.”

Dr. Derek Foster, Computer Science Programme Leader, University of Lincoln, England

The imperative is clear: to build relevant skills with students to benefit economic and workforce development around the world. Microsoft is prepared to partner and align with the mission. So what is holding us back? We invite you to start the journey today with Microsoft Learn.

¹ The Future of Jobs Report 2020 | World Economic Forum

² Degree + Digital | Microsoft & LinkedIn

The post How Microsoft is partnering with education institutions to help improve the future of work appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Fulton County Public Schools outside Atlanta, Georgia, is one example of a district that faces many of the same challenges as nearly every U.S. school system. The district is dedicated to making sure that students grow socially, emotionally, and academically in a safe and supportive environment. The concept of “school safety” has evolved significantly in the last several decades to include cybersecurity, ranging from policy compliance, privacy, and data protection from common cybersecurity threats like phishing attacks, malware, and untrustworthy links.

Something smells phishy

Phishing occurs when a site, communication app, or other platform tries to collect personal or private information for harmful reasons. Often, phishing attacks try to gather personal information like credit card details or login credentials. In a given month, Fulton County Schools faced 254,255 phishing attempts, and successfully blocked 89% of them using their Microsoft 365 A5 security subscription.

To help reduce the number of successful threats, work with students to look for these common phishing red flags:

• The message or subject has misspellings and errors
• The message uses an email address that mimics a teacher’s or administrator’s name
• The message contains links that do not go where expected
• The message appears to be from a school or staff member and conveys a threat or urgency or offers an unrealistic reward
• The message makes a request to supply private information

Our job is to protect student and staff data, no matter what because we have social security numbers, health data, and other sensitive data in our student information systems and enterprise resource planning system, we must have a robust information security system in place.

AJ Philips, Director of Instructional Technology, Prince William County Schools

As the Director of Information and Instructional Technology, AJ Philips helps keep the students in Prince William County Schools in Virginia safe from cybersecurity threats like phishing. His district uses Microsoft Defender for the Cloud Apps to protect and watch potential threats to the district’s 90,000 student devices. Defender’s comprehensive protection helps keep students safe when they are on-campus, at home, or even when visiting family around the world.

Take a tick before you click bad links

The shift to blended learning accelerated abruptly over the last few years. Unfortunately, many students’ digital skills and cyber hygiene are still catching up.

Students access content in multiple ways: through learning tools, communication apps, and search engines. Each of these platforms is a landing spot for hyperlinked text. Students need digital literacy skills to help them determine which links are safe, valuable, and reliable as they explore content. Help students improve their digital hygiene by modeling how to assess and verify links found in websites, search results, email, communication apps, and social media.

It’s important for students to understand that clicking a harmful link could lead to someone being able to access their device’s camera, spy on or crash the device, or steal private information. Harmful links can occur on many of the devices that students use on a regular basis in the classroom like cell phones, tablets, and laptops.

Something doesn’t ad up

While ads are not inherently good or bad, it’s important that students develop the ability to tell the difference between a legitimate advertisement and a potentially harmful one. Ads are commonly found in interstitial videos in digital games, promoted search results, and social media. Advertisements show up everywhere promising a flashier app or a healthier life, and they can sometimes be a gateway for malware or phishing attacks.

Remember, ads are not always bad. It’s important that students understand the signs of trustworthy ads from those that are suspicious or potentially harmful. Help students avoid harmful ads by discussing and modeling the following practices:

• Identify the advertisement. Labels or captions like #ad or “sponsored” could be good clues.
• Decide if the ad is relevant to a search query.
• Avoid links that ask for personal data or try to incite fear.

Responding when mistakes are made

Even with good digital skills and tools like Microsoft Defender for the Cloud monitoring security threats, mistakes still happen. It’s important for students to know how to respond when they see a questionable email, click on a harmful link, or visit a dangerous ad.

The first step is to tell a trusted adult what happened. Help students feel free from judgment or punishment. Use these messages and strategies to help when mistakes are made:

• Emphasize that there are no consequences for reporting. Asking for help will not be punished or reprimanded. Microsoft recommends a “no consequences self-reporting environment” when possible.
• Remind students if they mistakenly click on a bad link, their life isn’t over! They just need to tell an adult to get help
• Provide students access to school experts who have helpful tools to fix it.

Help students understand why cyber hygiene is important

Recent years have shown the importance of understanding how to behave safe online and that everyone has a role to play in cybersecurity. Because of that, Microsoft has created the Cybersecurity Awareness website, with consumable resources for organizations, consumers, and students to learn cybersecurity best practices and how to be cyber smart. In this hub, audiences will be able to find infographics, certifications, reports, events, trainings, scholarships, and more to stay connected with cybersecurity education opportunities.

As students continue to gain important digital skills, they will increase their understanding of the threats that commonly try to compromise schools, social media apps, and communication tools that they use every day. Explain to them the cause and effect so they can see how to avoid scams and compromises, and why keeping an eye out for these is important.

Begin your cybersecurity discussion with students using the Microsoft K-12 Cybersecurity Infographic and Conversation Guide:

The K-12 Cybersecurity Infographic provides simple examples of phishing links and scam ads and how to identify them.

