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.

We’ll highlight some of the recent product updates and capabilities to help you boost student engagement, improve your instruction, and simplify your tasks. We’ll also share professional development opportunities to help you develop and enhance your skills. Let’s dive in and see what’s new in Microsoft Education.

Simplify your workflow with new tools, features, and capabilities

1. Get free access to Khanmigo for Teachers for US educators

We recently announced a new partnership with Khan Academy to help turn the promise of AI in education into reality and increase access to innovation. As part of the partnership, Microsoft is enabling Khan Academy to provide free access to Khanmigo for Teachers to all US educators, we’re collaborating to explore opportunities to improve AI-powered math tutoring with a new open-source small language model, and bringing high-quality education experiences to more learners.

Read about our collaboration with Khan Academy and learn how US educators can get started with Khanmigo for Teachers for free. You can also save or print this quick guide to Khanmigo for Teachers to refer back to as needed.

2. Discover new Minecraft Education, Reflect, and MakeCode experiences inspired by Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2

Engage your class with new experiences from Microsoft Education inspired by Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2. Create an open and accepting classroom with these new activities from Minecraft Education, Reflect, and MakeCode.

• Dive into a world where emotions come to life and find what brings you joy in a new Minecraft Education build challenge inspired by the movie, complete with a lesson plan and a custom world.
• Explore new brain breaks in Reflect that include stories, games, and coloring pages featuring characters from the movie.
• Celebrate the release with a new Bubble Popping arcade tutorial from MakeCode that features art and characters from the movie.

3. Teach computing skills with Visual Studio Code for Education

Consistent with Microsoft’s commitment to preparing students for the future, we announced the release of our latest product to empower the next generation of developers—Visual Studio Code for Education, a free online computer science education platform. Visual Studio Code for Education is designed for students and educators and provides integrated curriculum and a sandbox coding environment for everyone, with zero setup.

Get started with Visual Studio Code for Education and see how it can be a valuable resource in your classroom!

4. Practice summer reading with Reading Coach

School may be out for summer in many places across the northern hemisphere, but learning doesn’t have to stop! Have your students practice their reading and personalize their own stories using Reading Coach online during the summer break. Reading Coach provides personalized, engaging, and independent reading fluency practice by allowing learners to create unique AI-generated stories by choosing characters and settings from a curated collection of options.

One of the newest features, “Unlock characters and settings,” empowers learners to get a new character or story setting for every 20 minutes of reading. Learners can even trade characters and story settings from a whole new collection. Get started with Reading Coach online for school or home use and scroll further to learn about the new Reading Coach training course for educators on Microsoft Learn.

5. Leap into summer learning with a free game from Microsoft

Help your student stay sharp over the summer break with our free game for students, Leaps and Logs. In this summer learning game, players take on challenges across various subjects including English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Coding, and Arts/Music. The free summer learning activities in Leaps and Logs can be completed by students of most ages (age 8 or older recommended) and players can engage with Leaps and Logs in two different ways: digitally or on paper (with access to a device for embedded task links).

Visit Leap into summer learning with a game from Microsoft for full game directions and the Leaps and Logs game board.

6. Check out the new AI enhancements in Microsoft Teams for Education

New features in Microsoft Teams for Education, a powerful communication app for schools, leverage AI to help you draft content like rubrics and assignment instructions, all while keeping the educator in control.   

• Using generative AI to create rubrics in Assignments: With generative AI integrated into Assignments, enter what you want the rubric to assess, and Assignments will suggest criteria and complete the rubric for you.
• Using generative AI to create instructions in Assignments: Get multiple suggestions for how to enrich the content, such as adding more details, adding learning objectives, emphasizing key concepts, and even making your assignments more interesting. After the content is created, you can make further edits and updates as you go.

Visit What’s New in Microsoft EDU | May 2024 to learn about all the new updates in Microsoft Teams for Education.

7. Explore the new wild wisdom activities collection in Microsoft Reflect

We’re excited to introduce the wild wisdom activities collection in Reflect, featuring stories and coloring pages centered around nature. Reflect is a Learning Accelerator that helps students build important social, emotional, and academic skills by offering quick check-ins, intentional brain breaks, mindfulness activities, and actionable data. Each story in the wild wisdom collection is paired with a corresponding coloring page and highlights the fascinating behaviors of various animals—from dolphin friendships to elephant empathy, and penguin teamwork.

Explore the engaging stories and coloring pages in the new wild wisdom activities collection in Reflect.

8. Enrich teaching and learning experiences with Microsoft Forms updates

Microsoft Forms helps educators assess student progress and create engaging, interactive learning experiences for their students. Check out these updates in Microsoft Forms to easily access your responses and insert a form into a Stream video.

• Form or quiz data sync to Excel: You can now access all your responses in Excel for the web. New responses will sync automatically in real-time, while also leveraging Excel’s robust functions to analyze and evaluate your class’s performance.
• Embed Forms and callouts into Stream videos: You can now insert a form or quiz directly into a Stream video. As the video plays to a specific moment, the form or quiz will appear to the students. Once they’ve completed the form or quiz, they can continue watching the video, providing you with a new way to enhance engagement and assess comprehension in real-time.

Read What’s New in Microsoft EDU | May 2024 to learn about all the latest updates in Microsoft Forms.

9. Adding Universal Print value for educational organizations

Many schools have told us that they need simpler printing solutions and more predictable costs to manage their budgets effectively. To help educational organizations meet their printing needs, we recently announced licensing changes that will address both these issues. Organizations with Microsoft 365 A3 and Microsoft 365 A5 licenses¹ now receive 100 print jobs per license per month. This means that most organizations can use Universal Print with no extra cost if they have eligible licenses.

Read the article Adding Universal Print value for educational organizations to learn more about Universal Print and the new increased print volume.

Stay ahead with professional development opportunities and events

10. Take the new Reading Coach course on Microsoft Learn

Learn how to use Reading Coach, a free tool that uses AI and built-in fluency detection to personalize reading content and practice for learners, with a new training module on Microsoft Learn. The new course will help you understand how to access Reading Coach and use the tool in your classroom. It’ll also help you learn how to describe the core reading functionality of the tool, and how to best use the different reading modes to support your students’ reading fluency.

