Tag: Education

Preserving traditions with virtual graduations

Humans love to celebrate. We learn at an early age that every milestone is a good reason to gather, share our excitement with friends and family, feel pride in our accomplishments, and enjoy the warmth of connection. And the reason for celebration can be defined in many different ways. It can mark something as simple as the passing of time (like a birthday), or something a person spends years working toward, like a high school or college graduation. Celebrating and marking milestones are more important than ever when times are difficult. What better opportunity to highlight the positive, and come together to support one another than when other parts of life are uncertain? But how do you celebrate when people need to stay physically distant to be safe?

Around the world, millions of people are struggling with this question—especially education administrators, students, and their loved ones. At this time of year, there are thousands of ceremonies and traditions for all levels of education that typically bring large groups together. They range from pre-school song-and-dance presentations, to the “Pomp and Circumstance” and cap tossing of university graduations. Every one of them provides a sense of closure for one chapter of life, and the opening to another, and means a great deal to students, families, and educators.

The
current situation has made it unwise for groups to gather in the usual way, so
educational institutions are working to find alternative ways to mark their
commencements. This is an incredibly difficult decision to make.

Teams live event availability expanded to support MORE digital graduations!

There is no “one size fits all” solution to properly recognize the achievements of every student and honor the traditions of each school and group while following recommended social distancing policies. But as schools around the world are demonstrating, there are many creative and innovative ways to make the most of this graduation season. Online solutions range from PowerPoint presentations prepared by faculty/administrators with input and content from students, to hybrid live, recorded, and livestreamed ceremonies. For example, Ritusemeikan Primary school in Japan held an in-person commencement with their students and faculty, but livestreamed it to families via Teams, to limit the number of people at the gathering.

Students at the University of Pennsylvania and several other colleges and universities have collaborated to recreate their campuses in Minecraft. Many of them are organizing virtual versions of traditions and ceremonies practiced at their schools that will be held and viewed in the Minecraft world. And one of the most moving examples is by Newcastle University Medical School, where the graduating class individually recorded themselves reciting the Hippocratic Oath and posted it to Flipgrid to express their commitment to their new position as medical doctors. Administrators also recorded congratulatory speeches, and the school produced a short video commemorating the event that’s available for all to view.

Though every tradition and ceremony is different, with the right tools and a little creativity, there are ways to celebrate safely and make positive memories for all.

Digital events can even follow the traditional graduation flow with an academic procession, a welcome address, presentation of awards, speeches, and more.

To support institutions moving forward with digital graduations and celebrations, we’ve put together a toolkit of resources that will be updated regularly. To see the most up-to-date content, check back to this page often:

And starting in early May 2020, we’ve made the applications needed more broadly available than ever. Users with the Microsoft Office 365 A1 faculty license, which is free for educational institutions, will have the ability to host and broadcast Teams live events for a limited time. That means users with A1 faculty licenses can host a virtual graduation, alumni summit or any live event for up to 20,000 attendees, at no extra cost. Starting in early May 2020, live events will be automatically enabled for users with an A1 faculty license and automatically disabled on July 1.

We recognize the process of hosting a virtual graduation is a first for many educational institutions, and we’re here to help with this important moment for your students and their family. To ensure schools are able to successfully execute their plans, our Microsoft Store team will offer resources and personalized trainings, tailored to the unique needs of each participating school. Get started today! Once we have information about your school’s goals, and schedule, we can determine the best way to help you conduct your virtual graduation ceremony and celebrate your student’s milestone achievement.

Challenging times can bring out the best in the human spirit and inspire innovation and creativity. We’d love to hear your ideas and see your solutions!

Our sincere congratulations to everyone celebrating achievements and moving toward their next milestone.

As you settle into remote teaching and learning, we’re devoting this episode of What’s New in EDU to sharing free resources that can support you as you lead virtual lessons, foster collaboration and engagement, and focus on accessibility.

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.