The K-12 Cybersecurity Conversation Guide helps educators and caregivers discuss key topics with students on how to improve their cyber hygiene.

The post Keeping students safer with cybersecurity awareness appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

For almost 15 years, Edmodo has helped strengthen the education community. They created tools that have enabled teachers to share content, distribute assignments, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and parents. As the new school year begins, the positive impact Edmodo has provided to classrooms will be missed across the industry, but their legacy will not soon be forgotten. Congratulations Edmodo, on all the achievements and contributions your company has provided across the education community. We wish you the best of luck moving forward, and to all your future success.

Our commitment to providing tools to create a connected classroom

While technologies in this industry may change, the connected classroom is still an essential part of our educational environment. The tools and support teachers and students can utilize are important to our overall success. Microsoft will continue to support the education community by offering a host of solutions that can help get the most out of in-person and hybrid learning environments.

For example, Microsoft Teams for Education is part of a product suite designed to empower every learner and bring everyone and everything together in one powerful communication application. It’s built with tools and features to support the evolving needs of students and teachers in both small classrooms and larger educational institutions. Microsoft Teams for Education has both free and paid subscription plans that can fit the needs of any school and provides the necessary tools and support to help you get started right away.

By combining a classroom’s communication and productivity tools in one place, Microsoft Teams enables you to:

• Collaborate seamlessly by making it easy for educators to set up virtual classrooms, keep assignments and grades organized, and collaborate on any number of files in real time.
• Connect virtually to make remote and hybrid learning fun and engaging. Chat, video, file sharing, and other features help students and educators connect and communicate more naturally. 
• Communicate securely with the ability to reach out to students, staff, parents, and guardians in a safe and secure environment, including supervised chats for students.

In addition to providing collaboration, connection and communication tools, Teams can also greatly enhance the learning experience by: 

• Encouraging independent learning by providing access to personalized tools that allow students to practice and learn on their own, with the help from our AI-assisted digital learning coaches and built-in progress trackers.
• Developing social skills by supporting students’ emotional and social well-being and providing a safe space to navigate feelings with age-appropriate activities that promote Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).
• Enhancing hybrid education by bridging the gap between in-person and remote educational environments with easy-to-use tools that make blended learning more convenient and efficient for everyone.

We understand that the school year has already begun, and that the amazing tools Edmodo brought to your classroom are going to be missed. We hope Teams can help fill some of these gaps and provide you the solutions you need in the fastest and most efficient manner. From all of us at Microsoft, to the entire education community, best of luck with the new school year, and let’s make this the best one ever, together.

If you’re interested in learning more, find out how Microsoft Teams for Education can help you create a successful, connected classroom.

The post Kudos to the Edmodo team: A graduation with honors appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Analyzing more than 3,000 essays from secondary and higher education globally, the latest research from John Hattie, author of Visible Learning, shows that “Where to next?” feedback can lead to bigger gains in student learning.

How “Where to next?” feedback works

“Where to next?” feedback gives students direction on how to take the next steps to improve their learning and performance. This kind of feedback typically has three components:

• Issue: Identifies a misunderstanding/mistake in the student’s work.
• Relevance: Defines why the issue matters in the context of the assignment.
• Action: Suggests how the student can resolve the issue without “giving away” the answer. 

Here’s an example of “Where to next?” feedback about an unclear sentence from a student’s writing assignment:

• Issue: This section of text may be difficult for readers to understand.
• Action: Read this sentence out loud and ask for instructor or peer feedback to determine how to write your ideas more clearly.
• Relevance: Some aspects of sentence construction, such as syntax, word choice, and extra or missing words or punctuation marks, can affect the way that readers understand your writing.
• Action: Pay close attention to those pieces of your writing to ensure you are being clear and precise.

The timing of feedback is also critical. Feedback should be given shortly after students have handed in their work to give them the opportunity to apply the feedback and adjust their work on an ongoing basis. When feedback is provided at the right time, students can better contextualize, understand, and implement what they’ve learned in their assignments. 

Introducing Turnitin Draft Coach

Providing quality feedback to every student at the right moment can be challenging, especially with the ever-growing demands and disruptions educators face during the school year. Integrated with the built-in capabilities of Microsoft 365, Turnitin has launched Draft Coach in Microsoft Word for the web.

Drawing from John Hattie’s “Where to next?” research, Draft Coach gives secondary and higher education students guidance about how to address accidental plagiarism, citation, and grammar issues. The example feedback mentioned earlier is an actual piece of grammar feedback from Draft Coach.

Sample writing feedback from Turnitin Draft Coach in Microsoft Word.

Draft Coach helps educators provide effective feedback to any student when they need it. With each “Where to next?” comment, students build critical writing and research skills that help set them up for success throughout their education journey. Draft Coach empowers students by giving them access to essential learning tools anytime and anywhere they write.

When students autonomously use Turnitin Draft Coach to pre-check their essays before submission, not only are they working on their writing and research skills—they are submitting a higher quality piece of writing. Thus, they can get higher quality feedback from their teachers.”