Take the new Build reading fluency with Reading Coach training module on Microsoft Learn and learn how to get started with Reading Coach.

11. Recharge and explore with summer learning for educators

Many educators in the northern hemisphere are getting ready to take a well-deserved break for the summer. We know that many of you embrace this opportunity to explore new things, so we’ve curated a list of exciting learning experiences to inspire you this summer. These free, flexible professional development resources for teachers allow you to move at your own pace and can be accessed anytime, anywhere.

Visit Recharge and explore with summer learning for educators to tap into our collection of free professional development resources for teachers.

Tap into new possibilities for innovation in education

12. Become an MIE Expert, Showcase School, or Incubator School for 2024-2025

The future is here, and it’s time to step into the spotlight as a beacon of educational innovation. The Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Expert nominations for the 2024-2025 academic year are open until June 17, 2024, and Showcase School nominations are opening soon. This is your opportunity to shine! Being part of these programs means actively participating in a global movement that redefines education through technology.

Check out the article Become an MIE Expert, Showcase School, or Incubator School for 2024-2025 to learn how to nominate yourself and your school.

Whether you want to discover new ways to engage your students, expand your learning, or tap into possibilities for innovation at your school, Microsoft Education has new features and experiences for you to explore. Happy teaching!

¹ Users with Student Use Benefit licenses can print with Universal Print, but these licenses do not contribute print jobs to the pool. See Product Terms for details about Student Use Benefits and Academic Programs.

The post Discover 12 new ways to enhance your teaching with Microsoft Education appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Education has evolved significantly over the past several years, and so have the needs of educators. In today’s diverse classrooms, it’s more important than ever to use the right education technology, find ways to support all students, and help create more inclusive environments. We recognize that educators need time-saving workflows, teaching tools, and resources to help everyone thrive and reach their full potential. 

Microsoft believes that education technology has a valuable role to play in supporting the needs of both teachers and students. However, we understand that it can sometimes be challenging to adopt new education technology and face the learning curve of mastering new teaching tools. To bridge this gap and make adoption smoother, we’ve pulled together a collection of free quick start guides for you. Our PDF guides for teachers are instructive and user-friendly, designed to help you easily get started with Microsoft Education tools in the classroom. 

Where can teachers find quick start guides for Microsoft Education tools?

Check out our collection of quick start guides, created by fellow teacher Heather Aird, a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIE Expert). Through vibrant colors, simplicity, and comprehensive coverage of our learning tools and Learning Accelerators, these PDF guides for teachers empower you to embrace education technology quickly and confidently.  

AI in education tools

• Microsoft Copilot quick guide
• Reading Coach with AI stories quick guide
• Microsoft Teams for Education AI features quick guide
• Khanmigo for Teachers quick guide

Microsoft 365 tools

• Classwork in Microsoft Teams quick guide
• Microsoft OneNote Class Notebook quick guide
• Microsoft OneNote quick guide
• Microsoft Word quick guide
• Microsoft PowerPoint quick guide
• Microsoft Forms quick guide
• Microsoft Loop quick guide
• Microsoft Stream quick guide
• Minecraft Education quick guide
• Microsoft Lens (formerly Microsoft Office Lens) quick guide
• Microsoft Bookings quick guide
• Microsoft Editor quick guide
• Microsoft Planner quick guide
• Microsoft To Do quick guide

Learning Accelerators

• Reading Progress quick guide
• Reading Insights quick guide
• Speaker Progress quick guide
• Speaker Coach quick guide
• Search Progress quick guide
• Search Coach quick guide
• Math Progress quick guide
• Reflect quick guide

Accessibility tools

• Digital Tools for Dyslexia quick guide
• Immersive Reader quick guide
• Reading Coach in Immersive Reader quick guide
• Math Solver quick guide
• Microsoft Translate quick guide
• Speech to Text (Dictate) quick guide
• Live Captions for PowerPoint quick guide

Our quick start guides cover a range of teacher resources and where to find them, unlocking countless possibilities for personalized and interactive learning experiences. Each PDF guide provides step-by-step instructions, accompanied by clear visuals and diagrams, ensuring that you can navigate Microsoft Education teaching tools and education technology with confidence.  

Microsoft Education is dedicated to providing technology solutions that can save you time, individualize student learning, and set students up for future success. Explore these portable and printable PDF quick start guides—designed to equip you with guidance and support whenever you need them! 

Looking for more ways to quickly get started with Microsoft Education technology? Check out these free resources below, created specifically for teachers like you. 

• Meet your AI assistant for education: Microsoft Copilot
• Eight how-to guides for educators: Quickly get started with Microsoft Education 
• Reflect activities for student engagement 
• New ways to reflect and thrive on World Mental Health Day! 
• 4 new Teams updates to enhance classroom engagement 
• Transform assessment with new Forms updates 

The post Comprehensive quick start guides for Microsoft Education tools appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Assessment is today’s means of modifying tomorrow’s instruction.

Carol Ann Tomlinson, William Clay Parrish Jr. Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development

Microsoft Forms helps educators assess student progress and create engaging, interactive learning experiences for their students. Check out these updates in Microsoft Forms and tips for using Forms in education that help all educators easily assess what’s happening in classrooms, just in time for the end of the semester. 

Forms updates will help you:

• Create quizzes and surveys in the Forms app
• Save time creating quizzes, surveys, and forms by importing files 
• Automatically generate styles and response options in subject areas like math 
• Engage students with polls during synchronous Teams meetings 
• Distribute forms that anyone, regardless of age, can open 
• Create timed assessments, send reminders, and allow students to edit their responses 
• Uncover trends and patterns in your students’ responses 

Use the new Forms app to create forms, quizzes, and surveys

Previously, creating a form required access to the Forms website. Now, you can create and distribute forms, quizzes, and surveys with just a few clicks with the new Forms app! 

Visit The new Forms app is here! to learn more and start using the new Forms app to streamline the creation and distribution of forms in your classes. 