In today’s reality of distance learning, educators around the world are rapidly modifying their lessons for use in digital classrooms. At Microsoft, we want to support you as you’re making this transition to inclusive, online learning. What practices and solutions are working best for you? How are you making it all happen? What keeps your students engaged? How do you provide a socially and emotionally supportive environment for everyone involved?

For this month’s special-edition TweetMeet, we’ve invited 200 former hosts back to guide the conversation in many different languages. We look forward to welcoming you to a 75-minute discussion on Tuesday, April 21 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time about the topic Remote Learning.

We have five discussion questions lined up this month, allowing 14 minutes of discussion time each:

Pacific Time	#	#MSFTEduChat TweetMeet question timings
10:00 AM	Event begins	Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Use #MSFTEduChat and #TweetMeetEN or #TweetMeetXX for non-English languages.
10:04	1	How are you making the transition to remote learning? Share stories.
10:18	2	How do you ensure that all your students are engaged?
10:32	3	How do you care for the well-being of your students, colleagues and community?
10:46	4	What are your best tips and resources to support remote learning?
11:00	5	What lessons can be learned from teaching and learning under the present circumstances?
11:15	Event closes	Participant Survey and announcing the next event.

Even if you’re conducting a class at the time of the event, busy doing other things, or asleep—no problem! All educators are welcome to participate any time after the event. Simply look at the questions and respond to them at a day and time that suits you best.

You can also schedule your tweets in advance. In that case, be sure to include the entire question in your tweet and the hashtag #MSFTEduChat, so that everyone knows how your responses align to the event questions and conversations.

Your Remote Learning Stories – a new, special-edition Wakelet

We’ve invited this month’s hosts to send us their personal stories about their transition to remote learning. We proudly present these in our new Your Remote Learning Stories Wakelet, live-embedded here:

Introducing our hosts – Twitter List

We’re very grateful to all the former hosts who have accepted our invitation to lead the conversation on April 21. Check out their profiles, consider following them, and engage with their tweets through this month’s Twitter List.

Language tracks offered this month

We offer this month’s TweetMeet in 14 language tracks: English, Arabic, Croatian, Finnish, French, Italian, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, and Welsh.

Want to help promote the TweetMeet?

Our PowerPoint Templates provide three easy ways for you to announce the TweetMeet to your friends and followers:

Each of our templates contains the step-by-step instructions on how to create these for yourself. If you need help, just reach out to us via @TweetMeet Twitter DM.

Here’s an example of a TweetMeet Friend Card:

Welcoming TweetMeet newcomers

Do you know someone who’s new to TweetMeets? Our TweetMeet Ultimate Wakelet collection is created especially for newcomers, so please share it with friends and colleagues who might be interested in joining.

Why join the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet?

TweetMeets are monthly recurring Twitter conversations about themes relevant to educators, facilitated by Microsoft Education. The purpose of these events is to help professionals in education learn from each other and inspire their students while they are preparing for their future. TweetMeets also nurture personal learning networks among educators from across the globe.

When and how can I join?

Join us on Tuesday, April 21 from 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM Pacific Time on Twitter using the hashtags #RemoteLearning, #MSFTEduChat, #TweetMeetEN and #MicrosoftEDU.

Be sure to double-check your own local event time. You can find the event time for 215 countries with this time zone announcer.

Our next recommendation for you is to set up Twitter dashboard TweetDeck and add columns for the hashtags and for your favorite hosts. When a tweet appears that you want to respond to, press the retweet button and type your comments. Additional tips are offered in this animated GIF that you’re welcome to share with newcomers:

Got questions about the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet?

Please connect with TweetMeet organizer Marjolein Hoekstra @TweetMeet on Twitter if you have any questions about the TweetMeet or about what it takes to be a host on a future event!

As we continue to see educators around the world transition to distance learning our team is here to help, listen, and support you and your students.

To make it easier to connect with each other, and to answer your questions, we’ve created a new remote learning community. It’s a great resource for best practices, tips & tricks, and sharing personal experiences about how to enable distance learning for schools. We are inspired by the way this community has come together to support each other and share ideas,  during this challenging time.  