Annie Chechitelli, Chief Product Officer at Turnitin

Draft Coach has won The EdTech Awards for Research and Reference Tools Solution by EdTech Digest, the EdTech Breakthrough Awards, a Gold Stevie® for Learning Capacity-Building Solution, and Best of Show at ISTE 2022 from Tech & Learning.

How to get started with Draft Coach

Draft Coach is free for schools with an institutional license to Microsoft 365 and Turnitin Feedback Studio or Originality. You can set up Draft Coach now using quick-start guides for Feedback Studio and Originality administrators. If you’re interested in Draft Coach, but don’t have Turnitin, please visit the Draft Coach site for more information.

Learn more about how Microsoft 365 Education, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams, plus additional classroom tools, can support your students to accelerate their learning and achieve better learning outcomes. With Microsoft 365 Education, you can unlock creativity, promote teamwork, and provide a simple, safe experience—all in a single, affordable solution for education.

The post Accelerate learning by providing quality feedback appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Today is International Literacy Day, a day designated by UNESCO¹ to highlight and raise awareness of the importance and incredible benefits literacy has for individuals and society. Literacy means more than just learning to read and write at school. It can open lifelong opportunities and has been shown to improve everything from individual financial prospects to community health².

Since 1966, UNESCO has designated a new theme each year that focuses on specific aspects of improving literacy. This year’s theme is “Transforming Literacy Learning Spaces,” and the goal is to “encourage educators to rethink the fundamental importance of literacy learning spaces to build resilience and ensure quality, equitable, and inclusive education for all.”

To celebrate this International Literacy Day, we’re sharing our latest Accelerating Learning paper, “Immersive Reading: Supporting Student Focus through Read-Alouds.” We’ll also highlight other literacy solutions that can help students learn, practice independently to become more fluent readers, and give teachers the insights they need to provide individualized support.

Digital environments as literary learning spaces

Learning devices today have built-in accessibility tools that enable every student to build, practice, and gain skills to have a voice and choice in their education journey. Since 2020, we’ve seen learning happen in various locations: in and out of schools, students’ homes, libraries, museums, outdoor spaces, and more. But no matter where they are, students are using devices as a hub for learning. This is why learning devices are considered one of today’s primary learning spaces.

That may sound strange for a device to be a “space,” but when leveraged effectively and designed with built-in accessibility tools, learning devices can provide many of the same benefits a classroom does—including access to teachers. When thinking about transforming literary learning spaces, we can shift our focus on developing learning applications and tools to help support students attain greater reading fluency.

Unlocking the text

One of the benefits of the increasing role technology has in learning is that when tools are built to support all learners, they provide unique ways for students to build skills and improve their education. One example of a transformational application that can facilitate reading and learning for millions of students is Immersive Reader. This tool can read text in 85 languages, provide translations in more than 60 languages, and is available across the Microsoft 365 suite of tools.

In our paper, “Immersive Reading: Supporting Student Focus through Read-Alouds,” reviewers compared the process a student would undertake to use Immersive Reader to read a document in both the browser and desktop application versions of Microsoft Word versus the process to enable and use read-aloud functionality in another document creation product. The comparison revealed that since Immersive Reader is built-in to the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, Immersive Reader was easier to access and safer to use. Other solutions required installation of a third-party extension and didn’t offer integrated translation.

Immersive Reader is not the only tool Microsoft has designed to support literacy and reading fluency. Another tool, Reading Progress, helps students practice their reading fluency by recording video and audio of them reading a passage out loud, then sharing their recordings with their teacher. Teachers can create Reading Progress assignments in Microsoft Teams and track student progress over time in the Insights tab. The tool can track reading fluency in more than 100 supported languages.

Reading Progress shows teachers which words students had difficulty reading.

A tool that works alongside Reading Progress is Reading Coach, a reading practice tool for students that automatically creates individualized exercises based on each student’s specific needs. Teachers can assign a reading passage in Reading Progress, and when a student records themself reading it, Reading Coach automatically identifies words that the student struggled with and creates additional practice opportunities. It also provides guidance on correct pronunciation and syllabification, shares visuals to help vocabulary recall, and positively reinforces students to help build their reading confidence. Additionally, it empowers self-directed learning and practice, giving more time for teachers to focus on the development of each student academically and emotionally.

Reading Coach provides options to help students practice challenging words.

When these tools are integrated into virtual and in-person learning, digital environments are transformed into literacy learning spaces that are versatile and engaging—whether students are practicing on their own, or with the guidance of a teacher.

Supporting literacy through partnerships

For those that have access, learning can (and does) happen anywhere. But much more needs to be done to advance digital equity so that more students can have access to high-quality educational tools and instruction. There are many groups working to increase literacy in different ways, and Microsoft is honored to work with them to bring resources and training to students and teachers.

Organizations like First Book work directly with communities to bring resources to children who need them most. Since 1992, First Book has distributed more than 225 million books, devices, and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income communities across the United States and Canada. In collaboration with First Book, we created a M365 Literacy Tools Quick Start Guide (located in the Training and resources section) so you can learn how to use our free literacy tools and view educator-created videos that explain tool features in-detail.