Create quizzes without lifting a finger

Designing an online quiz for a unit is a time-consuming task. You can easily spend hours developing questions that accurately measure important knowledge or skills. When you also include multiple choice options, feedback, and answers, quiz development can take even longer! And the final, time-consuming steps? Formatting the assessment and choosing how students access it. 

Forms saves you time by making online quiz creation an effortless process. You don’t need to copy-and-paste questions and answers from a working file—just upload a Word file, PDF, or any handy document and let Forms do the work for you. Forms’ smart conversion turns your file into an online quiz that’s ready to distribute to students. Smart conversion also works with surveys and other paperwork that you might want to distribute—like semester surveys, parent feedback forms, or exit tickets.  

After the quiz is generated, you will have several theme suggestions to choose from. The suggestions will automatically change based on the title that you enter. 

New updates also take the guesswork out of creating math questions. When you want to see if students can solve an equation, turn on the math toggle switch and type your equation using the math symbol keyboard. Forms automatically takes the equation and generates the correct answer and sample non-answers. Just select Add all and your question is done. Now you have time to finish tomorrow’s lesson plan! 

Manage your assessments with enhanced control options  

When assessments require higher levels of supervision and control, put these features to work: 

1.  Timer: Set a timer to limit how long students have to complete an assessment once they begin.
2.  Reminders: Send out a reminder to complete a quiz so that all students have a chance to respond. 
3.  Question order: Shuffle questions so that each student sees a different sequence when they complete an assessment. 
4.  Save Responses: Allow students to save and edit their responses in an assessment so they can return later to make changes. 

Use polls in Teams to engage students

Engaging students during Teams meetings can be challenging, especially if students are listening more than participating. Teams channel meetings now support polls when you want to add interactivity to your synchronous lessons. Liven up your Microsoft Teams meeting by sharing a question that checks for understanding or launching a live quiz while meeting with students. The Polls app also supports images for those times when you need to give students a visual clue—like identifying the nucleus in a cell.  

Whether you need to take a quick temperature check about students’ feelings or gauge your instructional effectiveness, Polls has you covered during any live Teams channel meeting.

Share with your audience in mind

Sharing a quiz or form is now more accommodating for the entire school community, from the youngest student to the oldest guardian. You can use popular classroom options like creating a link, sending Forms to Microsoft Teams or Outlook, or embedding your question in a learning management system (LMS).  

And now there’s a live Present mode capability in Forms: 

• Collect live, anonymous feedback about a topic or upcoming test and display results to the classroom. Just launch live presentation mode to show an interactive graph along with a QR code to submit responses. You can also use live presentation mode in PowerPoint, too.
• Bypass typing and multiple apps when you want young children to open a form. Simply project the QR code and your students can use their device’s camera to skip to what you want them to access. 
• Include a short URL and QR code so that parents can provide their communication preferences at an open house event. Whether they need to submit responses later at home with the short URL or complete the form on their phone using the QR code, you can give parents a choice that fits their needs. 

Visit Breaking Boundaries with Form Distribution: Capture Responses Anywhere, Anytime to learn more ways to share Forms and collect responses from anyone in your school community. 

Understand your students better with Insights

Distributing classwork and collecting information from students can be meaningless without analyzing responses. Forms tabulates and displays results for every question or item, and it also analyzes and highlights trends using the new Insights feature.  

Insights helps you make better sense of the percentages, scores, and answers in your Forms responses so you can make better informed decisions. It summarizes responses for single items and compares data across all items, giving you actionable information that’s digestible and shareable. Everything occurs automatically inside of Forms—just view your Responses and select the Insights button on a question. Forms also gives you the option to export the responses to Microsoft Excel to do further analysis like sorting, adding different filters, or inserting a chart.

These new features are just a few of the many ways you can use Microsoft Forms in your classroom. Visit the Microsoft Forms Blog to learn more and see other innovative use cases for educators and schools. How can you use Forms today? 

The post Transform assessment with new Forms updates appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Explore how the latest updates to Teams can help you streamline lesson planning, enhance your students’ reading fluency, and make space for feelings in your classroom—literally!

Use Classwork in Teams to create and organize class content

Classwork in Teams for Education is now available! Classwork is specifically designed for educators to simplify the task of managing their curriculum. A one-stop-shop, Classwork helps you bring together your class materials—including Assignments, Links, Class Notebook pages, files, and Teams channels—into one central location.

With Classwork, curate a view of content and resources that will help your students navigate materials and see everything in one place.

With Classwork, you can create modules of study aligned with your curriculum structure in a way that makes it easy for you and students to navigate and find class materials. You can add class content to your modules and organize them by topic or week. Easily arrange your modules by simply dragging and dropping into the order that you choose. Modules are created in a draft state, meaning you’re in control of when to share content with students.

You can also pin modules to the top of the Classwork app so students can easily find the topic and all the related resources. Students are empowered to find what they need, exactly when they need it—without having to hunt through multiple tools and sift through folders of resources.

Organizing your class materials has never been so simple! Check out the Classwork training module on Microsoft Learn and streamline your lesson planning with Classwork in Teams for Education.

Simplify reading fluency checks with Comprehension Questions and Reading with Expression

Reading Progress, a free Learning Accelerator available in Teams, is designed to help you track your students’ reading skills. Reading Progress quickly gives you actionable insights into your students’ reading fluency and focuses them on specific areas for improvement. Here are two new updates to Reading Progress that can help simplify your reading fluency checks—just in time for the new school year.

The first new update, Comprehension Questions, gives you the ability to add reading comprehension questions to Reading Progress. Now, after your students complete a reading assignment, they’ll be able to see the corresponding comprehension questions right in Reading Progress. Comprehension Questions uses the technology of Microsoft Forms, including the auto-grading capabilities of Microsoft Forms Quizzes, so you can save time grading multiple-choice questions.

Add reading comprehension questions in Reading Progress to assess your students’ reading fluency and understanding.

We know that reading comprehension questions are a big part of evaluating your students’ reading skills and tracking their progress. Learn more about Comprehension Questions in Reading Progress to assess your students’ reading fluency and make personalized interventions for improvement.

