Over the last few years, schools underwent tremendous change by adopting hybrid learning and new tech tools for teaching, learning, and working. However, schools face increasing challenges with outdated software and ever-increasing cyberattacks that threaten the security of sensitive and important data, targeting student personal information, login credentials, school operational data, and more. It’s a daunting security landscape as the education sector regularly makes up over 80% of the reported malware encounters in any 30-day period.

Let’s take a deep dive into some of the real-life challenges that primary and secondary education institutions have faced and learn how they solved them.

Harnessing secure AI tools to transform education

Bad actors are constantly testing the fences of educational IT networks looking for vulnerabilities. Because of this, the Fulton County school district in Georgia, US, put plans in place to monitor, detect, and mitigate these potential cybersecurity threats. The district also wanted to modernize data collection to showcase student performance and operational efficiency data in near real time.

The district’s plans involved advanced Microsoft security features through a Microsoft 365 A5 educational license, which gave them the tools to address cybersecurity risks. They also transformed their data-driven decision-making with dynamic analytic insights using Microsoft Power BI. Additionally, the district maximized its existing Microsoft licenses and migrated to an end-to-end platform that spans on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, which suited the institution’s complex needs.  

Newington College, a primary and secondary-level boarding school in Australia, experienced a cybersecurity incident that catalyzed their need to improve the security and management of education technology while revolutionizing the way students and teachers engage and collaborate. For Newington, the greatest success lay in the efficiencies gained and benefits realized across the Microsoft stack by simplifying the deployment and support model across the environment. This process has become a catalyst for enhanced engagement, collaboration, and student success—helping the IT team stay on the front foot of opportunities.

Many school districts are embracing technologies they deem beneficial for educating students and supporting how faculty work. In fact, 68% of educators and 95% of education leaders have already used AI for school-related purposes. Wichita Public Schools in the US is one such example. Because no two students learn in precisely the same way, Wichita Public Schools started looking into the many ways Microsoft Copilot with enterprise data protection can help educators bring a greater diversity of tailored learning experiences into the classroom.

Students are also using AI-powered tools to enhance their learning and literacy. The Stour Academy Trust, located in Southeast England, tested two powerful Microsoft Education tools—Reading Progress and Reading Coach—to boost literacy and help readers succeed. Features in Reading Progress leverage AI to generate and personalize reading passages and assessments, which significantly reduces an educator’s workload while addressing student’s specific needs.

The Stour Academy Trust beta-tested AI-enabled Reading Coach to further enhance student reading fluency. When added to Reading Progress assignments, Reading Coach identifies words that are most challenging for each student and gives them a supported opportunity to practice the words again. One of the most exciting features of Reading Coach is the ability for learners to co-create their own personalized reading experiences utilizing responsible AI. Due to their success, Reading Coach and Reading Progress continue to be introduced across the Stour Academy Trust so that all educators can see how these tools fit into their classroom practices.

Our final case study takes us back to Australia, where the South Australia Department for Education is empowering students and teachers with responsible AI in the classroom. The Department has harnessed the power of AI to build and trial a chatbot that has been designed specifically for teaching and learning. ‘EdChat’ is the first chatbot of its kind in Australia and one of the first in the world to be introduced in an educational setting.

The chatbot was designed in partnership with Microsoft and uses Azure OpenAI Service, powered by the same technology as ChatGPT. Students can enter prompts to get information on a topic, ask for creative suggestions or analyze complex ideas. EdChat proved extremely helpful in allowing students to access vast amounts of information quickly, and have this information synthesized into simple, easy-to-understand language.

These are just a few real-life examples of how specific Microsoft products have helped in primary and secondary education. However, there’s something even bigger that Microsoft offers that every school should consider for meeting their needs.

The most comprehensive value for education

The Microsoft 365 A5 license offers a comprehensive solution tailored for schools, blending essential security, management, productivity, and learning tools. There are three highlights that separate Microsoft 365 A5 from others. The first is the ability to implement a Zero Trust approach across your entire digital estate with Microsoft’s suite of security products. The second is simplified endpoint management that gives you the power to deploy endpoints from the cloud and streamline support of student devices. The third is that Microsoft 365 A5 offers AI-powered instructional tools and advanced accessibility features, enabling new patterns of working and learning in today’s environment.

In a Forrester report from 2023, the composite education organization using Microsoft 365 A5 licenses saw a 118% return on investment or $4.2M over 3 years, $1.7 million reduced downtime for educators and IT staff, and a 30% reduction in licensing costs with vendor consolidation.

Microsoft 365 A5 empowers you to support your school community—from enhanced security and access control, comprehensive cyber threat protection, and streamlined data governance and security, to efficient classroom management and collaboration. Microsoft 365 A5 is one of the best choices that every school should consider when looking to enable secure teaching, learning, and working for all.

Reimagine education with AI

Microsoft is committed to security, privacy, and compliance across everything we do, and our approach to AI is no different. Microsoft’s approach to Responsible AI is grounded in a set of core principles and practices that we believe should guide AI development and use. With that in mind, perhaps the most exciting application currently is Microsoft Copilot, allowing you to leverage AI to provide personalized suggestions, accelerate routine tasks, offer real-time feedback, and more. Additionally, Copilot also offers enterprise data protection to help safeguard your information. Simply tell Copilot what you want to create, and it will help you generate new content in seconds.

Additionally, Microsoft Teams for Education leverages AI to enhance learning outcomes and streamline collaboration. Educators can leverage AI to help draft rubrics, assignment instructions, learning objectives, and more. With Reading Coach—a popular Learning Accelerator available in and outside of Microsoft Teams—learners can create unique AI-generated stories by choosing characters and settings from a curated collection of options.

There are additional ways that Microsoft can help meet your school’s needs. You can protect against student endpoints through the recently released student Defender for Endpoint. You can also step up your security by leveraging AI and machine learning to provide real-time threat detection and response with Microsoft Sentinel.

Overall, from productivity and learning to security, Microsoft is ready to help provide the most value to you and help you realize transformative benefits for your school.

Now is the time to transform your school

Microsoft 365 Education is a significant step toward meeting the demands of your school and empowering students and teachers to do more. By leveraging Microsoft’s robust tools and resources, educational institutions can create more secure and connected learning environment.

• For an overview on Microsoft 365 licensing, see the Microsoft product licensing page.
• Visit the Microsoft Education Cybersecurity solutions page to learn how our solutions help protect your school’s information.
• Empower everyone in your organization to be a cybersecurity champion with cybersecurity awareness resources and training.
• Learn how you can get started with free AI tools from Microsoft Education.
• Reference the Microsoft Education AI Toolkit to deploy and implement Microsoft AI Solutions.
• Learn more about Microsoft Copilot and ways you can use it to save time and energy.
• Explore quick Learning Accelerators demos and leverage these powerful tools in your classroom.

The post Transforming education in the age of AI with a unified solution appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

AI is reshaping education, and institutions need a plan. With new education insights from the 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Survey, it’s clear that AI use in education is here with 71% of education professionals using it at work. At the same time, 63% reported their institutions lack a vision and plan to implement AI, likely contributing to 81% of education professionals not using tools provided to them—but instead choosing to bring their own AI to work (BYOAI).

As the future of work and education continues to evolve with AI innovation, it’s increasingly important to ensure that educators and students are engaged and encouraged to build AI literacy. 77% of business leaders say with AI, early-in-career talent will be given greater responsibilities, yet many education professionals express reluctance to admit to using AI and say they don’t know how to use it effectively. Learn more about the need for bridging the AI literacy gap and starting AI conversations in our AI in Education Report.

Enhancing Microsoft Copilot with enterprise data protection

Microsoft Copilot is your AI assistant for education, providing secure access to advanced AI models for free so you can focus on what matters most. We’ll continue bringing new models to Copilot, now including GPT-4o, and capabilities like recent chats to reference or continue previous chats. In August 2024, we shared several additional updates to enhance data security, privacy, compliance, and user experience which begins rolling out today. While signed in with a school account, Copilot will offer enterprise data protection (EDP) in a simplified, ad-free interface that can be accessed at Microsoft.com/copilot, in the Microsoft 365 app, and will soon be available in Microsoft Teams and Outlook. 

Enterprise data protection means that your Copilot prompts and responses are protected by the same terms and commitments that are widely trusted by our customers—not only for Microsoft 365 Copilot, but also for emails in Exchange and files in SharePoint. With EDP, we secure your data, your data is private, and your access controls and policies apply based on the underlying subscription plan. Additionally, we help safeguard against AI-focused risks such as harmful content and prompt injections, and your data isn’t used to train foundation models.

Education institutions like Wichita Public Schools and Auburn University have already leveraged Copilot to empower students, faculty, staff, and researchers. We look forward to continuing to support institutions worldwide in their mission to provide equitable AI access and learning about where Copilot is improving educational outcomes.

These updates will be available to all educators, staff, and higher education students aged 18 and older over the next month. We’re also excited to continue our private preview program for students 13 and older, now with enterprise data protection. For more information, review the enterprise data protection FAQ.

Microsoft Copilot Wave 2 innovation

Microsoft 365 Copilot, integrated into the apps you use every day and available as an add-on, has added 150 new features and capabilities since general availability and more than 700 product updates based on customer feedback. We’ve announced three key updates: Business Chat and Copilot Pages, transforming Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps, and Copilot agents.