Another organization making a difference is Made by Dyslexia. Dyslexia is a genetic difference that affects 1 in 5 people, sometimes causing dyslexics to have challenges with reading, spelling, and memorizing facts. Made by Dyslexia’s mission is to train every teacher and help every workplace to spot, support and empower every dyslexic mind. To help serve their mission, Microsoft has partnered with Made by Dyslexia to offer educators free online training with strategies from the world’s leading dyslexic schools.

As we highlight the importance of literacy and the spaces where learning happens, we also celebrate those who work to improve the reading fluency of students. The devices and spaces for learning are just tools to support the incredible efforts of teachers, principals, superintendents, and educators. Their dedication and skills make such a lasting impact by helping learners everywhere become strong and confident readers throughout their lives.

To read and download all of the Accelerated Learning papers and infographics, including “Immersive Reading: Supporting Student Focus through Read-Alouds,” visit the Learning Next page.

In support of International Literacy Day, the Microsoft Learn team has created the Literacy Skills Challenge! This is a free, gamified learning experience built into Microsoft Learn that introduces educators and school leaders to Microsoft’s literacy tools. Compete against your colleagues through the Skills Challenge Leaderboard and receive a digital certificate as an achievement for completing the challenge content.

By completing the Literacy Skills Challenge curated content, educators and school leaders can deepen their knowledge of the Microsoft solutions which help develop fluent readers and support personalized learning experiences.

The Literacy Skills Challenge kicks off today and lasts for 30 days.

¹ International Literacy Day | UNESCO

² Literacy | UNESCO

The post Transforming literacy learning to unlock positive futures appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

While Microsoft 365 and Learning Management Systems (LMS) have often complemented each other, we are excited to share new integrations with our LMS partners that will further enhance workflow and make content more easily accessible. 

New and improved Microsoft 365 Learning Tools Interoperabilities (LTIs) are now available with the following LMS partners: 

• Canvas
• Blackboard Learn
• Moodle
• OpenLMS
• Brightspace by D2L 

Your LMS + Microsoft 365: Better together 

We know your LMS is key to your course management and much more. Using Microsoft 365 in conjunction with LTIs, you can super-charge both your experience as an educator and students’ experiences with seamless integration and collaborative capabilities. Microsoft 365 provides file collaboration through OneDrive, online meetings, asynchronous chat through Microsoft Teams, and other essentials. Bringing your LMS and Microsoft 365 together will save you time: Everything you need is now in one place. 

OneDrive LTI 

Here are a few benefits of the OneDrive LTI app:

• It integrates with assignment, collaboration, and grading workflows. 
• Educators can add Microsoft files to course content and assignments. 
• Students can work on Microsoft document assignments and collaborations. 
• It provides simultaneous support for multiple OneDrive accounts. 
• The user experience has been updated to include a new OneDrive picker and new Microsoft viewers and editors. 
• NEW: It provides access to Teams sites and shared files.  

The new OneDrive LTI app is supported in Canvas, Blackboard Learn, OpenLMS, and Brightspace. 

Teams Meetings LTI

The improved Teams Meetings LTI app will help both educators and students more easily integrate class meetings into their course work. Users can:  

• Schedule individual or recurring meetings within the course in the LMS and set meeting options (based on tenant policies) 
• Join or edit the details of a Teams meeting from the course in the LMS (deep link into Teams) 
• NEW: Schedule channel meetings associated with a Team 

Soon, users will be able to access previous meeting artifacts within the LMS course, including chat, recordings, transcripts, and attendance reports.  

The new Teams Meetings LTI app is supported in Canvas, Blackboard Learn, Moodle, OpenLMS, and Brightspace. 

Class Teams LTI 

With the new Class Teams LTI app, educators and students will be able to seamlessly navigate between Teams and their course in the LMS. Educators can create a Class Team to supplement the LMS course in a few clicks, adding collaborative capabilities like messaging, meetings, and much more. 

Additional capabilities: 

• The app allows an educator to create a Class Team with the proper user roles within an LMS course using the enrollment roster. It allows users to follow Teams admin and LMS privacy policies during Class Team creation. 
• It lets educators and students access their Class Teams within the LMS course or Teams. 
• It provides support across desktop, mobile, and web platforms. 
• NEW: You can see Teams notifications in the LMS. 
• NEW: You can create Teams posts within the LMS.  

The new Class Teams app is supported in Canvas, Blackboard Learn, Moodle, and OpenLMS. 

Contact our Microsoft LTI team to learn more about the new and upcoming integrations. Our customer success team will reach out with more information and can provide 1:1 assistance with deploying the LTIs.  

The post New LMS integrations offer seamless learning experiences appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

One school district that overcame this challenge is Wichita Public Schools (WPS) in Wichita, Kansas, which is the largest district in the state serving roughly 11 percent of Kansas students—more than 50,000 each school year. Its investment in Microsoft’s educational technologies, such as Microsoft Surface Pros for educators and Surface Go and other devices for students, is helping fulfill the district’s mission of equipping every student with the 21st century skills and knowledge needed to succeed in an increasingly digital future.

Here’s how WPS is using technology to transform how learners learn and how teachers teach, while ensuring every student has equal opportunity to succeed:

Solving for equity and access

The issue of student access to technology pre-dated the pandemic but was exacerbated once it began, so WPS’s IT professionals set out to help create an equitable solution. Their solution—providing access to the internet and a device—has not only been paramount to supporting each student’s success during the pandemic, but will also be important long afterward.