Another new update in Reading Progress, Reading with Expression, will automatically gauge the expression—also known as prosody—of your students. Expression identifies several aspects of prosody, including monotone reading, long pauses, and not pausing for a period or comma. It can also determine whether students use the correct voice inflection for question marks or exclamation points, and even whether they’re stressing the correct syllables of multi-syllable words. You can track your students’ progress over time in the Insights tab, along with reading speed and accuracy.

Use the Expression feature in Reading Progress to measure and track your students’ reading fluency.

Since fluency checks are traditionally a one-on-one activity, using Expression can help you perform checks more frequently, with less disruption to your class. Learn more about Reading with Expression to help save time, navigate the logistics of fluency checks, and enhance your students’ independent reading practice.

Foster wellbeing in the classroom with the Reflect Emotion Board

Microsoft Reflect, a wellbeing app in Teams, helps support your students’ connection, expression, and learning by providing a space to share feelings. Reflect can help students broaden their emotional vocabulary, recognize and navigate their emotions better, and deepen empathy for their peers. It does this in part by providing regular opportunities for students to share and be heard.

Now you can literally make space for emotions in your classroom with the Microsoft Reflect Emotion Board, a physical board kit for classrooms based on the Reflect app. It can be used in classes with young students, classes without many devices, or any other class where having a physical board will help drive more emotional expression.

To set it up, simply download the Emotion Board kit from the Reflect app, print it, and build an interactive check-in space on a board or wall. Then, assign a card for each of your students based on the mapping in the app. Once the Emotion Board is set up, have your students share how they feel by placing their card in the category they relate to. When students are finished placing their cards, capture their responses by using the Reflect app to scan the Emotion Board. Explore trends in the app to track wellbeing over time and gain insights into your students’ moods.

Valuing everyone’s feelings is now easier for all learning levels, with an inclusive, intuitive, and tangible approach. Learn more about Microsoft Reflect and get step-by-step instructions for the Reflect Emotion board.

These are just a few of the exciting updates to Microsoft Teams to help you achieve even more in the new school year. Learn about all of the newest Teams updates in What’s new in Teams for Education | June 2023 and What’s New in Teams for Education | August 2023.

The post Streamline lesson planning with new Teams features appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

If there is one resource that continually evades the grasp of nearly every educator on earth, it is time. With such a broad set of responsibilities, it seems there simply are not enough hours in the day for a teacher to accomplish everything. Preparing materials, organizing classes, teaching classes, engaging in professional learning, working with parents and families, and playing key roles as co-workers, school leaders, and community members only scratch the surface of what it means to be an educator. When you toss COVID-19 into the mix, it’s no wonder that teachers have even less time as they work to fulfill their important roles during a tumultuous time.

Remote and hybrid learning environments are now the predominant means for instruction. Platforms like Microsoft Teams have become the avenue through which teachers teach and students learn. It is our mission to empower every educator to achieve more and we want to help you take meaningful steps toward that end by saving you precious time.

Power Automate can be a useful tool that takes everyday tasks and automates them through various “flows”. Like a “flow chart” from which it gets its name, a “flow” is a series of steps that run in order. It can look up rows from a table, send emails, create files, and even play back a set of recorded clicks and keystrokes for desktop automation. Gone are the days of repeating by hand, one by one.

As you will read in the list below, anything from course registration to scheduling announcements can be set to automatically run with very little setup beforehand. The EDU teams within Microsoft have surveyed hundreds of teachers around the world and created automated workflows on common educator tasks including:

We are here to help you implement the flows you see in this list along with any others you may be able to think up. We are eager to understand how automation can become a meaningful and helpful part of your daily workflow as continue to improve them. If you have a story about how an automated process has improved your life as an educator or if you have an idea for building a new one, we want to hear it! Please contact us here.

It is our hope that these flows can free you from the manual aspects of teaching in remote and hybrid learning environments and give you back some time.

This post was originally published on this site.

The post Save Time and Automate Your Workflows with These Shortcuts for Educators appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

What is auto-grading?

We designed the auto-grading feature both to save educators’ time and to provide students with immediate feedback. Auto-grading kicks in for any multiple-choice, text, or ranking question if you have marked or entered the correct answer to a question.

Teacher’s View After Student Submits Quiz

By default, your quiz settings will “Show results automatically,” which means that after students submit the quiz, they can click a button to view their results. On this “View Results” page, they can see which questions they answered correctly or incorrectly, given you marked the correct answer when creating the quiz.

Student View of “View Results” Page

Tip #1: Provide automatic feedback on answer choices

You can automatically give students specific feedback based on the answers they picked in response to multiple choice questions. You can do so by hovering to the right side of a multiple-choice answer, clicking the speech bubble icon, and typing your comment.

If you use the “Show results automatically” setting, your students can view the comment for the answers they chose on the “View Results” page after they submit the quiz. If you decide not to use “Show results automatically,” students will see the comments only after you “Post Scores” for the quiz. They can do so by visiting the original link of the quiz. This “auto-feedback” feature is a great way for you to offer positive comments on a correct answer or constructive explanations on why an answer was incorrect.

Tip #2: Inform your students that their initial score under “View Results” might not be final

Because auto-grading currently only supports multiple-choice, text, and ranking questions, other types of questions you include in your quiz will require manual grading later. Thus, if you use “Show results automatically,” students will seemingly get zero points for non-auto-graded questions, as those questions have not been graded yet.

Therefore, the overall score they see at the top of their results page will be artificially low. Only after you finish manually grading and post scores will the score on the results page be final.

An important tip is to inform your students that the score they immediately see on the “View Results” page are not final until you have officially posted scores. Then, students can visit the quiz at the original link to find their final scores.

Tip #3: Take an extra step to ensure auto-grading works for your text and ranking questions

If you plan to use auto-grading for questions that require a text response, a best practice is to add all possible correct answers. The auto-grading is not case sensitive, but it looks for an exact match in terms of spelling and punctuation. Thus, you might want to add all acceptable answers, including ones with misspellings, to save time manually grading later.