To join this team, get help and share ideas with other educators and our experts, please fill out this form. We’ll add you to the Remote Learning Team after we’ve received your submission.   

Building community

In addition, we are in awe of all the incredible resources and ideas our community is sharing, like the tweet and ideas for remote learning from the eTwinz here. 

#RemoteLearning | We just want to use this last tweet to tell everyone who is transitioning to this new model due the #coronavirus that you are not alone. This community got your back!

We are #BetterTogether! #eTwinz

— Alberto Herraez, M.Ed (@aalbertoherraez) March 12, 2020

If you have examples of how you are making remote learning work for your students, please share, and submit your story to our blog team.

Available Resources

We’ve also set up a new support site to help you get started launching remote learning that includes training resources, practical guides on how to get up and running on Teams, and tools and programs to keep your students engaged. 

And, listed below, are additional Microsoft Education resources we have compiled so far to support remote learning.

• Guidance on remote learning with Office 365 can be found here. This is a great source of information for using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Teams – all rich resources for successfully navigating remote learning.
• Get ideas for using Flipgrid, a powerful video-based discussion tool, here. You’ll find webinars, resources for getting started with Flipgrid, and be able to connect with our team through Flipgrid here.
• We’re making Minecraft: Education Edition available for free to teachers and students with O365 Education accounts to support remote learning during school closures. Please fill out this form to request access. And download a remote learning toolkit for Minecraft: Education Edition here. Minecraft: Education Edition is a great tool to explore coding, social emotional learning skills development, and more, so if you haven’t tried it yet, now might be the time.
• The Microsoft Educator Center is home to a wealth of educator-created professional development resources, and we’ve made new remote learning materials available right on the MEC site, so be sure to check those out.
• And we’ve put together a Wakelet that curates all of the current Microsoft Education resources and stories on Remote Learning here. We’ll have more resources there in the coming days too, so please keep an eye on that site.

We’re here to support you

Teaching is among the most challenging professions in ordinary times, and these are anything but ordinary times. Thank you for the work you do on behalf of students each day, and especially now.  

You’re not alone in this. Our team is here to help. We’ll continue to share updates, resources and information as those become available here on the Microsoft Education blog. So, stay tuned and keep in touch. One way to send feedback is through Twitter by tagging @MicrosoftEDU.  

Over the past two weeks, we’ve published a series of blog posts aimed at helping our customers during the COVID-19 outbreak. In one of them, I shared a letter from Lily Zheng, our friend and coworker in Shanghai. Lily’s letter included lessons she’d gathered from China-based Education customers who moved to 100 percent remote learning back in February. Faced with delaying the term, these schools sprung into action, quickly migrating their entire curriculum online. And as countries around the world are impacted by the outbreak, many more educational organizations will need to do the same.

We want to help. My colleague Barbara Holzapfel and her team focus on creating technology for schools and universities, and they count a number of remote-learning educators among their customers. She has asked some of these experts to share the remote-learning tips that they’ve gathered over the years. From preserving student-teacher 1:1s to bringing lessons to life in the virtual classroom, it’s rich with useful advice for any educational organization that may soon be moving online. Take it away, Barbara.

Making remote learning effective and engaging with Microsoft for Education

In the weeks since the COVID-19 outbreak first hit China, our Education customers in the region have done amazing things to keep students learning while they transition to learning remotely. From e-learning innovations to keeping students’ spirits high with photo and cooking challenges, teachers and students have shown extraordinary resilience during this difficult time.

Now, as countries around the world take steps to contain the virus, many schools and universities globally are moving classes online. Teaching and learning from home is a big change for most students and educators. Without a physical classroom, how can you check that students are engaged and progressing? How do educators and faculty stay connected?

We want to help ease the transition, so we have asked experienced online educators—including Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA) and O’Dea High School here in Seattle—to share the tips they’ve gathered over years in remote education.