WPS works with local partners to provide hotspots for students so they can stay connected. “Providing internet to students matters, especially for the children who might not know where they’re going to sleep for that night,” said Dyane Smokorowski, WPS’s coordinator for digital literacy. “To me, this is a social justice act. Connectivity isn’t just for the privileged; it’s for everyone.”  

WPS also pairs each student with their own computer, embracing Microsoft Surface devices and Teams as the district’s hardware and software platforms of choice. With Microsoft Surface devices, such as the Surface Pro 7 for teachers and the Surface Go for students, WPS has increased the scope of what can be taught and learned remotely. Teachers can also approach lesson planning in new, technology-driven, and inclusive ways.

Incorporating tools for inclusivity and agency

One reason these devices have been effective is because Microsoft builds inclusive solutions directly into its technologies instead of as an afterthought. This creates a one-stop shop, freeing schools from managing multiple vendors or searching for additional accessibility tools.

WPS embraces a variety of Microsoft’s inclusive technologies, including free reading tool Immersive Reader. “When our teachers … learn how it helps, they realize it helps not just students with reading troubles. It’s excellent for all the students,” said Amanda Young, a program manager of Education Imagine Academy, which is a full-time, tuition-free online public school offering from WPS.

Dyane agrees. “It’s about building that inclusivity in your classroom,” she said. “I can now design lessons better for all learners and personalize to them.”

Inclusive technologies can also provide virtual access to experiences beyond the classroom and home, which is especially important for students with fewer resources. “We have students who have not left a five-mile radius of their school,” Amanda said. “We have done live feeds from the historical museum.” Students were also able to meet directors of the local minor league baseball team “and walk around the stadium, even though they weren’t physically in that space.”

These experiences inspire students, said Dyane. “They can visit virtually and think, ‘Maybe I could work in a zoo, or in a museum. I could be a scientist.’ I think it can change the world of every student.”

Creating a new pedagogy for success

Educational technology can’t successfully evolve in a bubble, and WPS leadership understands that to make the most of it, teaching methodology must also change. “When it comes to technology, the teachers are all now functional; they get it,” said Dyane. “Now they’re starting to look at what their students are excited about, and then determining who they need to talk with to take that learning deeper.”

Both Amanda and Dyane cite Whiteboard, digital inking, and Flipgrid as examples of digital tools that can foster student engagement with material, radically change how students interact and learn, and offer new ways of designing lessons. With Whiteboard, “Now we can have a collaborative space for multiple students to share ideas, ideate, and mind map,” said Dyane.

Technology also presents new ways to connect students with opportunities through events, such as a WPS-hosted virtual career day with more than 35 guest speakers from across the US. The virtual aspect gives all students the opportunity to listen to each speaker, not just the students who are in one specific classroom at a specific time.

WPS’s ability to expand access to technology at such a critical time was a feat that has helped educators and will encourage better student outcomes now and in the future. “I will forever be a Microsoft fan because I’ve been able to grow as an educator and help my teachers and my staff grow,” said Amanda.

Dyane is likewise pleased. “When you can take the impossible and make it a reality, that’s the best use of technology,” she said.

Read more about WPS’s success story and explore Microsoft tools and devices that can help students develop the digital skills they need to succeed.

The post How one school created greater learner equity with Microsoft tools appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

We’d like to make that easier, so Microsoft Education has created a weekly podcast, Leading Innovation, that brings together school leaders to discuss what we’re thinking, saying, and doing to guide our schools. Our podcast will help give voice to leaders through a platform that’s ideal for sharing challenges and triumphs, and will focus on the small, actionable steps leaders can take now to effectively work toward larger goals.

Meet our hosts, then read below to learn more about what’s upcoming and how to listen:

Jamie Trujillo
Jamie is a 20-year veteran of the technology industry. He serves as the Chief Information Officer for GOAL Academy, where he is directly responsible for leading technology efforts and enabling digital transformation across the school—with a passion to prepare students for a life centered around technology.

Frank Chiappone
Frank is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft with a focus on school leaders and IT audiences. He loves to go deep on how institutions undertake digital transformation, the challenges they face in implementing and driving technology adoption in the classroom, and how Microsoft can best deliver innovation to help institutions around the world enable student success.

Dina Ghobashy
Dina currently champions schoolwide education transformation and manages school leader strategy and programs at Microsoft. Dina possesses a broad background in technology and its effective application to transform teaching and learning. She is passionate about achieving positive social impact through education and she sees technology as a catalyst for realizing this vision.