Business Chat and Copilot Pages

• Business Chat (BizChat) is a central hub that brings together all your data—web data, work data, and line of business data—with the rich capabilities of the Microsoft 365 apps. BizChat is where you can work with Copilot like a partner, turning organizational content into a rich database of information and insight.
• Copilot Pages is a dynamic, persistent canvas in BizChat designed for AI collaboration to ensure the data in your organization is persistent, accessible, and valuable. You and your team can work collaboratively in a Page with Copilot, seeing everyone’s work in real time. In the coming weeks, we’re also bringing Pages to the free Microsoft Copilot when signed in with a Microsoft Entra account.

Updates to Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps

• Copilot in Excel is now generally available with new skills, and we announced Copilot in Excel with Python—empowering anyone to conduct advance analysis or visualize complex data—all using natural language, no coding required. 
• Copilot in PowerPoint now offers Narrative Builder, helping you to iterate with Copilot to build a great first draft in minutes and with Brand manager, Copilot can leverage your organization’s branded templates.
• Copilot in Teams can now reason over both the meeting transcript and the meeting chat to give you a complete picture of what was discussed and leave no question, idea, or contribution behind.
• Copilot in Outlook helps you quickly get to the messages that matter with Prioritize My Inbox, which analyzes your inbox and soon, you’ll even be able to teach Copilot the specific topics, keywords, or people that are important to you.
• Copilot in Word will enable you to quickly reference not only Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, and encrypted documents, but also emails and meetings, and offers the ability to partner with Copilot inline as you work on specific sections of your document.
• Copilot in OneDrive is rolling out now and makes it easy to gain insights, summarize, and compare up to five files with a clear, easy-to-ready summary of the details and differences within your files—without opening a file.

Copilot agents

• Now generally available in BizChat, Copilot agents run the spectrum from simple, prompt-and-response agents that anyone can build, to more advanced, fully autonomous agents.
• Simple and secure to manage, all agents have the same Responsible AI and enterprise data protection promises—your data never leaves the Microsoft 365 trust boundary, and everything happens within your tenant.
• To make it even easier to build custom agents, we announced agent builder. It’s a new, simplified experience that complements Copilot Studio to enable easy creation of custom agents and realize the value of your organizational data.

Copilot is transforming productivity in the workplace, empowering customers to accelerate research on rare diseases, save customer service agents hours each week, or go from content ideation to production significantly faster, and more.

In education, institutions like the University of South Florida are preparing students for this new future of work and are already seeing the value for their faculty and staff. We’ll also continue to enhance the value of Microsoft 365 Copilot with capabilities built for students and educators.

Get started on your AI journey

With new innovations and improvements coming every day, one constant is the importance of providing guidance, learning opportunities, and resources. We’ve compiled a relevant list below to help you get started.

Learn from more educators, and students:

• Discover Smart ways students are using AI responsibly at every level to enhance learning and avoid potential pitfalls.
• Hear from O’Dea High School and Indiana University educators on how Educators and students now have a secure AI ‘scaffolding’ to support them in the classroom.

Explore and share AI resources:

• Microsoft Education AI Toolkit: Designed to guide school leaders through the process of integrating AI into their school’s operations and building robust plans for your organization.
• AI for educators learning pathway: Explore the potential of AI in education, enhance teaching and learning with Microsoft Copilot, and equip and support learners.
• AI Classroom Toolkit: A creative resource that blends engaging narrative stories with instructional information to create an immersive learning experience.
• Microsoft Copilot Scenario Library: Get inspired with guidance by departments such as IT, HR, Legal, Communications, Operations, and more.
• Copilot technical skilling resources: A collection of kits, learning paths, Microsoft Mechanics videos, resources for developers, and upcoming events for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Worklab: explore the latest research insights on the future of work and generative AI
• Minecraft Education AI Foundations: A set of accessible, engaging materials for building AI literacy with Minecraft for students, educators, and families.
• AI Guidance for Schools Toolkit from TeachAI: Designed to help education authorities, school leaders, and teachers create thoughtful guidance.

The post Bringing a new wave of Copilot innovation to education appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

AI-powered tools to support educators

For educators seeking inspiring and innovative instructional strategies, Microsoft AI tools provide much needed assistance. Explore how these tools can help you save time, personalize learning, and renew your passion for teaching.

• Microsoft Copilot can help you generate engaging content and individualized suggestions, freeing up more time for direct student interaction. For added data protection, sign in using your school account. Use Copilot to create personalized content and tailored feedback based on a student’s unique learning requirements. You can also get suggestions for activities, resources, and assessments aligned with learning objectives or a rubric that you can attach to get recommendations specific to your classroom needs. Copilot is available at no cost with your school account and is accessible in Windows, Edge, and on the web.
• Copilot for Microsoft 365 gives you the power of Microsoft Copilot integrated seamlessly into the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day, like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Try generating creative writing prompts, translating languages, or summarizing complex topics in Word. It can also help streamline lesson planning by creating slides in PowerPoint on any topic or from any file, saving you valuable prep time.
• Microsoft Teams for Education is packed with AI features to help you set up your classroom for success. Streamline grading with AI-powered rubrics that adapt to student responses, allowing you to spend less time grading and more time supporting your students’ learning. You can also create comprehension questions tailored to the individual needs of your students or generate modules and descriptions for your class based on the subject, grade level, and learning objectives.

Discover more ways to use AI to support your instructional practice this school year:

• Empower your classroom with the knowledge to navigate AI responsibly by integrating the AI Classroom Toolkit into your lessons. It helps educators to teach students aged 13-15 how to use AI tools effectively through critical conversations and hands-on activities that build skills like fact-checking, data privacy, and mental wellbeing.
• Build fundamental AI skills with your learners in the engaging world of Minecraft Education. AI Foundations is a new AI literacy program that includes bite-sized animated videos that explain AI to learners ages 8 and up, free teaching materials and parent guide, and an imaginative new Minecraft world called Fantastic Fairgrounds where players solve problems and explore careers with AI (available in both Minecraft Education and Bedrock Edition on the Marketplace).
• Khanmigo for Teachers is an AI-powered tool that helps you generate fresh lesson ideas, personalizes student assignments, and explore resources so you can enhance your knowledge and stay current on content area topics. Created by Khan Academy and powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Khanmigo for Teachers is available for free in English across more than 40 countries.
• Learn more ways to use Copilot in your classroom from the Microsoft Education blog post “Meet your AI assistant for education: Microsoft Copilot” and download the Microsoft Copilot Quick Guide to get started today.
• Explore the training course “Enhance teaching and learning with Microsoft Copilot” to learn how to use Copilot, design effective prompts, and analyze results.

Improved efficiencies for school leaders and staff

School leaders and staffs’ days are often filled with administrative tasks like responding to emails, attending meetings, and filling out paperwork. Microsoft’s AI-powered tools and resources offer support in managing day-to-day responsibilities, helping to enhance efficiency and streamline operations. Discover how these solutions can help you optimize workflows, improve communication, and focus more on fostering a positive school community.

• The Microsoft Education AI Toolkit is designed to guide school leaders through the process of integrating AI into their school’s operations and building robust plans for your organization. This toolkit offers you insights in how others are leveraging AI-powered technology, access to a collection of the latest research on AI in schools, and supports the latest information on Microsoft’s AI technology designed for education.
• Copilot for Microsoft 365 can transform how you handle time-consuming everyday tasks like emails and meetings. Use it to summarize long email threads and draft suggested replies in Microsoft Outlook. You can also use it to summarize key discussion points in Teams meetings, helping you keep track of action items and follow-ups. Try saving time by creating professional looking slides for staff meetings or board meetings.
• Copilot in Power BI offers advanced data analysis capabilities, allowing you to generate insightful reports, visualizations, and narrative summaries. Just describe your desired outcomes, and Copilot will deliver, making it simpler to track student performance, present insights, or conduct research. This intuitive tool helps you communicate data insights clearly, supporting informed decision-making and enriching the learning experience. By consolidating data into a centralized environment and leveraging Power BI’s advanced analytics, educational institutions can gain near real-time insights into student performance and operational efficiency, saving hours of manual labor through automated data processes.

Explore more ways to use AI to enhance operational efficiencies. Check out the AI learning hub on Microsoft Learn to help you skill up and use the power of AI to transform your work.

Enhanced operations and security for school IT teams

School IT teams play an important role in ensuring the smooth operations of school technology systems. Microsoft’s AI tools provide robust solutions to support IT professionals in managing security, data, and overall IT infrastructure efficiently. Learn how these tools can help you enhance cybersecurity, streamline data management, and improve IT operations.

• GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered assistant designed to help IT teams write code faster with fewer errors. It suggests code completions and generates entire code blocks, allowing you to automate repetitive tasks and focus on more complex issues. With GitHub Copilot, you can improve your development workflows, enforce code consistency, and reduce the time spent on debugging and code reviews.
• Microsoft Defender helps IT teams amplify security through advanced, comprehensive endpoint protection with AI capabilities. Defender promotes school safety by filtering harmful content and protecting sensitive data through robust encryption. School IT teams can use Microsoft Defender to increase their efficiency while securing schools at scale. Likewise, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P2 – Students extends this industry-transforming technology to student devices, neutralizing malware and phishing attempts to safeguard your school from cyberattacks. Should an attack occur, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P2 – Students’ automated response swiftly isolates compromised devices, minimizing damage and maintaining control.
• Copilot for Security further empowers IT teams with AI to help defend at machine speed. When integrated with Microsoft Sentinel, Copilot can summarize vast data signals into key insights, cutting through the noise to detect cyberthreats before they cause harm. Copilot can generate incident reports suitable for non-technical audiences, such as your school board, and identify user risks or generate access policies. This helps you respond to incidents in minutes instead of hours or days. Pricing for Copilot for Security and Sentinel is usage based and available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 academic licenses.