But we also want to do more. Microsoft Teams is available for free to educational institutions through the Office 365 A1 offer. In addition, as schools in the U.S., Italy, Japan, and South Korea transition to remote learning, we’re providing faculty and staff a six-month subscription of Office 365 A5. This gives them free access to live events and audio conferencing and helps them expand their reach by hosting meetings for up to 10,000 attendees and help ensure access for students in low bandwidth areas by including public telephone network dial-in information for their online classes.

Moving to a virtual classroom

As schools move to a remote learning environment, Teams can provide an online classroom that brings together virtual face-to-face connections, assignments, files, and conversations into a single platform accessible on a mobile device, tablet, PC, or browser.

To help make this process as simple as possible, we have created a best practices guide for school leaders and IT to get up and running quickly, so their students and staff to begin communicating remotely.

Once Teams is set up, educators and staff have the ability to create their own class in Teams, add selected students, share lessons, create assignments, collaborate virtually in real-time, and do grading and provide personalized feedback all in one hub.

A few quick tips from expert educators to help you get started:

• Have interactive discussions with your class by sharing your screen to present your lesson and encourage students to ask questions using the chat feature.
• You can show a film by sharing your system audio in a meeting.
• During a lesson, you can moderate the class discussion by muting students, making them presenters, or if needed, removing them from the meeting. Finally, record the lesson so students can review it on their own time.
• Record a class session in case some students can’t join during the live session.
• For assessments, you can easily create and grade quizzes in Teams using Microsoft Forms.
• Let your students know your office hours and when they can reach you for questions.
• Encourage students to use Immersive Reader in Teams to help them read messages and understand assignment prompts, enabling them to follow along and contribute.
• Create a Fun Channel. Have a virtual science fair or poetry reading group. This will go a long way with students of all ages.

Getting support and training for educators and staff

We want to help support educators with practical guides, professional development, and how-to information that will help empower them and their students to stay motivated and engaged with learning. We have created a series of webinars that can be accessed on-demand for educators to get started on Teams, and resources in our Microsoft Educator Center to help new and existing users get up and running. We also invite you to join our newly launched Remote Learning Community where educators launching distance learning programs from around the globe are sharing best practices, and our Microsoft Education team is answering questions in real-time.

Read about adjusting to working from home.

Help students stay engaged

Continuing to drive student engagement and focused learning while outside of the classroom can be a challenge, especially for those moving to remote learning for the first time. Both educators and parents need support from their schools to help make this work. To help parents and guardians support their children, we have created a Remote Learning Guide for students and parents. For educators, tools like Flipgrid, Skype in the Classroom, and Minecraft: Education Edition can also help mix up the day and give students ways to communicate and demonstrate learning in new ways.

In addition, here are some tips we have heard from educators who have helped create healthy and effective learning environments that allow students to thrive in this new virtual setting.

• Stay healthy and charged: Learning from home can be a new experience for students. Encourage them to take breaks between lessons to stretch, hydrate, or just unplug.
• Stay focused: Find a quiet place where they can focus on the lesson with minimal distractions.
• Stay connected: School is important from a social perspective. Not seeing their friends face-to-face every day can be hard for students. Help them adjust to this new reality by encouraging them to schedule a lunch session for classmates to stay connected. If they are out sick or can’t join class because of an appointment, remind them to change their status or set a status message so their classmates are also aware.
• Motivate your class: Use Teams to encourage joyful challenges throughout the week by creating a Fun Activities channel. For example, hold a cooking contest and have students share their creations in the channel. Recognize your students by sending them Praise in the channel, inspiring more students to participate.
• Bring lessons to life: Make a lesson interactive by enabling Whiteboard in Teams during a live lesson. Have students come up to the whiteboard and solve a math problem or demonstrate their art skills, just like they would in a physical classroom.
• Connect with students individually: It can be difficult to gauge how students are faring without seeing them in person, so connecting individually is very important. You can support students 1:1 in a chat, creating a safe space for students to ask their questions and get the extra help they need.