Episodes of Leading Innovation air on Mondays and feature real-world educators sharing insights, strategies, and ideas about what’s working in their schools and what’s not. From tackling “innovation fatigue”—the overwhelm and exhaustion tied to rapid technology adoption in the classroom—to overcoming budget limitations, here’s a peek at the discussions from some of our recent episodes:

• What Every School Leader Needs to Know About Managing Innovation Fatigue
  In the premiere episode of Leading Innovation, we kick things off with a discussion about the need for school leaders to share ideas and strategies. Then, we dive into the challenge of managing the “innovation fatigue” that is being felt in school and classroom environments. Find out how some school leaders are using data to rebalance school priorities and reduce teacher burnout while maximizing student achievement.
• The New School Leadership Challenge: Inspiring and Energizing Teachers Without Adding to Their Stress
  This episode tackles a challenge that has risen to the very top of every school leader’s priority list: talent management. As teaching becomes more demanding and the pool of talent shrinks, how do leaders inspire and energize teachers without becoming a source of the stress that is burning them out? Hint: Open communication is key.
• Five Practices That Enable School Leaders to See What Matters Most for Teachers’ and Students’ Success
  In this episode, we introduce five practices that give school leaders the ability to see what teachers and students need most to achieve their academic goals—at any point in the school term. Join us to learn the what, why, and how of putting these practices to work.
• How School Leaders Can Connect With Teachers and Students When It Doesn’t Matter… So We Can Connect With Them When It Does
  We all know that meaningful connections between administrators and teachers are required for effective learning, but the pandemic disrupted the traditional face-to-face connections educators rely on in schools. As our podcast guest, instructional coach Kimberly Moyer, explains, “We need to continually look for creative ways to build those bridges to our students. It doesn’t matter if it’s face to face or using technology; it’s all about relationships.” Tune in to this episode for techniques to connect with teachers and students when the stakes are low—including through resources such as Microsoft Teams and the Microsoft Showcase School program—to maintain those critical connections when it counts most.
• How Exceptional School Leaders Create Cultures That Work Around Budget and Resource Constraints
  For many schools and school leaders, budget constraints and limited resources are the big barriers to greater student performance. In this episode we talk with a school leader who transcended extreme budget limitations, using solutions such as free Microsoft 365 Education A1 licenses, to create a model school that attracted interest from around the globe. Our guest, Paramjeet Kaur Dhillon, the Founder Principal of Kamla Nehru Public School in Phagwara, India, offers empowering insights: “When it comes to finances, I have budget constraints. But when it comes to human resources, we are bountiful. Our resources are the culture of the school. Our resources are the attitude which we possess. Our resource is the will to change the world of our students.”

Upcoming episodes will explore topics including why technology hasn’t disrupted education as predicted, how to find inspiration when you aren’t inspired, and how to cultivate and measure culture within a school.

Tune in to Microsoft Education’s Leading Innovation podcast to listen to these episodes and more, and tweet us your thoughts about the latest episode using the tags @MicrosoftEDU, @DinaMGhobashy, @GOALACADEMY, @frankchip2, and @BAMRadioNetwork.

The post Tune in to Microsoft Education’s podcast for school leaders appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

We created our new YouTube series, How to with Microsoft EDU, with this purpose in mind. The videos can help you discover additional creative, compelling, and easy ways to use Microsoft tools in the classroom. Each video focuses on a specific tip or how-to—typically in one minute or less—and together the videos can help you streamline your teaching resources, encourage effective collaboration, better understand student needs, and more.

Take a look below at what’s covered in our first round of videos, and click on the links to quickly walk through these helpful features and functionalities in Microsoft Teams!

• How to connect Microsoft Teams to your learning management software (LMS): Did you know that you can access Teams within your LMS, such as Canvas or Blackboard? Watch this video to learn how you can plan lessons, schedule meetings, and share content in one secure space via desktop, mobile, or web devices.
• How to present PowerPoint in Microsoft Teams: Find out how to present a PowerPoint right from Teams. Sharing content with your students to follow along—including accessing from their own devices—is as simple as clicking one button. 
• How to collaborate using Office 365 in Microsoft Teams: Group projects just became much easier! Teams brings together all the tools you need to collaborate, in one place, including Whiteboard, Word, and PowerPoint. This video shares the details.
• How to track student progress in Microsoft Teams with Education Insights: Learn how to track student engagement and experiences in your classroom using Education Insights. The Insights app in Teams can help you check in on students’ progress and well-being by keeping tabs on attendance, class activity, assignment turn-in, and more.
• How to add a partner app in Microsoft Teams assignments: Have a favorite edtech app or looking for new ways to spark student discovery through your lesson plans? This video explains how to integrate partner apps into assignments in Teams.
• How to complete an assignment with Lens in Microsoft Teams: Teams makes it easy for students to digitally submit physical assignments and makes it just as easy for teachers to grade them. Watch this video to discover how.

Don’t delay in finding new ways to support your digital classroom. Subscribe to Microsoft Education’s How to with Microsoft EDU playlist on YouTube for more tips to get the most out of your favorite classroom tools.

The post Top tips to get the most out of Microsoft classroom tools appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Introducing Reading Coach 

Empower your students to reach their reading goals with Reading Coach, the newest feature to join our portfolio of tools supporting literacy. Available this summer, Reading Coach identifies the five words in a Reading Progress assignment that a student struggles with most and presents them again with tools and individualized exercises to support the learner in practicing independently. Based on educator preferences enabled when Reading Progress assignments are created, students can use available tools including text to speech and picture dictionary to improve reading fluency and the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and meaningful expression. 