Learn more about how AI can support your IT teams:

• Discover how to better respond to security threats in this Microsoft Copilot for Security training module and uncover the steps to making the most of this AI-powered security analysis tool.
• Find out how to use AI to streamline your work with GitHub Copilot in this Microsoft Learn Official Collection.

Whether you’re an educator seeking innovative instructional strategies, a school leader aiming to improve efficiencies, or an IT professional focused on enhancing cybersecurity and data management, Microsoft’s AI-powered solutions are here to help. With tools like Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Teams for Education, and Copilot for Security, your school can achieve these goals and more. Equip your school with the AI tools it needs to thrive this school year, and focus on what truly matters—supporting and engaging your students, family, and staff.

The post Power your school year with AI solutions for educators, leaders, and IT teams appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

By integrating these resources into your classroom, you can encourage meaningful exploration and representation of the diverse cultural landscape that exists within the Hispanic community.

Foster inclusivity and inspire learning with Minecraft Education

Millions of educators and students use Minecraft for game-based learning. Integrate the LatinExplorers worlds from Minecraft Education into your classroom instruction to give students the opportunity to see themselves and their culture represented in engaging, interactive ways.

Through these immersive experiences developed with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, students can delve deeper into topics that impact the Hispanic community. They will meet characters inspired by Latinx leaders who have lead change in climate science, community services, and the creative arts, inspiring a new generation to lead with purpose.

• LatinExplorers offers a unique exploration of Hispanic heritage, showcasing how Latinx community members are leading the way, from supporting those in need to standing up for others.
• LatinExplorers 2 is a continuation of Minecraft Education and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation’s commitment to inspire the next generation of leaders. It presents a new way to build leadership and social-emotional skills, teaching students how leaders in the Hispanic community can motivate them to take meaningful action in their own communities.

The game-based LatinExplorers worlds are available to all Minecraft Education users in 29 languages, providing an inclusive experience. You can use lesson materials and family resources to help students learn and explore through both guided practice and independent adventures.

Interested in incorporating Minecraft Education into your Hispanic Heritage Month lessons, but not sure how? Take the Minecraft Education: Teacher Academy learning path designed to boost your confidence using Minecraft as a powerful tool for teaching and learning.

Leverage Copilot to plan meaningful instruction

Copilot offers powerful tools to help educators create dynamic and culturally rich lesson plans for Hispanic Heritage Month. By leveraging Copilot, you can easily access and create a variety of educational resources, including articles, multimedia content, and interactive activities. Copilot can suggest lesson structures, themes, and activities that align with educational standards, ensuring that learning experiences are both engaging and educational.

Tailor these prompts in Copilot to your classroom and learning objectives to help you get started:

Develop a lesson plan for fifth graders to celebrate the achievements of Hispanic figures in STEM. The lesson plan should include a project that allows students to explore one or more figures extensively and be aligned to fifth grade NGSS standards. Include suggestions for notable and lesser-known Hispanic figures, research activities, and relevant historical content that will foster a deeper understanding and appreciation.

Create an inquiry-based unit plan for high school students that delves into contemporary issues facing the Hispanic community in the United States. Include prompts to spark critical thinking discussions, unbiased primary and secondary sources, and a thorough rubric for students to use to guide their work.

Design an engaging lesson for third grade students around global Hispanic cultural traditions, specifying countries of origin and cultural significance. It should avoid stereotypes and encourage in-depth exploration in a respectful and meaningful way. Include age-appropriate reading materials, multimedia resources, and interactive activities that align to third grade TEKS ELA standards.

Generate an eighth-grade math unit plan that explores the contributions of Hispanic architects and engineers aligned to eighth grade Wisconsin Standards for Mathematics. Incorporate sample geometry and algebra problems inspired by their work, as well as activities that involve analyzing architectural designs or engineering solutions from Hispanic cultures without promoting stereotypes. These activities should be engaging and hands-on and provide real-world application.

By using these prompts or creating your own, you can harness the potential of Copilot to create meaningful, inclusive lessons that celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in a way that resonates with your students.

Amplify voices of the Hispanic community in your classroom

Copilot can also be a valuable tool to provide ideas and resources that help amplify diverse voices in your classroom. With your input, it can recommend guest speakers, virtual field trips to Hispanic cultural sites, and projects that connect students with Hispanic community leaders. You can also use Copilot to suggest literature, music, and art from Hispanic creators, enriching your classroom with authentic and diverse perspectives.

Customize these prompts in Copilot to explore ways to diversify your classroom experience:

Curate a list of age-appropriate literature and picture books by Hispanic authors that would engage second grade students. The books should introduce students to a variety of Hispanic cultures and perspectives without perpetuating stereotypes. Include the theme of each book and a short summary.

Create a month-long exploratory unit for a middle school art class that meets twice a week for 45 minutes. The theme of the unit is Hispanic artists and their works. The unit should include some research as well as a project that pays homage to a Hispanic artist of the students’ choosing. Provide a list of research sources about various Hispanic artists with ways to digitally view artwork and any relevant historical information.

Develop a list of songs, rhymes, or stories from Hispanic cultures and languages that would engage kindergarten students. Avoid content with stereotypes and bias that marginalize the Hispanic community. Include any relevant background information and suggested actions or movements to accompany them.

Generate a plan for a high school class where students research and present on the contributions of local Hispanic community leaders. Students should include details on how these leaders have impacted our community and how their stories can be integrated into current social issues or historical contexts. Provide ideas for how students can connect with these leaders or their work through virtual interviews or online resources.

Check out the “How to create a great Microsoft Copilot prompt” video to learn how to craft your own prompts. Then, use your prompts to support learning during Hispanic Heritage Month 2024 and throughout the school year.

Empower your students this Hispanic Heritage Month with educational experiences from Microsoft Education. Celebrate the diverse cultures and perspectives of the Hispanic community with LatinExplorers from Minecraft Education and use Copilot to help craft engaging lessons. By incorporating these tools, you’ll not only enhance your students’ learning journey but also contribute to a more inclusive and culturally vibrant classroom environment.

The post Honor Hispanic Heritage Month 2024 with Minecraft Education and Microsoft Copilot appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

This year’s focus is promoting multilingual education, emphasizing the potential of literacy to foster mutual understanding and peace. Research highlights the cognitive, pedagogical, and socioeconomic benefits of a first language-based, multilingual approach—benefits you can bring to your community as a school leader and educator.

To support you in this important work, our learning tools and Learning Accelerators can help you personalize education and create supportive learning environments. These solutions offer features to enhance literacy for Multilingual Learners of English (MLEs), ensuring that every student can thrive. Additionally, Microsoft Copilot can help you develop inclusive policies and practices and empower you to cultivate lifelong learning.

Implement inclusive policies and practices for multilingual education

A first language-based, multilingual approach to education recognizes the linguistic diversity of students as an asset to learning and social participation, fostering greater equity in education. You can promote this approach by advocating for inclusive policies and implementing practices that value and include students’ culture and linguistic backgrounds.

AI-powered tools, like Copilot, offer powerful support in advancing multilingual education within your school. To get started, use Microsoft Copilot to refine and develop policies and practices that promote multilingual education. You can even upload your existing policies to get personalized recommendations and revisions. For enhanced data protection, sign in using your school account.

Here is a prompt you can personalize and use in Copilot:

Develop policies and practices to support a first language-based multilingual program, including timelines, active community involvement, and guide for implementation. Ensure that inclusive language policies are developed and supported by students, families, and staff and that the process fosters shared ownership and sustainability. Language diversity should be viewed as an asset and practices should be implemented that leverage students’ multilingual strengths. Consider programming that supports learners who are multilingual within the mainstream classroom through co-teaching and interaction in diverse groups.

As you explore the strategies from the Copilot prompt, consider which practices you can implement immediately to support MLEs in your classroom. You can also extend the prompt to think about how you might present these ideas to school leadership to support multilingual education in your school.

Empower MLEs with Microsoft tools for literacy

You can also promote multilingual education in your classrooms by leveraging the existing literacy skills of MLEs in their home languages to build on their strengths. Microsoft offers a variety of literacy solutions to support MLEs, helping you ensure that inclusive school policies translate into effective, day-to-day classroom practices.

Support access to text with Immersive Reader

Immersive Reader provides MLEs with literacy tools that help them access texts in their preferred language. This tool empowers learners to take charge of their literacy experience and customize their support.

Learn more about how you can use Immersive Reader to support literacy needs.

• Read text aloud: Build literacy skills by having text read aloud. As the text is read, the words are highlighted, allowing MLEs to follow along and match the word to the appropriate pronunciation and spelling. 
• Translate to home language: Translate individual words or the entire passage into students’ home language. This feature enables students with different levels of English proficiency to engage with the text in their preferred language.
• Visualize words: Use the Picture Dictionary tool to visualize text that represents a selected word. This tool can make it easier for MLEs to understand and retain new vocabulary.

To learn more about how to integrate these features into your classroom, check out the Immersive Reader Quick Guide.

Provide customized reading feedback with Reading Progress

Reading Progress, a Learning Accelerator, makes customized literacy instruction possible with immediate, personalized feedback, allowing MLEs to sharpen their individual literacy and pronunciation skills. Schools like the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, United Kingdom, used Reading Progress for teaching Spanish as a foreign language and made significant literacy gains in Spanish:

• 22.43 words-per-minute increase in reading rate.
• 13.29% improvement in reading accuracy.
• A reduction of 7 average mispronunciations per task.