I hope these tips from our educator community help you create an engaging remote learning environment in which both students and educators can stay connected.

We recognize navigating this new way of learning presents a set of challenges that are new to everyone impacted. Our team is available to answer questions you have around remote learning in our new Remote Learning Community. We hope to help make this transition as easy on you as possible.

You can also see this post on the Microsoft Education blog.

COVID-19 has impacted the lives of people around the world. As Jared and Lily Zheng shared yesterday, the daily routines of millions, including educators and students, have been impacted. And our Microsoft Education team is committed to helping teachers and students stay connected and engaged.

As some schools look to continue learning remotely for the safety of their students and faculty, Microsoft Teams for Education provides an online classroom so students and teachers can find new ways to continue to focus on learning. Free for schools and universities, Teams provides an online classroom that brings together virtual face-to-face connections, assignments, files and conversations into a single place accessible on either mobile, tablet, PC or browser.  

We have heard incredible stories about how educators are supporting students and have also received questions regarding how students and educators can stay connected using technology.  We want to take this time to share some of the ways you can stay connected and engaged with classrooms and faculty during this time.

To learn more about Microsoft Teams and how to get started, you can join the live webinars on March 5^th, from 8:00 – 9:30 AM PST, after which they will be available on demand. To see all the webinars, click here.

• Part 1 – Online lectures & classes with students: Explore how you can create a persistent online classroom with meetings for up to 250 participants. This webinar is designed to help first time users of Teams get started and host classes and lectures with online meetings. 

• Part 2 – Online meetings with a selected group of your students: Discover how you can keep students engaged with online meetings for small groups. This webinar is for educators who need to create ad-hoc meetings with selected groups of students and will cover virtual office hours, tutoring sessions, and other group meetings.

Microsoft Teams is included in Office 365 A1, which is free for educational institutions. For IT guidance on how to deploy Office 365 and get your entire school started on Teams, check out this page.  Once Teams is enabled, students and faculty can start using it by entering their school email address at teams.microsoft.com. We’re also here to support. For any support questions or issues, file a ticket here and for trainings on Teams, visit your local Microsoft Store to speak with a Specialist.

We are learning so much from schools all around the globe that are enabling remote learning in ingenious ways and you can learn more about Microsoft Teams for Education here. No matter which tools you use, we wish your students, faculty, staff, and families all the best.  

In this blog, Microsoft talks about ways to address the top challenges to AI adoption through empowering inclusion, expanding access to accessible and affordable technology, supporting faculty and staff with skills, training, and resources, and partnering on long-terms AI strategies.

Artificial intelligence is transforming higher education, according to a new study released today by IDC and commissioned by Microsoft. The report details the expected opportunity with AI in higher education and the challenges institutions must overcome to realize results. 

The study covered 509 higher education institutions in the US, and found that nearly all respondents—99.4 percent—say AI will be instrumental to their institution’s competitiveness in the next three years. Fifteen percent called AI a “game-changer,” and 54 percent of higher education institutions in the US have started to experiment with AI, while 38 percent have adopted AI as a core part of their business strategy.  

With the primary goals of improving student outcomes, enabling the workforce of the future, and accelerating innovation, higher education institutions are bullish on the role AI will play in realizing success. The report showed an expected twofold increase in competitiveness, funding, and innovation over the next three years. 

In the short term, AI-enabled solutions that don’t require a big data strategy will begin to transform learning. The IDC study found that modernized learning and classrooms top the list of use cases for AI-enabled solutions over the next 12 to 18 months. Modernized learning refers to personalized learning enabled at scale, accessibility, and inclusion features for learners of all abilities, as well as AR/VR for blended learning. Modernized classrooms, likewise, refer to virtual workspaces and labs, as well as smart classrooms.