The new feature also offers guidance on correct pronunciation and syllabification, shares visuals to help with their vocabulary recall, and provides positive reinforcement to help build a reader’s confidence. Reading Coach and Reading Progress work in tandem to help teachers provide their students equitable opportunities to develop strong literacy skills. Learn more about Reading Coach in Teams and our expanded literacy portfolio. 

Support student achievement with dialogue between educators and guardians 

Help your students reach their full potential and more effectively involve parents and guardians to support their achievements with Parent Connection. 

Using Parent Connection, educators can now see a roster of the parents and guardians in their class and initiate a Teams chat, phone call, or email with a single click. Instead of parent-teacher conferences or sporadic emails, educators can now provide more iterative updates to help manage and track their student’s progress while also keeping their personal contact information private. 

Parent Connection is generally available to all Teams for Education customers (included in all Office365 A-SKUS). Learn more, or talk with your IT administrator about setting up Parent Connection using School Data Sync. 

Get more done with new features from Assignments 

We’re pleased to announce that one of the top requests in the Microsoft Teams feedback portal is now available. Educators can now turn-in and upload documents in the Assignments grading tool on behalf of their students and is available for both individual and group assignments. 

Other updates in Assignments include the ability for educators to be notified when students turn in a late assignment. You can choose to be notified for any assignment that’s turned in late, or only specific assignments. Additionally, you are able to customize the notifications associated with Assignments using the settings menu in Microsoft Teams (in the 3 dots menu to the left of your photo) and get direct access to the assignment from your Teams activity feed. 

With the new mini grader update to the grading experience in Assignments, you can choose to collapse or expand the grading view, allowing you to allocate your screen real estate as you see fit, giving you extra space to grade when you need it. Navigate pages, assign points, or return the submission to the student with the mini grader, or use the expanded view to provide in-depth written feedback. 

Hold more effective class sessions 

Make your hybrid classroom a more effective and engaging experience by providing in-person and remote participants equal opportunity to chime in. Front row is a new layout for Teams that puts remote attendees at the room’s eye level and moves chat and a roster of participants to the front of the room. 

Video mirroring has also started rolling out on Windows and Mac desktop apps and you now have the option to stop mirroring the image of your video preview. Stop being distracted by flipped text or worrying that your online students see the text on your in-hand whiteboard backwards. In Teams you can now un-mirror your video to see your video, background, and text as your students do by going to Device Settings and toggling off Mirror my video. 

Help students prepare for the future with updates to Career Coach 

Higher education students can discover potential career paths, grow real-world skills, and build their professional network with personalized guidance from Career Coach, a Microsoft Teams app powered by LinkedIn. Recent updates to Career Coach include: 

• Connect message templates. Students can now select a message to include with their LinkedIn connection invitation to school alumni. 
• Integration with edX content. Career Coach will now feature edX content, an online course provider, within the learning experience. Job market trends. 
• Faculty and staff license holders will now be able to view location-based job market trends within Career Coach. This experience is powered by LinkedIn hiring data. 

Read all the newest updates Teams and OneNote on our Tech Community page. Don’t have Teams? It’s free for students and teachers! Download Teams and get started today. 

The post Discover Teams features that enrich lessons and engage students appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Sarasota County Schools, a diverse, Florida district of more than 41,000 students, has worked to tackle the issue head-on with Microsoft’s Reading Progress, a free tool built into Microsoft Teams to help students improve their reading fluency. The district has in turn helped bring equity and inclusion to the forefront.

In piloting Reading Progress, through a program with Microsoft and using the HP Probook 640 device for educators and the HP x360 for students, Sarasota County Schools and its educators, such as Anita Dennison, were able to make a notable difference. They traded in traditional, time-consuming running records—a practice in which students read aloud to a teacher as the teacher codes their reading level and needs—for automated coding of students’ independent, recorded readings. This streamlined practice is one that can not only build students’ skills and confidence as they’re able to practice privately without worrying about judgment from observers, but can also save teachers valuable time so they can focus on other tasks important to improving student learning.

Here’s how Reading Progress helped Sarasota’s students catch up and embrace reading—and how the tool can help students in other districts, too.

Fostering equity-first learning

Anita’s classroom, where she teaches intensive reading to a mix of learners in grades 6-8, centers around helping vulnerable students, such as English as a Second Language (ESL) students and special education students. Her aim is to improve their reading levels, which are at a kindergarten to sixth grade level when they first enter her doors.

Throughout the pandemic, her classroom took on a unique form as she taught in person to both students who were present in the room and students who tuned in remotely from home. It wasn’t long before pandemic-related learning interruptions became apparent: her students were less focused, paying less attention, not completing assignments, and not following directions. “You could tell that they were doing 5,000 other things,” Anita said.

But in October 2021, Reading Progress made its way to Anita’s classroom, significantly improving students’ performance and confidence.

“The repetitiveness of [Reading Progress]…increases their reading skills, so then they’re more willing to participate because they feel successful,” Anita said. “It’s incredibly spot-on.”

This not only helps vulnerable students in classrooms like Anita’s but can benefit students who struggle with anxiety in any classroom. As they feel more comfortable reading aloud independently, they’re more relaxed doing it in front of others, which allows learning gaps to close and enables equity to flourish.