Learn more about how you can use Reading Progress to support the literacy needs of MLEs.

• AI-generated passages: Create personalized reading passages by selecting challenge words, topics, age, length, and language for your MLEs.
• Comprehension questions: Develop comprehension questions with the power of AI and edit them before sharing with students, providing a tailored reading experience. Customize the questions to the needs of MLEs to help students gain lifelong reading comprehension skills.
• Pronunciation sensitivity: Support your MLE with customized pronunciation sensitivity that accommodates your student’s speech pattern and accent. This tool can help your students develop nuanced pronunciation skills for challenging words.

Discover more in the Reading Progress Quick Guide and the “Support reading fluency practice with Reading Progress” training module on Microsoft Learn.

Offer opportunities for literacy practice with Reading Coach

Reading Coach Preview offers personalized reading fluency practice through AI-generated stories with customizable characters and settings, and options to choose your own path through the story. This innovative tool supports students with targeted word practice, motivational rewards, and includes Immersive Reader for a fully accessible learning experience.

Learn more about how you can use Reading Coach to support literacy needs.

• AI generated stories: Generate unique stories with the “Create a Story” mode that offers 26 main characters, from dogs to dragons, and 13 varied locations like castles or outer space. Students pick a character and location, set their reading level, and AI crafts a story with the option to choose a path through each chapter. Challenging words from one chapter are automatically included in the next chapter.
• Pick passages from a library or add your own content: Educators can help students pick leveled passages from a curated library of fiction and non-fiction passages or provide their own content to read.
• Practice pronunciation with coaching: Practice difficult words and explore their pronunciation through visual syllable cues, hearing the word read out aloud, and getting coached on the mispronunciation. This feature helps MLEs decode text and access content more effectively.

Reading Coach Preview is currently available for free in English to use at school with a Microsoft Entra ID (school account) or at home using a personal Microsoft account. Get started with Reading Coach online or download the Windows app.

Discover more about AI-generated reading passages in Reading Coach Preview with the Reading Coach with AI stories Quick Guide and the “Build reading fluency with Reading Coach” training course on Microsoft Learn.

Get actionable literacy data with Education Insights

Education Insights in Microsoft Teams for Education offers a wide range of actionable student data to help you make informed decisions to support each student’s unique academic and linguistic needs. With Education Insights, you can easily streamline your decision-making process, analyze academic and literacy trends, and identify students who may need additional support.

Learn more about how you can use Education Insights to support the literacy needs of MLEs.

• Analyze progress and data: Review individual, group, and whole class data efficiently to monitor reading progress and inform inclusive instructional decisions. This tool provides a clear overview that helps you quickly identify trends and address challenges that MLEs may be having.
• Practice challenging words: Create personalized or whole-class practice assignments to address MLEs’ reading and language needs. Education Insights analyzes challenging words and phonics rules from Reading Progress and Reading Coach data to inform instruction and create vocabulary activities that target areas where students need the most support.

To learn more about using Education Insights to explore actionable student data and support literacy, visit the Educator’s guide to Insights in Microsoft Teams from Microsoft Support.

Celebrate International Literacy Day 2024 with us and empower your MLEs through cutting-edge learning tools from Microsoft. Get started with Learning Accelerators and transform your classroom with a multilingual approach that meets every learner’s needs.

The post Celebrate International Literacy Day 2024 with Microsoft Education appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

“That’s one of the best uses for AI in an academic setting,” Evans says, “because sometimes you can read a paragraph five times and still not understand until the concept is explained in a different way.” 

Generative AI is opening up all sorts of new avenues for learning, from personalized tutoring to study guides. But as with any technology, it’s helpful to know its strengths and limitations before diving in.  

We talked with some students, parents and educators who’ve embraced the new tools for tips on how to use AI responsibly at every level to enhance learning and avoid potential pitfalls.   

“The key,” says Matt Hall, a professor in Texas, “is two words: Use it. And once you’re done using it, use it again. Use it as early as possible, and learn to become a good prompt writer. Using AI is a basic life skill now, and if you’re not using it, you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage.”   

Younger learners

Elementary school-aged students can benefit from AI-powered programs to help learn the fundamentals such as reading and math.

Elementary school-aged students can benefit from programs that are powered by AI as they focus on building foundational skills. Aren Uzun, a 12-year-old seventh-grader in California, uses Reading Coach after school to help him practice reading and speaking — and says he is getting higher grades as a result.  

Ava Gerlach, a 10-year-old fifth-grader in Florida, is learning about AI in Minecraft Education to get more comfortable with the new technology and the ways it can help her learn in the future. 

What AI can help students do

Tools like Reading Coach—part of Learning Accelerators—can help kids boost their confidence by practicing skills with a less intimidating audience, such as before reading out loud in front of the whole class, says Aren’s mom, Cigdem Patlak Uzun. Aren is more comfortable presenting to others and is more willing to take the risk of sharing ideas now that he can test the waters first with secure AI coaches built for learning, she says. 

“For some of my presentations I got lower grades, so I wanted to see exactly what I was doing wrong,” Aren says. Reading Coach showed “that I was speaking too fast and said some words incorrectly, so it helped me fix that.” 

There’s value in learning how to learn and how to constantly grow with these new tools.

James Evans

Ava says she was first introduced to the concept of AI through Minecraft Education’s Hour of Code last year, and now she can spout off an explanation at the drop of a hat: “AI is basically a human-made technology that helps people with real-world problems,” she says. 

“I will probably use it as a fifth-grader to help me with research, studying and understanding the steps to math equations,” Ava says. “Especially going back to school now, I’m going to need a refresher on long division.”

Tips for using AI in learning

Kids need to learn the fundamentals first and focus on ways to build their skills with AI tools, Aren says. “You shouldn’t be using AI to figure out how to do the beginning of something,” he says. “Like, if you’re learning what 1+1 is, and AI tells you the answer is 2 but you don’t know why, then later there could be a test on what is 198+275 and you wouldn’t know how to calculate it. It’s better to use it for something that will help you forever, like how to improve your writing skills and do research for new ideas.” 

The personalized guidance in Reading Coach helps keep students engaged — “almost like getting a personal tutor with one-on-one instruction,” Patlak Uzun says. Aren urges fellow students not to share personal information, such as an age or address, online and says younger kids generally should use AI alongside an adult. A recent 4H study backs that up, showing that 72% of the kids surveyed are seeking support from adults in learning how to use these new tools correctly and with confidence. 

Minecraft Education has given Ava a way “to explore things in a safe context,” says Ava’s mom, Holly Gerlach. “And she’s learning about the principles of creating with AI and thinking about inclusivity, privacy and security.” 

High school years

Teens can benefit from AI tools that help build skills such as information literacy and how to validate sources.

As kids get more involved with technology and start using AI, tools such as Search Coach can help by teaching information literacy and how to validate sources. Those are foundational skills students need now, says Isabelle Armstrong, a 16-year-old high school student near Perth, Australia. 

What AI can help students do

Isabelle says Search Coach has helped her narrow down her prompts to be more specific, so now she gets more relevant and trustworthy answers from AI. That, in turn, has taught her how to be more concise and precise with the essays she writes for English classes. “I’m a bit of a rambler,” she says, “so this is helping me get more clear with what I’m saying and get to the point.” 

AI tools can help generate ideas and assist with research, Isabelle says. “It helps kickstart the process and guide me so I’m not looking at the wrong things,” she says. 

“Using AI to brainstorm can help the students work smarter, not harder,” says Kylie Kingdon, who teaches remote classes for kids spread out all over Western Australia, including Isabelle’s modern history class. Kingdon uses Copilot in class to show students various prompts and responses and help them ascertain “what’s good and what’s not. They can see what my prompts are and the answer that’s come out, and that prepares them for the future.”  

The skill of learning how to use AI effectively is helpful throughout a student’s education, Kingdon says — such as realizing that if you only ask for information about “President Roosevelt” for the U.S. history class she teaches, you could get back an answer about Theodore when you meant Franklin. 

AI is basically a human-made technology that helps people with real-world problems.

Ava Gerlach

Search Coach also instructs students in how to evaluate sources, Isabelle says, to get more reliable and less biased information. “We learned the difference between .com and .org and other different domains,” she says. “It’s good to see your searching habits and where you can improve and maybe branch out to different websites or domains, or change what words you use to get different answers. It helps to see your patterns. 

“That’s helped me refine what I’m looking for to get better results.”

Tips for using AI in learning

Use AI as an aid to help learn subjects, but not to produce final coursework, the student and teacher both say. “You need to utilize it in a way that helps you build the skills, not just to get the work done,” Isabelle says.  

AI tools won’t be available in every setting, such as exams, so it’s important to know how to do assignments yourself, she says. “Don’t rely on it as a crutch.” 

It’s all about the process for her students, Kingdon adds. “It’s no longer the final result that’s important,” she says, “but giving them the tools to do all of this.”

Higher education

Older students can benefit from AI’s help with the more intense courseloads—as well as with life skills such as meal planning.

College and university students will find that AI can help them both in and out of the classroom, as they’re hit with intense courseloads as well as the complexity of stepping out of the childhood nest into adulthood, says Evans, the 21-year-old student from Florida who’s moving to Pennsylvania to start on a master’s degree in business analytics. 

What AI can help students do

In addition to reframing complicated concepts to help him better grasp them, Evans uses AI to help create study guides or practice tests, to brainstorm essay ideas and the best structures for presentations, and to research topics. 