The top hurdles standing in the way of higher education goals that leverage AI include solution cost and lack of skills: 57 percent of institutions listed cost as the top challenge they face in adopting AI-enabled solutions today. Lack of skills, resources, and continuous learning came in second for employees. And nearly half of organizations said they’re planning to invest equally in developing AI solutions and closing the employee skills gap. The study also revealed a widespread lack of data strategy as well as gaps in data governance policies, quality, and availability. This indicates that many institutions need to better understand and plan for what is needed to support AI-enabled solutions in the long term.

So, what does the research mean for students and educators, and how is Microsoft working to help? Let’s take a look.

Empowering inclusion of all learners

Inclusion is core to everything we do at Microsoft. We believe educators and technology leaders like Microsoft have a responsibility to help bridge the growing skills gap—not only to ensure a skilled workforce in the future, but also to support economic growth and innovation across the world and for future generations. To achieve these goals, strategies need to be inclusive of every individual, and in particular of people who face the challenges of living with physical or learning disabilities.

There are more than 1 billion people globally living with a disability, or around 15 per cent of the world’s population.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, in the US alone, 19.3 percent of people between the ages of 16 and 64 with a disability were employed in 2019. In contrast, the employment-population ratio for persons without a disability was 66.3 percent. Persons with a disability are less likely to have completed a bachelor’s degree or higher than those with no disability.

Children with disabilities are less likely to attend school, and education completion gaps are found across all age groups in all settings, with the pattern more pronounced in poorer countries. But people of differing abilities are just one example of learners with special needs. In 2017, 258 million people (or 1 out of every 30 people) were living outside their country of birth, with children making up over half of all refugees. The education and assessment needs of refugee and migrant children are complex and differ enormously.Today, 9.6 percent of US public school enrollees are non-native English learners. Overcoming the language barrier can be a major challenge for students, leaving them struggling to keep up.

For these reasons, inclusion is a critical component of both modernized learning and modernized classrooms, and a core part of Microsoft’s mission to empower every learner on the planet to achieve more.

Accessible, affordable technology

At Microsoft, we believe technology needs to be affordable and more accessible for everyone to use. Microsoft is prioritizing accessibility in our products and services, building diverse teams, and seeking input from the accessibility community in the development process. Products like Microsoft Teams help provide an inclusive classroom environment, while built-in accessibility tools—such as Microsoft Translator for Education— boost inclusivity for all language speakers, helping people of all abilities and backgrounds participate fully in their education. 

Educators and businesspeople alike need access to tools that help them be more effective in their jobs. Microsoft is enabling anyone to build AI-enabled solutions at a lower cost with off-the-shelf tools. In a recent LinkedIn post, Satya Nadella referred to this concept as building a new category of “citizen developers” with the goal of equipping domain experts in every sector with low-code or no-code tools to create solutions that solve their unique needs.

Some recent announcements illustrate how Microsoft is putting this into practice. At Ignite in November, Microsoft announced new capabilities in Microsoft’s Power Platform, including newly named Power Apps and the new Power Virtual Agents. Power Apps help drive innovation across an institution by enabling faculty or staff to quickly build low-code apps, such as those that deliver actionable insights in real time.  

The new Power Virtual Agents enable institutions to easily create and maintain intelligent chatbots without having to code, enabling conversational engagement with students and employees. For example, Professor David Kellermann of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, has built an intelligent Question Bot that gets smarter and is capable of supplying answers on its own to students, which allows for greater student independence and supports personalized learning. And, as evidenced in this example, these tools can all be incorporated into a single Teams environment for users to access everything in one place, enabling a collaborative, inclusive classroom.

Skills and continuous learning

According to Satya Nadella’s LinkedIn post, there are more than 800 million people today who need to learn new skills for their jobs. Further, two-thirds of students today will eventually apply for jobs that do not yet exist. In today’s world, it is critical that employees continuously update their skills to keep up with technology and its power to drive change, and institutions need to provide students with skills that prepare them to meet the opportunities of tomorrow’s careers. 