If you plan to use auto-grading for ranking questions, a best practice is either to mark the question as “required” or to make a note in the description of the question for your students to click on the ranking choices. The auto-grading kicks in only if the student engages with the question; otherwise, it assumes that the student left the question unanswered. Even if the ranking order looks correct at first sight, to ensure they have answered the question, your students still need to click on the answer choices, so that the order numbers appear.

Tip #4: Use “Show Results Automatically” only if you want to provide instant feedback to your students

Show Results Automatically Option in Quiz Settings

“Show Results Automatically” is a powerful feature, as students can see both automatically graded questions and automatic feedback to their answer choices, which we will discuss in the next tip. With this feature, you could be more efficient in your teaching, but you will want to keep the following in mind:

• “Show Results Automatically” might be more appropriate for lower stakes or normal check-in quizzes, rather than for higher stakes exams.
• If your quiz includes several questions that will require manual grading, either due to the question type or the need to offer partial credit, or if you plan to offer manual feedback on students’ answers, you might want to avoid using “Show Results Automatically.”
• If you want to have higher control with ensuring integrity during quiz-taking, we suggest that you not use this setting.

Nonetheless, even if you do not use “Show Results Automatically”, you are still able to use the auto-grading feature of Forms to assist you in quicker grading.

Tip #5: Consider turning off “Show Results Automatically” and using “Shuffle Options” or “Shuffle Questions” to promote academic integrity

However, regardless of whether “Show Results Automatically” is turned on or off, students will not be able to find answers anywhere in the source code before submitting the quiz. If you still plan to use “Show Results Automatically,” your students can see the answers after they submit the quiz. Given that the “View Results” page reveals the auto-graded correct answers, it will be challenging to prevent students from taking a screenshot or copy-pasting this information somewhere else.

For further assurance, a good tip is to turn on the “Shuffle questions” feature in your Forms quiz settings. For multiple-choice questions, you can also turn on “Shuffle Options.”

Shuffle Questions Option in Quiz Settings

Shuffle Options for Multiple Choice Question

We hope these five tips are helpful to you as you begin teaching again in 2021. You can find resources on Forms for educators specifically here and watch our session for the ISTE 2020 Conference, “Remote Teaching Simplified with Microsoft Forms”, here.

For more questions you might have, please visit our support page. If you have additional feedback on Forms’ surveys, quizzes, or polls, please visit our Forms UserVoice site.

Mike Tholfsen
Microsoft Education Product Manager
@mtholfsen

This post was originally published on this site.

The post Five Essential Tips on Auto-grading for Microsoft Forms Quizzes appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

For the past 16 years, I’ve been working with students and faculty here at Birmingham Metropolitan College to bring new technology resources to the classroom to deepen learning, create efficiencies, and boost engagement. Never did I imagine we’d be putting those skills and tools to the test in the manner we’re doing now.

Our college buildings closed on Friday, March 20, after the government announced all schools must be shut due to the global pandemic.

As the Learning and Technology Manager here, my team and I have since been tasked with training and supporting our employees to deliver instruction remotely. Our first priority has been to get everyone using the Microsoft Teams platform to ensure the college can continue to teach students. So far, that’s going well and our faculty members, across fields, are providing students with engaging remote lessons and delivering assignments effectively.

Meeting the needs of diverse learners

Birmingham Metropolitan College serves a diverse array of students. We’re a further education college for students ages 16 through 19 with various courses for adults too. Courses range from those with a focus on vocational and job training, as well as academic courses in preparation for further studies at the university level. We’re a large organization, with numerous campuses across the Birmingham area. It’s no small feat to get everyone working remotely, but we’re getting there and I’m proud of our efforts.

Istarted off here as an IT/Computing lecturer and moved into my role of LearningTechnology Manager four years ago. My role is to engage staff in usingtechnology in their lessons and improving students’ digital skills.

This year, I also teach on the PGCE program team, which is a post-graduate course for new qualifying teachers. The module is based on e-learning, where my biggest focus with my students has been on using Office 365 Education, which is free to educators and students at eligible institutions and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams.

I first got involved with Microsoft Education when I attended a Microsoft training program for educators in London. The three-day boot camp was so motivating. It was there that I learned all about the Microsoft Educator Center, a great site for professional learning that I’ve taken advantage of and shared with my colleagues. I love the community of educators I’ve worked with and come to know through the Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Expert program. If you’re looking for support at this time, Microsoft has a host of helpful remote learning resources.

Before the world was upended by the pandemic, I was fortunate enough to spend time with my peers in the MIE Expert program at the BETT technology conference and was honored to be recognized for my work by Microsoft, earning a trip to the Microsoft Education Exchange (E²) conference in Sydney, Australia. Unfortunately, that was postponed, but I hope to be part of the incredible gathering when a new date is set!

Microsoft Teams and OneNote: Great communication and collaboration tools

Even in ordinary times, my students have appreciated the ability to work remotely, and flexibly, once they have the tools and training to do so. Obviously, they’d rather the reason not be related to a global health crisis, but today’s current events are a good reminder that we need to be nimble and trained up on technology for whatever may come.

Mystudents have actually been using Teams all year. They love that they canaccess it from anywhere and on any device, and the way it helps themcommunicate and collaborate with peers. They also find it quite easy to use.

Late last year, we had a water main break at school, and the campus was closed. I heard about it in the car on my way to work. I pulled over and got onto my phone—my lesson was going to be in next 15 minutes—and pulled up the Teams app. I alerted my students to what was happening and told them not to come in but to look for my lesson on OneNote. No learning lost!

Oneof my favorite features of Teams is the way OneNote Class Notebook isintegrated into it. We have student pages, a content library, and acollaboration space all there and working seamlessly within Teams. I archive myonline notebooks by year, and I have every lesson I’ve taught in there. Everyyear, at the start of the year, I use the previous notebook as a basis for mynew Class Notebook, just adding my new learners. It’s such a time saver.

Forms and Flipgrid bring data and engagement to the classroom

Even before the transition to remote learning, several of my students had taken the tools I introduced them to into their colleges. They particularly find Microsoft Forms, a great tool for creating quick quizzes and surveys, to be useful with their students. It’s a remarkable formative assessment tool, and those I teach have come to see the beauty of the real-time analytics that Forms gives you. That can really inform your practice as a teacher and drive data-based decision making in the classroom.