Students now need to synthesize massive amounts of data in short periods of time, says Hall, the professor in Texas. Using Copilot for Microsoft 365—with permission from everyone participating—to record, transcribe and summarize classes and meetings can be a huge help with that, he says. It’s also worth asking Copilot to condense reports that might be hundreds of pages long into the key points, to see if the information is relevant to a study topic and worth spending the time to fully read. 

AI tools can help students learn the language of unfamiliar subjects and industries, such as helping Evans talk about warehouses, shipping and logistics for a business class. And that, along with knowing how to use new technology in general, could be valuable in landing an internship or that first job, he says. 

For school projects that require creativity, Copilot can be “a pull-start lawnmower to get you going,” Hall says.  

Using AI is a basic life skill now, and if you’re not using it, you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage.

Matt Hall

Evans says AI is helpful outside the classroom, too—especially for university students living away from their parents and “trying to figure out the logistics of life,” including activities like meal planning.  

“One of the biggest things you hear everywhere is, ‘never stop learning; always be learning something new,’” Evans says. “There’s value in learning how to learn and how to constantly grow with these new tools, because we’re on the precipice and seeing this major change with technology.”  

Tips for using AI in learning

Don’t use AI to write your schoolwork, Evans and Hall advise. Even though AI can write, it won’t have your voice or style, Evans says, and those are important to put out in the world. “We view AI as a co-creator or referential tool,” Hall says. “Don’t cheat yourself out of the learning journey.” 

Evans recommends learning how to do something yourself before getting AI to help with it, to make sure you can assess if the final product is accurate and good. 

Trust but verify, they both say. Use tools such as Copilot that provide sources and citations along with their answers, Hall says, to help with veracity checks. “At the end of the day, I’m the one who needs to make sure the information in my presentation is right,” Evans says. “And I need to learn these lessons before I get to the corporate world.” 

Learn how to talk with other students about AI as well, Evans says. Some will be more comfortable than others using it for help with group projects. 

Most importantly: how students use AI in the classroom will probably continue to evolve as quickly as technology itself. “Next semester my answers could change,” Evans says, “because we’re still learning it, and learning how to use it, and it’s changing with us.”

Photos, from top to bottom: Aren Uzun at Meadow Park Elementary School in Irvine, California (photo by Earnie Grafton); Ava Gerlach (photo courtesy of Holly Gerlach); Isabelle Armstrong (photo courtesy of Armstrong); James Evans (photo courtesy of Evans)

The post Smart ways students are using AI appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Whether you need a starting point for a welcome back letter or enhancements to existing lesson plans, Copilot is ready to assist. Simply tell Copilot what you want to create, and it will help you generate new content in seconds. With simple knowledge about how Copilot works, and some example prompts you can use, getting started is easy!

Working with Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is a generative AI tool that produces new content from your instructions, known as prompts. You can use natural language—whether typed or spoken—to ask for what you need from Copilot.

If you’re new to Copilot, review Meet your AI assistant for education: Microsoft Copilot so that you understand its features, options, and ways you can optimize your prompts. To get started, simply open copilot.microsoft.com or select the Copilot icon in your Microsoft Edge browser.

Throughout this post, you’ll find sample prompts that demonstrate how Copilot can help you with your back-to-school tasks. We recommend borrowing inspiration from them and adjusting the prompts based on your role, subject area, and the students you support. Or, if you’re just beginning, you can use the prompts without modifications.

Now let’s learn how Copilot can help you complete five common back-to-school tasks.

1. Create classroom setup checklists

Setting up a classroom involves everything from organizing furniture and materials to making sure that anything a student needs to learn is visible, accessible, and distraction-free. Copilot can offer ideas to consider when creating a welcoming and organized classroom with a prompt like this:

You are a first-year, middle school art teacher who is setting up a classroom for the first time. Create a checklist that includes 5 examples or ideas for each of the following: ways to set up a classroom for student collaboration, strategies for establishing quiet work areas, methods to ensure art supplies are accessible, and ideas to facilitate whole group instruction.

If you already know how you’ll lay out your classroom, you might consider asking Copilot to create a checklist of common hazards in classrooms and ways to make your classroom safer for students. Try using a prompt like, “Create a checklist of 10 common hazards found in classrooms and ways to fix the issue so that the classroom is safe for students.”

2. Generate bulletin board ideas

Creating a bulletin board display requires educators to come up with ideas that are developmentally appropriate, aligned to classroom activities, and engaging for people who visit the display. Luckily, Copilot can help you brainstorm ideas! Here’s a prompt that generates suggestions for bulletin boards that are standards-based and interactive:

You are a second-grade teacher in New York state who follows the English language arts standards in the New York Next-Generation State Standards initiative. Create a list of 10 bulletin board ideas that creatively incorporates Anchor Standard L1: “Demonstrate command of the conventions of academic English grammar and usage when writing or speaking” that students will learn in grade 2. The bulletin board ideas should include a way for students to interact with the bulletin board.

Customize the state, country, and learning standards in your content area to get relevant, personalized ideas for your students. You can also ask Copilot to generate ideas based on a classroom theme. Try adding a sentence like, “Each bulletin board idea should incorporate frogs, tadpoles, or lily pads.” Swap out amphibian-related terms for more relevant topics if they don’t align with your classroom’s theme. If decorating your classroom isn’t standard practice, try asking Copilot for ideas on creating an engaging classroom environment that’s relevant to your space and learning themes.

3. Write a welcome letter to families

Many educators send a welcome back to school letter to students and families before the first day of school. It’s a great way to introduce yourself and provide important reminders so that students are ready for school on day one. A prompt for generating a welcome letter with Copilot might resemble this:

You are an advisor who works with a small group of incoming first-year and new high school students. Write a welcome letter that introduces yourself to the students, shares times when students can meet you before school begins, provides reminders about things to complete before the end of summer, and includes what to bring on the first day of school. Conclude the letter with a paragraph about how to contact you with any questions. Write the letter using short, succinct paragraphs that are readable by all ages.

For best results, personalize the prompt by specifying your role and the students you support—you’ll get a more relevant response from Copilot. If your roster includes multilingual students with families who may prefer communication in a language other than English, Copilot can draft content in multiple languages. Add something like, “Re-write this letter in Spanish” after Copilot finishes and it will generate a Spanish version of the letter for you. Just make sure to review the translation with someone who’s fluent in the chosen language so that you know it’s accurate and culturally appropriate.

4. Enhance inclusivity in lesson plans

Each school year brings new initiatives and priorities that educators must put into practice in their classrooms. School leaders often emphasize inclusive practices like differentiation or Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for educators to use to support diverse learning needs. Copilot can offer relevant suggestions and ways to enhance lessons based on research-based learning approaches like these. Whether you want to align a lesson to standards or refresh existing lessons with new resources or activities, Copilot can help!

To analyze a lesson, you need to know how to add a file to a Copilot prompt.

1. Go to copilot.microsoft.com
2. Log into Copilot with a school-issued Microsoft account so that commercial data protection is enabled.
3. Select the Add a file button.
4. Browse your device for a lesson plan and select Open. The file size limit is 1 MB unless your school has a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license (then the limit is 10 MB, with unlimited uploads).
5. Add a prompt like the one below in the Ask me anything field and select the Submit button.

You are an instructional designer who specializes in universal design for learning (UDL) in self-contained classrooms. Analyze the attached lesson plan and provide two suggestions for optimizing individual choice and autonomy (checkpoint 7.1), two suggestions for optimizing relevance, value, and authenticity (checkpoint 7.2), and two suggestions for minimizing threats and distractions (checkpoint 7.3).

Notice how the prompt referenced the attached lesson plan to guide Copilot towards a more relevant response. Make sure to include this type of direction when you write your own prompt. You can also ask Copilot to provide suggestions based on student interests. Try including, “Provide at least one suggestion that incorporates video, coding, and art.”

5. Develop assessments to understand students’ strengths

Pre-assessing students’ knowledge and skills helps identify what students already know before starting new instruction. This is especially important at the beginning of a new school year when students’ strengths and needs are largely unknown. Plus, a solid pre-assessment allows you to modify instruction so that it addresses what’s most relevant and applicable for your students. For example:

You are an experienced high school math teacher specializing in AP Precalculus. Create a pre-assessment designed to evaluate students’ understanding for the first unit on Polynomial and Rational Functions. The pre-assessment should include 10 open-ended problems that effectively identify areas where students excel and where they need improvement. Provide a detailed answer key with the correct solutions and step-by-step explanations for each problem.

Another approach is to ask Copilot to create questions based on common misconceptions for a particular topic or subject area. Copilot is flexible enough to generate sample questions with or without standards-based guidance, but you should always check the citations and evaluate the accuracy of the response.

Explore more ways Copilot can help

Copilot is a versatile AI tool that adapts to your specific needs and can help you prepare to welcome students into your classroom. Remember, the prompts in this post are just starting points. Iterate on each example, try adding new instructions, and personalize what you tell Copilot. Customized prompts will produce more relevant content for your classroom.

Ready to learn more? For a deeper understanding of Copilot’s capabilities, check out the following resources:

• Smart learning: AI resources every educator should know
• AI for educators learning path on Microsoft Learn
• Microsoft Copilot resources for education – Microsoft Adoption

These resources cover many ways that Copilot can help you become more efficient in your classroom. Give Microsoft Copilot a try and see how it can enhance your teaching capabilities!