Last October, we announced the free online AI Business School for Education to enable education leaders to lead their organizations into the age of AI. In launching the school, Microsoft VP of Education Anthony Salcito talked about the opportunity for higher education institutions to provide truly personalized, accessible learning and experiences to all students around the world through technology and AI.

Leading institutions are doing this today. Case in point: Syracuse University’s I-School is partnering with businesses and government to drive experiential learning for its students while building AI solutions with Microsoft technology that help solve real-world problems, such as the solution from Our Ability that helps people with disabilities gain employment. Check out the video to see how Syracuse University is both skilling its students and helping build inclusive technology with AI. 

Partnering for a long-term AI strategy

Artificial intelligence runs on data. But 37 percent of respondents in the IDC study said that data strategy and data readiness—including a comprehensive governance plan—were not seen as strategic priorities for their institution, indicating a lack of clarity on what’s needed to execute against an AI strategy. 

When it comes to strategic initiatives across areas such as recruitment, retention, graduation, and fundraising in higher education, a more holistic data strategy is required to use AI to drive insight and improvement. Institutions seek agility and iteration, while integrating data from multiple sources and assuring that the data is managed securely and governed responsibly. This can be a long, arduous process.

Microsoft is working to help close this gap by providing a comprehensive data platform with Azure and Power Platform. We also provide guidance and help with execution of data strategy, governance, and readiness through Microsoft Consulting Services and Microsoft partners. Microsoft Consulting Services can help apply machine learning and AI to existing business processes, creating an intelligent model that allows institutions to be proactive in tackling top challenges like strategic planning, transformation initiatives, outcomes assessment, and student success. 

Start working with AI and accessibility tools today

The research shows not only the potential returns that institutions stand to gain from AI initiatives, but also that the technology needed to begin realizing that value already exists. The AI Business School is Microsoft’s starting point for guidance to understand AI and build workable short- and long-term strategies. Microsoft Consulting Services can help any organization put data and AI initiatives into practice.

Teachers, schools and education systems also can:

Microsoft’s Power Platform also has built-in accessibility to help anyone take advantage of the tools. Today, Microsoft provides a number of learning paths to develop skills on the Power Platform.  

For more information on how to get started with AI today, see the Include all learners with AI one-pager.  

 Again, make sure to check out the full IDC report here, including where institutions are today on the readiness scale. 

And remember that students and educators at eligible institutions can sign up for Office 365 Education for free, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and now Microsoft Teams, plus additional classroom tools. All you need is a valid school email address. 

The countdown is on! Now we just need your STEM-loving students to join in on March 2 at 9:55am PST. That’s when Astronaut Jessica Meir will speak with students around the world in a broadcast from the International Space Station.

Bring this special 20-minute conversation to your classroom from here.

Astronaut and marine biologist, Dr. Jessica Meir made history last year when she partnered with Astronaut and physicist Christina Koch to complete the first, all-female spacewalk. Give your students a chance to hear directly from Jessica about that historic milestone and a host of other inspiring experiences.

Today’s astronauts have diverse backgrounds in STEM fields, including engineering, medicine, geology and a lot more. By engaging with role models like Jessica, students have the opportunity to see how STEM education can lead to future technical jobs.

2020 is a critical milestone for STEM, space travel, and inclusion. It marks 20 years of humans living and working continuously aboard the International Space Station. Your students are the first to grow up during  a time in which humans are living both on Earth and in space. As STEM jobs grow to over 9 million by 2022, it is also a critical time to encourage young people to explore exciting and empowering STEM career paths.

Microsoft Education has partnered with NASA’s STEM on Station team to develop a hands-on STEM curriculum for middle and high school students based on real-life scenarios in space.  The collection celebrates the considerations that astronauts need to think about when living and working in space. It includes the Astro Socks Design Challenge that has students take on the roles of biomechanical engineers and product designers to solve the foot pain astronauts experience in microgravity. The standards-aligned lesson plan incorporates design thinking with an introduction to working with sensors and live data in Excel. It has been designed for the classroom and ready for you to try it out with your students!