“I have a lot of English as a Second Language students. They do not want to read out loud, ever, because they’re afraid to get made fun of…it takes a long time to get them to participate,” said Anita, who added that Reading Progress “definitely has an effect on the equity across the board.”

Another free reading tool has helped foster equity and support student learning, too. That tool, Immersive Reader, is likewise built into Teams and increases the readability of content by giving students the ability to have content read aloud to them and to adjust settings such as font spacing and text size. Anita has leveraged it in her eighth grade class for quizzes on listening comprehension, and it has helped students grow the confidence needed to effectively practice and improve their literacy. One such student with cognitive differences who entered Anita’s class reading at a kindergarten level left her class reading at a third-grade level.

When that student first met Anita, he told her he couldn’t read, but “by the end he was saying he could read, and he would tell his other teachers he could read…his effort went through the roof,” Anita said. “He definitely gained confidence and would try things on his own more.”

Making time for inclusion

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to learning, and Reading Progress has enabled educators in Sarasota’s district to individualize student learning experiences in a way that supports inclusivity.

The automation of the time-consuming practice of running records allowed educators like Anita and her colleague, Nicole Vickers, who is a middle school intensive reading teacher in Sarasota County Schools, to have more time to develop personalized learning plans and educational strategies for individual students—thanks to the data from Reading Progress.

“[Students] get such a better insight into seeing themselves, and it feels less like yet another assessment,” said Nicole. And as students feel more connected to the material they learn, and become empowered by the individualized strategies their teachers create for them, the students ultimately feel better seen, heard, and included in class.

“Some of my students are a hard group to engage,” said Anita. “But with this reading program, they’re buying in. They’re investing. And that’s huge.”

Sarasota’s decision to integrate Reading Progress into classrooms like Anita’s underscores how access to the right tools can create more effective, equitable, and inclusive classrooms.

Read more about the success story of Sarasota County Schools and sign up for the Microsoft Newsletter to learn how school districts across the country are transforming learning with Microsoft Education.

The post How one district is improving literacy with Reading Progress appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Today, an estimated 35 million children are displaced globally as a consequence of war, natural disasters, disease outbreak, or other crises.¹ In many countries, efforts to mitigate pandemic risk have separated 463 million students from school entirely due to a lack of remote learning policies or lack of devices needed at home.² This means that many students will experience their third calendar year without education. 

Originally launched as a digital remote learning platform for displaced youth in September 2018, the Learning Passport was later expanded to provide out-of-school children with continued access to quality education as school closures became prevalent during the pandemic.

Developed by UNICEF and powered by Microsoft, the platform allows governments around the world to manage the educational crisis by enabling teaching and learning through localized curriculum that is easily accessible both online and offline.

The global disruption to education caused by COVID-19 has been unparalleled, affecting 1.6 billion learners at its peak and leaving 463 million children unable to access digital or remote learning programs. To ensure the continuity of learning for children, we must reimagine education and transform education systems.

Robert Jenkins, Global Director of Education and Adolescent Development at UNICEF

Last year, TIME listed the Learning Passport as one of the best inventions of 2021. Today, it has reached more than two million users, with a growing number of countries adopting it as their national learning management system or using it to complement existing digital learning platforms that enable children to continue learning.

We know that frequent and prolonged interruptions to education can have a devastating effect on a student’s future beyond school.

The Learning Passport enables countries to bridge the learning and skills gap by providing learning opportunities directly to the students who need them.

The platform reflects Microsoft’s commitment to enable equitable access to education and empower every student on the planet to reach their academic and social potential.

Alexa Joyce, Digital Transformation & Skills Director, EMEA, Microsoft Education

This includes providing students with equal access to the opportunities, resources, and support they need to succeed—regardless of their ability, income, language, location, or identity. This belief is ingrained across all of Microsoft’s learning solutions and technologies, which are inclusively designed to help all learners achieve more.

The Learning Passport provides local content as well as global supplementary resources to support learners, with additional training materials and tools for teachers and parents. It also introduces an extensive educational model that covers early childhood education, primary and secondary education, adolescent skills, and technical and vocational education—all tailored to the specific needs of children and youth who are out of school or in need of support. Students who use the platform will gain access to a personalized record of their learning history which can be easily carried across physical and digital borders.

Learners and educators can access the Learning Passport via a portal and/or a mobile app. The offline model utilizes a hub device that acts as both a server—storing all digital content and learners’ records—and a local area network, which allows students in regions with low to no connectivity to link their devices to the server and access all of the learning materials.

We are looking at this as a great opportunity to reach children, both those affected by school closures and those who have never been registered in school. We are using this initiative as a springboard to leapfrog into the future as part of our plan to improve digital literacy and get children learning no matter where they live.

Dulce De Jesus Soares, Timor-Leste Minister of Education, Youth and Sport

The Learning Passport is currently live across 20 countries and in the deployment process in more than 25. Read more about how the Learning Passport is helping to bridge the digital divide.

Find out more about the Learning Passport.
Find out more about Microsoft Education.

UNICEF does not endorse any company, brand, product or service.

Photo: ©UNICEF

^{1 https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/
2 https://data.unicef.org/resources/remote-learning-reachability-factsheet/}

The post The Learning Passport provides learning continuity for millions of out-of-school children appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.