Iwas in a training session a few months ago and we had to do a quick evaluationof the program. The session leader started to give out bits of paper and pens, whenI suggested she try using Forms. I pulled out my device and typed in thequestions. We accessed it through QR codes on our phones. It took 10 minutes topull together and everyone was impressed with how easy it was to use.

I’ve also recently introduced my students to Flipgrid, the social-learning tool that allows for video-based discussions. It’s been wonderful to see my students try new tech tools, apply them to their own learning, and then share them with others—in this case with the students they teach.

Andnow, given the situation we’re all in, I’m so glad I’ve empowered my teachingstudents, and my peer teachers here at the college, with the tools andresources they need to keep the learning going remotely.

The post UK educator helps college and students successfully launch remote learning appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Connect, communicate, and collaborate with Microsoft Teams

In this episode, we take a look at how Microsoft Teams, included with Office 365 Education, can serve as a great digital learning platform during distance learning. With Teams, you can create video calls and invite your entire class, set up small-group discussions, hold office hours, post assignments, and much more.

It’s easy to sign up for an Office 365 account if you don’t already have one. Students and educators at eligible institutions can sign up for free and get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and now Microsoft Teams, plus additional classroom tools. Use your valid school email address to get started today.

Professional learning through the Microsoft Educator Center

We’ve also created a learning path on the Microsoft Educator Center focused on using Teams and other free resources to support remote learning.

• The first course centers around connecting with your students using Teams and additional Office 365 tools and provides ideas for establishing a remote learning plan and tracking progress.
• The second course spotlights student engagement and building strong connections with help from Microsoft Teams; Microsoft Stream, the intelligent video service in Office 365; OneNote Class Notebook, an app that helps you set up OneNote in your class; and Flipgrid, which allows students and teachers to create and share videos.
• The third course is focused on ensuring that the needs of students with learning differences are met. The course provides an overview of accessibility tools in Teams, Office 365, Windows 10, and other apps.

Learning Tools and accessibility

Everyone is working hard to adapt to remote learning, and as Mark Sparvell said in the video above, this may present particular challenges for students with learning differences. This is a great time to become more familiar with Microsoft Learning Tools, free resources that implement proven techniques to personalize learning and improve reading and writing for students.

These include tools such as:

• Immersive Reader, a full-screen reading experience that improves the readability of content. It has a read-aloud function, enables students to tailor fonts and spacing, supports grammar and writing by identifying parts of speech, and more.
• Dictation allows people to type with their voice. It’s available in Office 365 tools and can be helpful for learners with dyslexia, dysgraphia, or mobility impairments.
• Closed captions help people who are hard of hearing, speak multiple languages, and who use captions to help focus and retain information. We recently rolled out a preview of OneNote that allows students to connect OneNote to Microsoft Translator captions. You simply use a Join Code and receive the captions and translation stream. This allows captions from the teacher who is speaking to flow directly into OneNote for reading, while still allowing the student to take notes.

Assessment strategies

We know you’re probably working through how to best assess student learning in this environment. Microsoft Forms can help. You can use it to easily create quizzes and surveys, and you can share Forms with your students from any browser or mobile device.

Forms has built-in analytics that allow you to see student progress immediately. For more on using Forms and creating quizzes and other assessments within Microsoft Teams, check out this You Can in :90 video.

Keeping students engaged

As Mark emphasized in this month’s episode, Flipgrid is a great student engagement tool. We’ve heard many stories from educators who are using Flipgrid as part of their distance learning strategy to coach students on reading, help them learn history and science, and even run theater rehearsals.

Students can view each other’s videos and respond to them. The latest update from Flipgrid also allows you to record your lessons and share those with students through the Screen Recording feature. This enables you to record what’s happening on your screen directly in the Flipgrid camera and guide readers through content on your device and more.

Other ideas from educators around the world include scheduling 1:1 time with students, assigning students to work together in small groups within Teams, and using tools like Microsoft Whiteboard for Education, the freeform digital canvas, to boost engagement.

For families

We know a lot of parents are asking for high-quality resources that they can use to help support their children during this challenging time. One way we’ve responded is by launching a Family Learning Center. Geared toward families with children ages 3-12, it offers a collection of free resources on topics ranging from art, coding, spelling, and more. Please share it with your students’ parents and guardians.

Taking a moment

As Mark notes in the video above, the current situation we find ourselves in is creating enormous educational challenges. The shift to remote learning has been sudden and disruptive. For teachers, remote lessons aren’t going to be the same as you planned and led when you were in the classroom with your students. And that’s okay. You’re making a big difference in kids’ lives every time you connect with them, even if it is virtually. They need you. But for you to show up for them, it’s important to take time for yourself too.

With that in mind, and because we all could use it, we’ve created a new You can in :90 video on mindful breathing led by Mark. Check it out, and consider sharing it with your students.

We love hearing from you, especially now. We value your feedback and want to know how we can help. One way to let us know what you think of this episode of What’s New in EDU, and the tools we’re highlighting, is through Twitter by tagging @MicrosoftEDU.

And if you haven’t done so already, please sign up to join our Remote Learning Community and connect with other educators and Microsoft Education experts who are sharing ideas around best practices in distance learning.

Stay safe and stay in touch.

The post What’s New in EDU: Free resources to support engaging, accessible remote learning lessons appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

This year Microsoft is offering more leader-focused content at TCEA, as you’ll see the sessions below include some specifically curated for school leaders. These sessions showcase how districts use Microsoft technologies to improve student outcomes, enhance inclusive classrooms, and facilitate district initiatives with enterprise-grade digital tools. Read on to learn more about Microsoft at TCEA.

Read on to learn more about Microsoft at TCEA, running February 3-7 in Austin, Texas

Microsoft Conference Breakout Sessions: Meeting Room 2

During the conference, Microsoft will deliver several sessions focused on some of the biggest trends in EdTech. So, whether you’re a teacher, school or system leader, or IT administrator, we’ve got plenty for you.