The post 5 ways Copilot can help you start the school year appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

The University of Sydney (UofS) recognized the potential of generative AI to enhance teaching practices and assessments, enrich the learning experience, and prepare students for an evolving job market. However, they quickly realized that an out-of-the-box solution wouldn’t suffice, given their unique requirements for security, customization, and contextualization. UofS has demonstrated a successful path forward using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to build a custom AI solution to meet their needs. By showcasing responsible and effective integration of generative AI, they provide a model for other institutions. Their experience offers valuable insights to tailor AI tools to your unique needs and goals for successful implementation.

Read the full UofS customer story to learn more about their exciting custom AI solutions.

Building a custom AI assistant

Enter Cogniti, a self-serve web app authenticated through Microsoft Entra ID, developed by Danny Liu, Professor of Educational Technologies at UofS. Cogniti is built on the secure and private Azure OpenAI Service platform and empowers faculty to create their own AI agents that they can customize and contextualize to their unique needs, helping students learn in pedagogically meaningful ways. “Faculty love the fact that they can control and therefore trust the AI and that it’s so easy to build their own agents using plain language and embed it into our learning management system for students to use,” said Liu.

With the help of Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, Professor Liu handled the bulk of Cogniti’s development, from coding to faculty integration. “It was amazing to have Microsoft Copilot working alongside me, troubleshooting, and debugging,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been able to build Cogniti in the time that I did if it weren’t for Copilot.”

By leveraging Azure’s robust infrastructure and GitHub Copilot, Professor Liu developed Cogniti efficiently while maintaining alignment with the university’s objectives. Cogniti addressed privacy concerns by ensuring the confidentiality of prompts and responses, which are not used for further training by OpenAI. This powerful combination provides a secure environment for sensitive educational data and accelerates the development process.

Practical pedagogical applications

Cogniti has been successfully integrated into various pedagogical scenarios at UofS, enhancing student learning and faculty support.

• Bridging theory and practice: Occupational therapy students gained practical experience by role-playing with “Mrs. S,” an AI-simulated client. This allowed them to apply classroom knowledge to a realistic scenario, effectively bridging the gap between theory and practice.
• Consistent student feedback: A coordinator managing large first-year classes with 1,500 students used a Cogniti AI agent to improve grading consistency, quality, and efficiency. The agent incorporated rubrics, assignment expectations, and feedback examples, resulting in faster marking and more consistent feedback for students.
• On-demand biochemistry support: UofS teaches biochemistry to over 800 students who have thousands of questions each semester. With Cogniti, these students can engage in dialogue anytime, discussing course material, explaining their understanding, and receiving valuable feedback from the AI tutor.
• Empowering tutors in complex conversations: Following legislative changes in Australia, the University of Sydney implemented a new student support policy requiring tutors and faculty to advise students on academic issues. These meetings often lead to discussions about well-being, health, or finances. To help tutors navigate unexpected topics, the university fed scenario-specific prompts to Cogniti, offering instant guidance for questions beyond the scope of academic issues.

The benefits of Cogniti are far-reaching. Educators can now allocate more time to deeper engagement and personalized feedback, while students enjoy enhanced learning experiences through interactive AI assistance. Cogniti also offers students valuable opportunities to develop familiarity with AI within a safe, controlled environment, which will be increasingly crucial in their future careers.

The university’s commitment to equitable access to AI is clear in its decision to offer Cogniti for free to all students and staff. As Joanne Wright, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Education, states, “One of the values of Cogniti is that it can be used in a number of different learning settings. Faculty can even personalize it to meet their students’ preferences, weaknesses, or strengths.” Looking ahead, the university hopes to expand Cogniti’s use to more institutions worldwide, believing that its controllability, stability, safety, and accuracy can help dispel fears surrounding generative AI in education. Learn more about the University of Sydney’s inspiring journey with custom generative AI.

Build your own custom AI solution

If you’re interested in building your own custom generative AI solution for your institution, in a similar way to what the UofS accomplished with Cogniti, consider these first steps for getting started.

1. Purchase the necessary IT infrastructure, licenses, and software to create a custom AI application using the Azure OpenAI Service.
2. Review the Overview of Responsible AI practices for Azure OpenAI models and Azure OpenAI’s Transparency Notes to ensure responsible use of the service and understand any system limitations.
3. Assemble a group of school and instructional leaders who are enthusiastic about piloting your AI program to help design, test, and provide feedback.
4. As you begin to develop and document your implementation plan, consider addressing the concerns of all stakeholders, including community members. For guidance, consult the “Engaging your community” section within the Microsoft Education AI Toolkit.
5. Before you begin building, familiarize yourself with step-by-step technical overviews in the implementation roadmap in the “AI Navigators” section of the Microsoft Education AI Toolkit to understand how educational institutions like the Department for Education in South Australia successfully implemented their AI programs.

The UofS is also keen to partner with institutions who may want to adapt Cogniti in their own contexts. This is an inspiring example of how educational institutions can safely and responsibly build and integrate generative AI tools into teaching and learning practices. By embracing this transformative technology, you can also improve the quality of students’ education and equip them with the skills they need to thrive in an increasingly digital world.

Explore more about Azure OpenAI services and how to build custom chatbots with these resources:

• Azure AI Studio
• Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals: Generative AI
• Microsoft Copilot Studio
• GitHub Copilot Fundamentals – Understand the AI pair programmer

The post University of Sydney: Building custom AI solutions with Azure OpenAI appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

The game allows kids aged 8 or older to challenge a friend, neighbor, family member, or themselves. Players can complete fun challenge tasks from a variety of categories including:

• English Language Arts
• Art and music
• Social Studies
• Science
• Math
• Coding

These tasks are designed to reach and engage every learner, from aspiring coders to reluctant comic artists. Keep learning going this summer with our free Leaps and Logs game! Download Leaps and Logs to get started with summer learning activities from Microsoft Education.

Play digitally or on paper

The learning activities in Leaps and Logs can be completed by students of most ages (age 8 or older recommended). Players may aim to complete one or two rounds of play a day, continuing their game play until the start of the new school year.

Leaps and Logs is versatile and can be played digitally or on paper. Full game directions and a game board can be found by downloading Leaps and Logs.

• Playing digitally involves downloading the game board and task lists then uploading them into Microsoft Whiteboard.
• Playing on paper involves downloading and printing the game board. The challenge tasks can also be printed, but students will need a digital version to access the embedded links.

Also, check out some tips for sharing the game with students in our blog post Leap into summer learning with a game from Microsoft.

Join the fun and continue learning

To help you get started, we’re highlighting a few of the fun learning activities in the Leaps and Logs game. Explore ways kids can have a blast while letting their creativity shine as they learn and grow!

Create a comic book in 5 easy steps

Try your hand at creating your own manga-style comic book. Dazzle your friends and family with thousands of graphics and animations that make your comic come alive!

1. Create a short outline of your story or brainstorm a storyline with Microsoft Copilot.¹
2. Open the Microsoft PowerPoint comic template.
3. Go to New Slide and select a comic layout.
4. Customize your frames with colors, characters, and text.
5. Share your story!

Build your own instrument and hold a concert

Express your musical creativity by building a musical instrument using items you have at home. Then set the stage and entertain everyone with your DIY creation!

1. Ask Copilot¹ for steps to build your favorite instrument or get inspiration from homemade musical instruments other people have made.
2. Gather the supplies and items you’ll need to make the instrument.
3. Follow the steps to build your instrument.
4. Test your instrument by playing a song.
5. Hold a concert or recital!

Create a plan to improve your community

Enhance your neighborhood by making plans to improve your community. Learn how to create an action plan with the Neighborhood Good game from iCivics.

1. Visit https://www.icivics.org/games/neighborhood-good
2. Select “New Game.”
3. Pick an issue that resonates with you and your community.
4. Make a plan of action by playing the game and then choosing the Who, What, and How details.
5. Share your plan with people in your community!

Recreate a famous landmark in Minecraft Education

Explore the world by researching famous landmarks. Use Seach Coach in Microsoft Teams for Education learn about a landmark and build a digital version of it in Minecraft Education.

1. Choose a famous landmark you want to learn more about.
2. With your school account, use Search Coach in Microsoft Teams for Education to research the landmark.
3. Plan your replica from at least two different angles on paper.
4. Explore and build the landmark with the Replicating Landmarks world from Minecraft Education.
5. Share what you learned by building it with your friends and family!

Continue learning all summer long with these fun and engaging activities. Curious about the other challenge tasks included in Leaps and Logs? Explore the game to see how students can build AI-powered inventions in Minecraft Hour of Code: Generation AI, personalize their own story using Reading Coach online, or organize a trip within a specific budget using Microsoft Copilot.¹ There are a variety of tasks to choose from that will encourage students to be creative and think critically.

Keep kids entertained this summer and help them prepare for a new school year with our free Leaps and Logs game! Download Leaps and Logs to get started with summer learning activities from Microsoft Education.

¹ Students under 18 years of age will not have access to Microsoft Copilot and will need adult supervision to access these activities.

The post Extend summer learning with a free game from Microsoft appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

More than two thousand presenters crowded the Colorado Convention Center, with hundreds of sessions, workshops, and keynotes covering a wide range of topics. The predominant theme was, perhaps unsurprisingly, AI and strategies for using it in the classroom. The real-world examples of AI and authentic stories of schools solving their own problems utilizing AI-enabled tools was inspiring, and I’d like to share a few things that I learned.

Exploring AI in education with Microsoft  

Our team from Microsoft Education was on hand to share how AI can enhance learning experiences with exciting updates to our powerful tools, including Microsoft Copilot which helps educators save time and inspire creativity. We were also proud to announce the latest updates to the Microsoft Education AI Toolkit!