Don’t miss out on what’s certain to be an incredible conversation and a milestone moment in the education of your students

Learn more by visiting the Microsoft Education Downlink event page. 

As always, share your feedback with us on Twitter by tagging @MicrosoftEDU!  

We hope you caught all the news we brought you from the Bett education technology conference in London, but – there was a lot to take in 😄. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered in this month’s What’s New in EDU as we recap the can’t-miss Bett highlights and news about resources to help transform teaching and learning in your classroom. We’ll also share new “You can in :90” videos to give you quick tips for using Microsoft tools.

First, if you haven’t done so already, check out the What’s New in EDU episode above as our own Mark Sparvell and Stephen Eustace get together over Microsoft Teams to recap the Bett headlines and give you a close-up look at Teams in action, including the power of the new Class Insights tab. It allows educators to see average grades, on-time assignments, average return time and more. Mark and Stephen also show you how easy it is to record Teams meetings. Plus, they share the latest on other resources that can have a positive impact on your students and updates on affordable and durable devices.

New season of “You Can in :90” live from Bett:

See the latest “how to” video tutorials filmed live from Bett with the help of education technology expert Leslie Fisher, who joined us at Bett this year.

In the video below, Leslie offers an overview of handy Windows 10 shortcuts that will save you time and make the most of free accessibility features. Those include tips for reading student-created content and teacher-generated content in one window, how to pull up the emoji keyboard quickly, and ways to easily take screen shots and incorporate them into your work. These tips will make working with windows even easier than ever.

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Leslie also has some great insights to share on using Microsoft Stream, which allows you to safely record videos and share them with colleagues, students and families. The video below offers quick and concrete tips on recording videos, annotating and editing them and sharing them with your school community.

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Bett WNIE episodes all in one place

We recorded What’s New in EDU episodes daily during Bett, and you can find each one below for convenience. In this first one, we look at how to find affordable, secure and reliable devices for the classroom starting at US$219. We also offer updates on the new Microsoft Edge internet browser and its built-in accessibility features and new tools like Live Presentations in PowerPoint, which can deepen student engagement. And there is plenty more in this episode on helping students collaborate and improve their communications skills, so check it out now.

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In the second episode of our Bett 2020 series, we share ideas for helping students develop the kind of skills that can help them thrive in school and in future careers. We heard from teachers about the updated Microsoft Educator Center, got news about Minecraft: Education Edition with their Mindful Knight curriculum and the powerful role it can play in social and emotional learning, got updates from the Hacking STEM and Video Editor teams and more. This is a must-see video, if you haven’t done so already or want a recap.

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Finally, this last What’s New in EDU episode we produced during Bett spotlights ways to use technology as a vital tool for fostering inclusion and accessibility in the classroom. It features educators in Winnipeg, Canada who are making a real difference in the lives of their students through inclusive practices and offers practical ideas for using free, web-based Microsoft Learning Tools to do the same.

And check out the announcement around our 6th annual Education Exchange (E²) taking place in Sydney next month. One of our passionate and hard-working Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts is getting a free trip to the big event happening March 23-26.

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Thanks for tuning in this month. Stay tuned next month for exciting new product updates and the news from E² 2020. We’ll be highlighting innovation in education happening across Australia and showcasing steps to provide access to effective technology to students from the cities to the outback.

As a reminder, E² brings together Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts (MIEE) to work through problems and collaborate on projects with peers who are equally enthusiastic and ambitious in their use of technology that can have a powerful and positive impact on teaching and learning.

And don’t forget that students and educators at eligible institutions can sign up for Office 365 Education for free, which will give you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and now Microsoft Teams, plus additional classroom tools. All you need is a valid school email address. 

As always, we love hearing from you and value your feedback. One way to let us know what you think of the news we shared here is through Twitter by tagging @MicrosoftEDU! And if you haven’t already done so, sign up for the Microsoft Educator newsletter here.