And whether or not you’re working in an Office 365 school, as an educator, you can still sign up for Office 365 and other Microsoft tools for free! What’s more, you can run those on a range of devices. Be sure to check out informational sessions from ed tech influencers Leslie Fisher and Holly Clark, who will be leading several sessions showing you how to make all that happen. Look for details on those sessions and many others below.

Monday, February 3

Tuesday, February 4

Wednesday, February 5

Thursday, February 6

Friday, February 7

Learn Live Theater: Booth 1635
Tuesday, February 4 – Thursday, February 6

Visit us in booth 1635 to learn more about student-centered learning tools including 20-minute spotlight sessions featuring productivity and accessibility, demos and more!

Tuesday, February 4

Wednesday, February 5

Thursday, February 6

Hear from your peers and attend additional sessions found here:

Schedule subject to change.

The post Microsoft Education at TCEA 2020 appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Currently, they teach at Canyon Creek Elementary School in Farmington, Utah. Mario teaches sixth grade and Alberto teaches fifth. Their students are part of the school’s Spanish/English Immersion program. Both teachers are experts at using technology in the classroom, and they enjoy sharing their passion with their students. Get inspired and follow them on Twitter (@aalbertoherraez and @mmarioherraez).

Self-management in the 21st Century

When we looked closely at the daily routine of our students, we noticed their life is pretty much guided by someone else 24/7. Too often, they are directed by teachers, parents, coaches and even friends. They are so used to following directions and being told what to do that they struggle making decisions and practicing self-management.

The Class of 2030 report from Microsoft Education shows that self-management, the ability to set and work toward one’s personal and academic goals, manage stress, and stay motivated, is a top priority for students globally. Students want and need to be independent and make their own decisions. We wanted to provide our students with a program that helps them develop self-management.

Designing a program for an elementary setting

We were fortunate enough to visit the Colegio San Gregorio in Aguilar de Campoo during our summer vacations in Spain. There, we learned how two teachers, Julian Sanz Mamolar and Javier Ramos Sancha, spark self-management in their classes. This was the inspiration we needed to put together the program we recently started. It calls for a blended-learning environment in our 5th- and 6th-grade classes based on personalized playlists for our students.

Every week, we create individual planners in OneNote for all our students, which they complete during what we call “self-management” time. This planner (see picture below) is personalized with activities to meet each student’s needs. For example, we might include multiplication facts for students that struggle in math, more reading for those with low fluency or advanced science for students who need to be challenged. But students decide for themselves what day they want to do each activity based on a personalized playlist list and how much time they will need.

At the beginning of every week, students have their planner distributed in their OneNote Class Notebook. On Monday mornings, they need to customize their planner and fill it out with the activities from their personalized playlist (there are several activities for the same topic). All these activities can be found at the Assignment tab of Microsoft Teams.

We use the assignments feature of Microsoft Teams to distribute the assignment pages from our OneNote content library to our students’ OneNote Class Notebook. Learn how to do it in this video from the “You Can in :90” series.

Microsoft Tools to create a blended-learning environment

We use different Microsoft tools to help provide students with a blended learning model since all these apps generate activities that can be done individually and at their own pace, again helping to develop independence in students. Some examples of these activities are below.

• Flipgrid is a great tool for a blended learning environment since teachers can attach a document or a link to the instructions of the topic. We like to attach a Sway link to a Flipgrid topic where students can find videos, instructions and even a Microsoft Form (branching feature for formative assessments) embedded to the Sway that will help them do the Flipgrid task correctly.

• Microsoft Stream + Microsoft Forms:

We love to create interactive Microsoft Stream videos by including different Microsoft Forms in a video. With this feature, we make sure that our students are paying attention to the video because they need to answer the questions that are found in the Microsoft Forms embedded in the video. It is a great tool to check for understanding and to have them working individually.

• Microsoft Forms and its branching feature: 

We also use the Branching feature of Microsoft Forms to create personalized formative assessments. Branching means students get questions that are only relevant to them. So, students who get questions wrong might be directed to instructions or further exercises. With these assessments, our students get to learn while they are taking a test, and branching allows us to guide their learning without having to be with them.

• PowerPoint Recorder:

We use PowerPoint Recorder to record our lessons for students. We like to include these videos in their weekly playlists, so students can review them if they need it.

• Sway with instructions:

We use the Sway digital storytelling app to write instructions that our students need to follow during self-management time. It can be embedded almost everywhere.

We also like to include Microsoft Forms questions in our Sways. In that way, we can check that our students are on track and understanding and reading the instructions we are providing.

• Minecraft for Education:

We love to create Minecraft Worlds in which our students are immersed in an adventure where they need to follow the instructions of the different NPCs (non-playable character) placed around the world to complete the scenario.

And we like to ask our students to create their own worlds related to a topic that we’re learning in class to be used by their classmates as a formative assessment (Learning by teaching approach by Jean-Pol Martin).

Weekly goals and tutoring meetings

Within the OneNote page we distribute, students have a section to set up weekly goals. These are split into six categories, one per class and two Social Emotional Learning (SEL) categories: behavior and kindness.

Every Monday, students are asked to review the goals from the previous week, reflect on their performance and write what they could improve for next time or why they think they met the goal.

Also, students are required to find time in their schedule to meet with their teacher bi-weekly to go over their planner, goals and their self-management decisions.

The benefit of this approach

An average of 23.1 students fill the typical American elementary-school classroom, and each has different needs and learning styles. One of the biggest challenges we face as teachers is meeting these needs and providing a good learning environment for every student. In our classes, students work at their own pace on their personalized playlist designed to fit their needs.

Also, during this self-management time in which students work independently, we work individually with students that need specific accommodations or interventions.

In less than two months, we have already seen a significant improvement in our students’ self-management skills and performance. And we feel our students are happier in our classes because they are learning in a way they like, deciding what resources they want to use and managing their schedule.

We can proudly say that we have completed the transition from a teacher-centered approach to a student-centered approach in which our students are the ones in charge of their learning journey. We’re confident this is serving them well, both in and outside of school.