Explore my seven standout moments from ISTELive24: 

1. AI-powered tools for schools

Microsoft booth 1300 was abuzz with presentations and conversations detailing over 20 Microsoft-related updates and resources and we were able to show them in action! They included enhancements to Copilot for Microsoft 365, a new Minecraft Education Lesson Crafter, Learning Accelerators and Microsoft Teams for Education news, free access to Figma through our new partnership, and more value coming to Microsoft Education.

Some of the new AI-powered features coming to Copilot for Microsoft 365 allow educators to:

• Create assignments, lesson plans, and presentations using guided content generation.
• Generate quizzes with answer keys and step-by-step solutions for students.
• Receive suggested feedback on student work based on rubrics and instructions.
• Utilize data from Microsoft Teams for Education for a more personalized experience.

One of the exciting new pieces of value coming to Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 users is Clipchamp, a video editing tool that makes creation easy for learners and educators. Whether you’re recording experiments or producing awesome multimedia projects, Clipchamp is a great way to enhance student engagement!

2. Impact of Microsoft Education solutions

We were able to showcase the evidence and research that highlights the impact many of our tools are having on teachers and students. This included Microsoft Teams for Education being awarded the ISTE Seal for usability, pedagogy, and alignment to the ISTE Standards. De Wereldreiziger (The world Traveler), a primary school in Antwerp, Belgium saw its students make significant progress after starting to use Reading Progress. “Children are much more motivated to read, we can give much more feedback and the teacher can help 15-16 children at a time. For example, we see that children catch up on reading for six months or a year in 3 weeks, and some even for a year and a half,” says Jef Groffen, Principal of De Wereldreiziger. Congratulations to principal Groffen for recently winning the first EU AI in Education award.

3. Advancing AI in Teacher Preparation Programs with ISTE

I was thrilled to see the press release from ISTE on our new work together to support pre-service teachers through the Transforming Teacher Preparation initiative. Our goal is to help equip future teachers to effectively use new AI tools to ultimately enhance student and community impact. We’ll be working with ISTE to create a scalable AI module to reach thousands of pre-service teachers and hundreds of faculty members teaching in Education Preparation Programs. As a result, hundreds of thousands of elementary and secondary students around the world will benefit from the higher quality of instruction and learning experiences, as their teachers gain a deeper understanding of how to effectively use AI in their classrooms.

4. Khanmigo for Teachers, now free in the US

We recently announced an exciting new partnership with Khan Academy to bring Khanmigo for Teachers—an array of AI-powered teaching tools with no prompting required—to all US educators for free. It was great to see educators getting hands-on with these tools throughout the Khan Academy sessions at our booth, and to hear that availability is expanding soon. Learn more and get started with our Khanmigo for Teachers Quick Guide.

5. A toolkit for effective AI implementation and inspiration 

We were proud to announce many updates to our Microsoft Education AI Toolkit. These revisions and updates make the toolkit easier to use and even more indispensable. These updates include: 

• New AI Navigators and customer stories. 
• New implementation guides.
• Additional research reports and information.
• Improved accessibility throughout.
• A new “Quick Wins” section to help education leaders get started and be successful with AI.

To me, the most exciting aspect of ISTELive 24 was hearing from school systems and their forward-looking educators who are harnessing the power and potential of Microsoft Education tools and putting them to practical use in real classrooms. At ISTELive 24, we highlighted some of these Microsoft AI Navigators including the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and Wichita Public Schools with panels on “Accelerate and personalize learning experiences at scale with AI” and “The road to implementation: Navigating AI.”

6. Esports, AI, and big updates from Minecraft Education

Minecraft Education made a big blocky splash at ISTELive 24. There were coding sessions, cyber safety workshops, AI demos and—for the very first time—a special “Battle in the Rocks” esports showcase on the ISTE main stage that featured four teams of students in a live Minecraft build battle. The team previewed Minecraft Lesson Crafter (an AI powered lesson generator), GameCode (a new Computer Science curriculum) and accredited AP Computer Science Principles course, and showcased AI literacy resources for teaching and learning. ICYMI (in case you missed it) Minecraft Education also just launched cloud storage in OneDrive, a new credentialing partnership with Prodigy Learning, and an esports playbook!

7. Entirely new and powerful AI experiences  

Last month, Microsoft also unveiled Copilot+ PCs: the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built. With access to the most advanced AI models, Copilot+ PCs enable educators to do things they simply can’t on any other PC. We had a lot of interesting conversations with district leaders about the potential of Copilots in PCs, and—as these tools become more readily available in the market—we look forward to seeing how schools leverage them to better support educators and leaders in their organizations.

ISTELive 24 is just further confirmation of the potential for AI to bring opportunity to life in education: especially with these edu-relevant advancements! Enjoy your summer and we will see you soon with more ways to help all students to reach their highest potential. Be sure to learn more about all of Microsoft’s exciting announcements for education, coming to classrooms soon!

The post Seven standout moments from ISTELive 24 appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

In 2023, USF became the first public university in Florida in nearly 40 years to be invited to join the Association of American Universities, a prestigious group of the leading universities in the United States and Canada. Through hundreds of millions of dollars in research activity each year and as one of the top universities in the world for securing new patents, USF is a leader in solving global problems and improving lives.

USF recognized the transformative potential of AI in streamlining academics and operations but knew that integrating it across all campuses—including its USF Health campus—could prove to be a challenge. The university embarked on a phased approach, partnering with Microsoft to implement Microsoft Copilot. This innovative tool helps to boost efficiency and unleash creativity, aligning perfectly with USF’s vision of leveraging technology to enhance academic and research productivity.

“We want our faculty to do groundbreaking research and we want our students to be successful,” says Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology at USF, Sidney Fernandes. “Using technology as an accelerator is built into our DNA. And our goal with these new technologies is to responsibly allow our faculty, staff, and students to be much more efficient, but also much more creative.”

Copilot for Microsoft 365—your AI-powered assistant

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an add-on for AI assistance integrated with popular apps like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Microsoft Teams for Education, Outlook, and more. It protects data, ensures privacy, and maintains security all while supercharging productivity.

With Copilot for Microsoft 365 you can:

• Integrate information from files created in one application into another application.
• Auto-draft content.
• Summarize online meetings and files.
• Analyze and explore data in spreadsheets.
• Simplify text and check for bias.
• Condense long email threads.
• Design impactful presentations with PowerPoint.
• Manage communication with Microsoft Teams.

Faculty, staff, educators, and students over the age of 18 can use Copilot for Microsoft 365.

New avenues of innovation

The arrival of Copilot for Microsoft 365 marked a turning point for USF. Faculty and staff could now seamlessly harness the power of AI within familiar tools like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Word. Tasks like answering questions, organizing thoughts, researching topics, generating summaries, crafting presentations, and analyzing data became effortless. Administrative burdens were lifted, allowing staff to focus on strategic initiatives and more meaningful work. Familiarity with existing workflows made adoption smoother and maximized benefits.

Copilot was not just a time-saver—it unlocked new avenues for innovation. USF staff and faculty were encouraged to “play with the tools and be bold,” as Angela Sklenka, USF’s Chief Administrative and Human Resources Officer, says. This fostered a spirit of exploration and a willingness to embrace the unknown.

Securing vital research

Data security was paramount, especially for a research-intensive university like USF. Microsoft’s commitment to commercial data protection ensured that user prompts and responses were never saved, and no interactions were used to train the underlying AI model. This transparency alleviated any concerns and allowed faculty and staff to embrace AI with confidence.

“Any Research One university is going to be concerned whether its data is protected and used in a way that the agencies who trust us with doing this research feel comfortable,” says Fernandes. “Copilot with commercial data protection allows us to have that level of comfort while also allowing the faculty and staff to be creative.”

Creating more efficient workflows

The impact of Copilot was immediate. Processes that once took weeks, like policy revisions, were now completed in hours. Repetitive tasks were automated, freeing up faculty and staff to delve deeper into research, build stronger relationships with students, and explore innovative paths for USF.

Tim Henkel, Assistant Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, uses Copilot to interact more efficiently with his documents. He can now extract information, create visuals, and brainstorm ideas—all within familiar Microsoft 365 applications. Copilot even helps him stay more present in meetings by generating transcripts and action items.

“Copilot is revolutionizing our workflows, teaching, and learning spaces,” Henkel says. “I can now invest more time in people. Copilot can handle the basics such writing style and mechanics, so we can grapple with the critical thinking and problem solving. That’s where the real learning comes in. Copilot is changing the way we do everything, and that’s a big deal.”

Read the full USF customer story to learn more about their exciting AI innovations.

Implement your own AI innovations with the Microsoft Education AI Toolkit

The Microsoft Education AI Toolkit is your guide to implementing safe and secure AI experiences in your institution. It helps lower the barrier of entry to using AI with examples, case studies, and getting started materials to help you evaluate and implement AI solutions like Microsoft Copilot.

The toolkit provides guidance on:

• Get started with generative AI: Refresh your knowledge of AI basics, discover Microsoft’s commitment to responsible tools, and meet your new AI assistant, Microsoft Copilot.
• Plan for success: Explore student resources, data governance tips, and advice on crafting institutional policies for ethical AI use.
• Dive into implementation: Experiment with Copilot’s capabilities using practice prompts and step-by-step instructions. Then, curate learning experiences to empower your staff’s professional development.
• Meet AI Navigators: Discover institutions leading the charge in AI research, experimentation, and implementation in education.
• Stay informed: Access an ever-evolving collection of research on AI’s impact on teaching and learning.

