Please join us at the 2018 ISTE Conference & Expo taking place June 24^th-27^th in Chicago, Illinois.

Register for ISTE 2018 here. If you won’t be at ISTE this year, don’t worry! You can tune into What’s New in EDU: Live from ISTE each day the week of ISTE. You can also tune in on Facebook Live for HacktheClassroom.

10 Happenings from Microsoft Education at ISTE (and online for those #NOTAtISTE):

1. See ALL things Microsoft Education on our ISTE page.

2. Visit the Booth: Microsoft Education in the Expo Hall at #1102. We have dozens of sessions and training opportunities planned to help teachers save time by showing them ways to keep classrooms organized, create lessons, give students personalized feedback and track grades.

In the Booth: Classroom, devices, demos

Explore. Drop by booth #1102 to attend our sessions and your get hands on our latest education devices. Plus, you can enter to win a Surface!*

In the Booth: Visit our STEM Experience in partnership with BBC Learning

Visit booth #1102 to see how you can build future-ready skills in your classroom with hands-on learning through educator-built lesson plans that align to both ISTE and NGSS standards. Take your students on an underwater global odyssey in Oceans: Our Blue Planet, a BBC Earth and OCEANX film that reveals extraordinary discoveries and untold stories of the oceans’ most astonishing creatures.

3. Join Edtech Influencers and change-makers, Steven Andersen and Shaelynn Farnsworth, at 1:00 PM CT on Tuesday in the Microsoft Booth for, “Differentiation: Meeting the Diverse Needs of Learners with Technology,” a Microsoft-exclusive session. You can find info on all the Microsoft sessions here.

4. Register for the Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Academies:

Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Teacher Academy

Bring your own device to this one-day training designed for K-12 classroom educators who want to learn more about Microsoft’s tools and resources. Saturday, June 23rd at 8:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Register now.

Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Trainer Academy

This two-day, in-depth training is exclusively for K-12 education teacher trainers responsible for delivering professional development training in their school districts. Saturday, June 23rd and Sunday, June 24th, 8:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Register now.

5. Minecraft: Education Edition Training: Bring your Windows 10 device to this one-day training to learn how to use Minecraft in your classroom to promote creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving. Sunday, June 24th, 8:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Register now.

6. Hands on Learning Lab | NEW! Play. Explore the latest technology through an immersive experience in Convention Center Room 185A. Enter a drawing sweepstakes for a chance to win a Surface Studio, attend a hands-on learning Make Code workshop, explore Collaboration Tools and much more!

7. Hack the Classroom | LIVE! Get Inspired. Hack the Classroom is an exciting, online, live event designed to show you what’s possible and ignite new ideas. This year, we will be live from ISTE bringing you the latest tools designed to empower your students to create the world of tomorrow! Learn more here.

8. Free Certifications | Grow. In our mission to support educators, we are offering FREE Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS), Microsoft Certified Educator (MCE) and Microsoft Technical Certified – Touch Develop (MTC) exam testing. Drop by the Marriott Room Shedd AB. To prepare and learn more please continue to visit aka.ms/ISTE18 for additional information and resources on Certification Testing.

9. IT Bootcamp | Get hands on. Looking to experience an IT Bootcamp through the eyes of a student? Join the IT Bootcamp Classroom in our Expo Floor Meeting Space area.

10. MIE Teacher Sessions | Listen & Learn. Join Microsoft Educators at the Hyatt Clark room to learn what’s new in Inclusive and Accessibility Tools; explore Collaboration tools between teachers, students and staff; and see how to inspire creativity with digital inking, mixed reality and 3D + STEM topics like Minecraft, Make code, Hacking Stem, Girls in Stem and Computer Science.

11. Get 1:1 support and connect with a Microsoft Training Partner at ISTE. You can even find your local Microsoft Learning Consultant at ISTE. Microsoft Learning Consultants attending ISTE include:

More happenings you won’t want to miss:

Spotlight on Solutions

Share & Learn. Join our panel sessions in room 183B. Panel members will be a mix of school leaders, school teachers along with both community and Microsoft team members to foster an open dialog with several points of view.

Microsoft Partners

Explore and learn. Visit the Microsoft Booth #1102 to learn more about inspiring Education Apps available in the Microsoft Store for Education. There will be a blend of demos from teachers sharing their practices throughout the booth experience.