The post How to foster self-management skills and personalized learning in an elementary setting with Microsoft Tools appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Video Editor for Windows 10

We used Video Editor for Windows 10 to create this month’s What’s New in EDU video. Educators have told us they want a full-featured set of video creation and editing tools for digital storytelling, and it’s available completely free with every Windows 10 device. Give Video Editor a try and see how your students create films with background music, text effects, 3D models and special effects, all completely free with every Windows 10 device. Look for it in your Start Menu or search for “Video.”

Video Editor isn’t just for students. Educators are using it to create video newsletters, capture special events and document instructional approaches. New features just released include: split video and precision trim for easier editing, back-up project to create templates and allow students to share work in progress, add content directly from Bing image search with Creative Commons license captions for digital citizenship, and even more choices for animated text and effects.

Download the Video Editor How-to Guide and watch this video to get your classroom up and running in no time. Follow the Video Editor team on Twitter for even more updates on video storytelling in the classroom.

Learning Tools

Learning tools are free resources rooted in proven techniques to improve reading, writing, math and communications. Here’s what’s new:

• Immersive Reader is coming to Microsoft Forms, allowing students to hear questions as well as answer choices aloud. We’re also bringing Immersive Reader to Whiteboard for Education. And we’ve integrated Immersive Reader into assignment instruction pages in Teams. Since Immersive Reader is so effective as a reading aid, we also wanted to make sure you knew about the Immersive Reader page on the Microsoft Educator Center and the Immersive Reader interactive training guide.

• To help students with writing, Dictation is rolling out to PowerPoint on the web allowing students to add writing to their slides with the power of their voice.
• And math practice quizzes are now available in OneNote Online. Students can use the Math assistant in OneNote Online to generate a quiz. We’ve also just launched an interactive guide for inclusive math.

Microsoft Forms

An update to Microsoft Forms lets you use branching logic to create personalized assessments. Adding this technology allows you to change quiz questions based on student answers. In a quiz that branches, students only see questions that are relevant to them. So, if students get an answer wrong, they might be directed to additional instructions and practice questions. You can learn more about Microsoft Forms here.

Microsoft Teams for Education

Microsoft Teams brings conversations, content, assignments and apps together in one digital hub.

• Now you can add assignment resources from any team. Working on a lesson plan in a staff or PLC team? When it’s ready to assign, simply select Add resources on your assignment and choose it from the file picker. No need to move your content between teams.

• Set a Close Date. Edit all the dates that matter to your assignment with new, more fine-tuned controls. Schedule to assign in the future, add a due date, and now, specify when you want to close turn-ins, too. No submissions will be allowed after the close date, granting you more flexibility on if/when you’ll accept late or revised work from students.

• Use Immersive Reader to read assignment instructions and feedback. When it’s challenging to read the assignment instructions, it can be difficult for students to share their best work. That’s why we’ve integrated the Immersive Reader into all student assignment instruction pages. Now students can better understand assignment instructions and educator feedback using Immersive Reader.

Computer Science

You’ve told us you’d like more coding support to ensure you are helping students develop critical technical skills, and we have news on that front.

• Educators using the micro:bit with MakeCode, a free resource that brings computer science to life with fun projects, can download new curriculum resources here.
• We’re hearing great feedback about MakeCode Arcade, a new retro ‘80s game-development environment that allows students to design and build 2D games.
• And educators participating in the FIRST LEGO League robotics competition this year can use MakeCode for MINDSTORMS to program their robots. Get started here.

Hacking STEM

If you haven’t explored Hacking STEM—our free, project-based STEM lesson plans—now is the time. Our latest lesson plans were created in partnership with NASA’s STEM on Station team. These hands-on, standards-aligned lesson plans celebrate the astronauts’ contributions to improving life both in space and on Earth. To help you bring some of these projects into your classroom, our partner Carolina Biological Supply has created classroom-ready kits for you.

Minecraft: Education Edition

Microsoft New Zealand partnered with local game designer, Whetu Paitai, to create a special Minecraft world and set of lessons called “Ngā Motu” to immerse young people in Māori culture. In this video, discover how the immersive world of Minecraft is bringing indigenous culture to life and helping build social-emotional skills as students work together to explore their country’s national language and history.

 

 

We’ve also heard from those of you teaching in Australia and have created new educator resources aligned to your education standards.

Stay tuned for a new Minecraft Hour of Code tutorial coming from the Minecraft Education team next month! Save the date for Computer Science Education Week, happening December 9-14.

Flipgrid

Flipgrid helps amplify student voice by empowering students to record and create short videos. Here’s what’s new:

• FlipgridAR is a hit! Educators around the world are using the magical new ability to “stick” videos from Flipgrid to student artwork, books, classroom displays, locker posters and more.
• Empower every student in your class with Flipgrid Conversation Starters, now in the Flipgrid Disco Library.
• Want more support? You can join Flipgrid Educator Innovation Leads for FlipgridPD. The 30-minute sessions take place on Teams and are packed with great ideas.

Events

The Microsoft Global Learning Connection, formerly known as Skype-a-Thon, allows students to travel the world virtually and connect using Skype, Teams and Flipgrid. Join us on November 5-6 as we aim to travel 17 million virtual miles and connect hundreds of thousands of students.

Device Spotlight

We’ve heard you say you’d like to know more about affordable devices. You can find information here. We’ve heard many of you say the Dell Latitude 3190, a lightweight laptop with an 11-hour battery life, is great for students. Pricing starts at $219 USD for a 4/64 storage configuration with the latest-gen Intel Celeron processor.

What’s new in Higher Education

We’re excited to share that Microsoft’s AI Business School now offers a learning path for education. The Microsoft AI Business School for Education helps learners understand how AI can enhance educational experiences. The learning path is available on Microsoft Learn.

Thanks for tuning in, trying some of these resources and continuing to share your insights with us. We hope we’ve given you the information and inspiration you need to get started with new tools, and please let us how we can further support you. At Microsoft Education, our mission is to empower every student on the planet to achieve more. We can only do that in collaboration with you and are so grateful for your partnership.

Share your feedback with us on this month’s What’s New in EDU update on Twitter by tagging @MicrosoftEDU!

The post What’s New in EDU: How to use innovative resources for digital storytelling, STEM learning, personalized assessments and more appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.