Microsoft Copilot is a versatile tool that adapts to your specific needs as an educator. Learn how to get started with Copilot by going to copilot.microsoft.com or downloading the iOS or Android mobile app. The most powerful way to experience what Copilot can do for you in the classroom is to try it out yourself! Here is a prompt to click to get you going. Notice what the prompt asks Copilot to do and how Copilot responds.

You are an education leader needing guidance on how to use generative AI responsibly and ethically.

Learn more about Copilot for Microsoft 365 with the Create and draft with Copilot for Microsoft 365 module on Microsoft Learn or the Get started with Copilot for Microsoft 365 learning path. Visit the AI for Education hub on Microsoft Learn to discover how you can use AI to empower teaching and learning in your classroom.

The post The University of South Florida implements Microsoft Copilot to streamline workflows and unleash campus-wide innovation appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

We’re thrilled to share over 20 updates and resources and show them in action next week at ISTELive 24 in Denver, Colorado, US. Join us at the show to learn more and hear about the latest from Microsoft Education at our booth and in dozens of sessions.

Enhancing Copilot for Microsoft 365 in education

We’ve loved seeing the early adoption and benefits from education institutions already using Microsoft Copilot, our no-cost AI-powered chat with data protection, and Copilot for Microsoft 365, an add-on for AI assistance integrated with the apps you use every day. We’re excited to now bring even more value to education in Copilot for Microsoft 365 with a new set of capabilities designed for relevant and powerful use by educators and students. These features will be included in Copilot for Microsoft 365 and will be in private previews over the coming months. Education institutions with any academic license are eligible to purchase Copilot for Microsoft 365, with no minimum, for their faculty, staff, and students aged 18 and older.

Educators will be able to use a guided content generation experience to easily kickstart materials like assignments, lesson plans, lecture slides, and more based on pedagogical requirements across Microsoft 365 apps such as Teams, Word, and PowerPoint. This includes the ability to align content to over five million education standards from 35 countries for both public and private institutions through EdGate.

Additionally, educators now have access to quiz generation through Copilot in Forms which allows them to generate quizzes and correct answers, support students with step-by-step solutions for each question, and easily assign quizzes to classes in Teams for Education. Educators can use Copilot to generate quizzes based on their own files or pasted text. Later this year, educators will be able to align the quizzes to education standards. 

Our recent research found that students are already using AI to quickly receive initial feedback on their work. We’re excited to help educators do the same in meaningful ways with suggested AI feedback. Educators review, edit, or discard suggested student feedback, which is based on individual student progress, rubrics selections, or assignment instructions. Educators can start by selecting initial rubric scores and then add the corresponding draft feedback directly into student Word documents in the form of comments or share overall feedback in a Teams Assignment.

AI has the potential to further support students by accelerating and deepening their learning process in engaging ways. Interactive practice experiences will be available for educators to create and share with their students, or for students to generate on their own to help them save time and increase subject matter retention on their specific learning content. They’ll be able to use Copilot functionality across Microsoft 365 apps like OneNote to easily build study materials like flashcards and guided chat experiences based on their learning content. The guided chat experience is designed to help learners walk through and engage with the content to ask questions, get immediate feedback, and test their knowledge. 

To better support educators and students with their daily tasks, we’ll be launching built-in learning and teaching extensions to help guide them through relevant activities and provide contextual, persona-based support in Copilot. They’ll see custom prompts to get started with tasks like building an interactive lecture or receiving initial feedback on their work.

For staff, educators, and students to be able to maximize the value of Copilot for Microsoft 365, it’s essential to have access to relevant data and files. We’re introducing education data integration to generate more helpful responses, insights, and content based on personal and organizational information. This will include data from Teams for Education such as Classwork, Assignments, Grades, class rosters, and more. We’ll also interoperate data from Learning Management Systems (LMS) in the future for simpler, connected, experiences across platforms including many of these new AI-powered capabilities.

Read more about guided content generation, standards-alignment, suggested AI feedback, interactive practice experiences, learning and teaching extensions, and education data integration in the June Edition of What’s New in Microsoft EDU.

Getting started on your AI journey for free

To help get started on your AI journey, we’re excited to continue offering free tools and resources. Read about products available at no cost for educators and students like Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and more in our recent blog on our free AI offers.

Last month we announced that Khanmigo for Teachers is free for all US educators thanks to our new partnership with Khan Academy. We’ve heard from educators around the world who look forward to using Khanmigo for Teachers, and we’re excited to share that we’ll be expanding free availability globally in the coming weeks. Educators can sign up to be notified regarding availability in their country. Khanmigo for Teachers is an AI-powered teaching assistant that helps streamline class prep with no prompting required. Learn more from our Khanmigo for Teachers Quick Guide.

Minecraft Education will be previewing its new Lesson Crafter web tool at ISTE, which will be available for free in the coming months. Lesson Crafter allows educators to generate custom easy-to-teach lesson plans for Minecraft Education tailored to the needs of their learners on any topic and age range. Lesson Crafter will make it easier to get started teaching with Minecraft and give more teachers the opportunity to bring fun, immersive game-based learning into their classrooms.

In addition to these free tools, we believe in the importance of building a foundation of AI literacy for everyone. Get started today with the following resources:

• For pre-service educators: Next week at ISTELive 24, we’ll be sharing a new collaboration with ISTE and ASCD focused on AI skills for pre-service educators. Stay tuned for more details coming soon.
• For educators: AI for educators learning path, AI Classroom Toolkit, AI literacy resources from Minecraft Education including lessons, PD, and Minecraft Prompt Lab playbook.
• For educators, guardians, and IT: Microsoft Copilot resources for education.
• For education leaders and IT: Microsoft Education AI Toolkit now refreshed with updates including use cases from AI Navigators and more research and resources.

Empowering educators and learners with Learning Accelerators, Teams for Education, and Learning Management Systems

Our newest Learning Accelerator, Speaker Progress, will be generally available by July! Speaker Progress helps students build confidence in their presentation skills with real-time feedback. Educators can create presentation assignments where students will receive real-time coaching on their public speaking skills like their pace, pitch, filler words, and more. Students and educators can view a rehearsal report of top strengths and top opportunities with targeted feedback to help students improve.

Math Progress, coming to preview in July, enhances numeracy gains by streamlining the creation, review, and analysis of math practice for educators and providing feedback to students on the problems they did not solve correctly. Both Speaker Progress and Math Progress provide actionable insights to help educators collect and visualize presentation and numeracy data to track progress and improve student outcomes. 

To ensure convenient access to all education institutions, we’re bringing the Learning Accelerators and Teams Assignments to your LMS through a new LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) private preview. Educators will be able to use all the capabilities of Teams Assignments within their LMS and sync content like files and grades. Learn more from our blog about existing LMS integrations.

Partnering with Figma to help prepare students for the future

Now more than ever, skills like collaboration, creativity, and strategic planning are critical for students in an ever-changing world. That’s just one of the reasons we’re excited to announce a new partnership with Figma to provide free access to Figma and FigJam enterprise tiers for all Microsoft K-12 educators and students. Figma and FigJam are design and collaboration software used by professional designers, engineers, and makers of all kinds. They can support students in building together—in a fun, interactive space that simultaneously prepares them for future career opportunities. Figma’s education offering through Microsoft 365 schools will be available in the US, UK, and Japan today, with plans for future international expansions. Admins and school leaders can apply here to get started.

We’re thrilled to partner with Microsoft to bring Figma into more classrooms. Currently, Figma is available in over 5,000 K-12 schools through our free education plan, and teaming up with Microsoft will help even more students across the world access Figma. Today’s students are tomorrow’s product builders, designers, developers and problem solvers—and we want to equip them with the best tools to bring their ideas from imagination to reality.

Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer, Figma

Bringing more value to Microsoft Education

• Clipchamp is coming to Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 licenses at no additional cost, starting next month. In today’s digital world, communication skills are increasingly important. Clipchamp equips educators and students with the ability to convey ideas visually, fostering essential skills for success—from the classroom to future careers. Integrated with Microsoft 365, Clipchamp makes video editing easily accessible. To learn more, visit the Clipchamp webpage and Clipchamp Support. 

• Preview exciting updates from Minecraft Education coming for Back to School including a new Computer Science curriculum and AP CS Principles course launching at CSTA next month, esports program playbook, credentialing with Prodigy Learning, and new product updates including cloud storage on OneDrive and an AI-powered Lesson Crafter. Visit the Minecraft Education blog for details, and sign up for free summer training to learn how to bring Minecraft into your classroom or district.

• Visual Studio Code for Education, an online computer science education platform, is now available for free to empower the next generation of developers. It helps students learn to code at their own pace, develop in-demand skills with the same platform used by professionals, and bring their ideas to life. Visit the Visual Studio Code for Education webpage for more information.

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint – Student (MDE P2 – Students) is an affordably priced version of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P2, tailored specifically for student devices that are covered by an A5 license. It encompasses the comprehensive range of features that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers. With a focus on the security of students, Microsoft ensures that student devices receive the same robust protection as faculty devices do with MDE P2. This initiative is designed to protect student devices against vulnerabilities, proactively neutralize threats, halt attacks, facilitate swift investigation and remediation, and provide access to threat intelligence. Read more in our blog on ensuring secure learning experiences with MDE P2 – Students.

In such an exciting time for technology innovation, we look forward to continuing to share our progress, new capabilities, and resources to help you make the most of them. Check out the Microsoft Education Blog for the latest news and come join us next week at ISTELive 24 to explore AI in education!

The post Enhancing Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Education appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.