ISTE + Microsoft Collaboration

Collaboration. Join Microsoft Educators in the official ISTE + Microsoft Collaboration Room. We will cover various educational technology topics to keep you at the forefront of how students are learning in today’s modern classrooms. Join us in the Convention Center #184D.

Computer Science Firehose

Dig Deep. Please join Microsoft Educators at the CS Firehose Track. They will share all the latest on Minecraft: Education Edition with code builder, Makecode.com, #HackingStem, Youthspark’s Make What’s Next Initiative and an overview of Microsoft Imagine Academy’s CS curriculum offerings.

You can view all the 2018 sessions here.

*Enter for your chance to win a Surface device at Booth #1102. Simply pick up an activity card at the Booth’s welcome desk, complete the activities listed, then return it to that same welcome desk. We’ll be drawing three winners each day!

Similar to the embedded devices that came before them, modern IoT devices are often used in places where physical servicing is difficult and expensive. For example, it’s expensive for an oil company to put a technician on a helicopter to service equipment on a platform at sea. As a result, commercial IoT devices need to be supported and in service for far longer than their consumer counterparts.

Today at Computex 2018, we are excited to announce Windows 10 IoT Core Services. This offering will provide 10 years of support along with services to manage device updates and assess device health, enabling our IoT partners to create solutions to address their customers’ needs.

Windows 10 IoT Core is an edition of Windows 10 designed for building smart things and optimized to power intelligent edge devices. First released in 2015, it has been adopted by industry innovators such as Johnson Controls, Askey, and Misty Robotics.

Building on the Windows 10 IoT Core operating system, Windows 10 IoT Core Services will be a paid offering for IoT devices. The free edition of Windows 10 IoT Core will still be available via the Semi-Annual Channel (SAC).

1. 10 years of Windows OS support via the Windows Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) which provides quality updates to keep device security up to date. Devices using the LTSC release won’t receive feature updates, enabling them to focus on stability by minimizing changes to the base operating system. Microsoft typically offers new LTSC releases every two to three years, with each release supported over a 10-year lifecycle.
2. Update control with the newly announced Device Update Center (DUC) which provides the ability to create, customize, and control device updates. These updates are distributed by the same Content Distribution Network (CDN) as Windows Update which is used daily by millions of Windows customers around the world. Updates can be applied to the operating system, device drivers, as well as OEM-specific applications and files. Updates can be flighted to test devices prior to broader distribution.
3. Device Health Attestation (DHA) enables enterprises and OEMs to raise the security bar of their organization with hardware-attested security. Evaluating the trustworthiness of a device at boot is essential for a trusted IoT system and a device cannot attest to its own trustworthiness. Instead, this must be done by an external entity such as DHA Azure cloud service. This service evaluates device health and can be combined with a device management system, such as Azure IoT Device Management. With this, you can take actions, for example, re-imaging the device, denying network access or creating a service ticket.

With these features, you can commercialize a device built on Windows 10 IoT Core and know that you have the enterprise-grade support and security that is synonymous with Windows. We are currently in limited preview with this service; to join, please email iotservices@microsoft.com. A broader preview will be ready in July 2018, with general availability later this year.

Earlier in the year, we announced that with the next release of Windows 10 IoT, we will provide 10 years of support for both Windows 10 IoT Core and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. We also announced a partnership with NXP to support Windows 10 IoT Core on their i.MX 6 and i.MX 7 processors. The Windows 10 IoT Core Services offering builds on these announcements, as we continue to evolve the platform and make investments to support the IoT devices of today and tomorrow. We are excited about the possibilities and hope you will join us to create the future of IoT.

Windows 10 IoT – Tomorrow’s IoT today

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Updated June 5, 2018 11:03 pm

Bugs! Every developer deals with them, some more efficently than others.

As part of GDC 2018’s Tools Tutorial Day, Media Molecule’s Amy Phillips showcased how the Dreams dev has built and iterated on a range of tools and tech that optimize its bug flow.

According to Phillips, This has enabled Media Molecule maintain a stable build with few bugs throughout development, allowing everyone to work (mostly!) unimpeded. This system is integrated with Jira, avoiding duplicating bugs, and ensuring accurate and complete information is attached to a bug. 

Her hour-long talk offered a fascinating deep dive into the intricacies of squashing bugs during production, so carve out some time in your schedule to take advantage of the fact you can now watch her talk completely free on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.

Now until June 8th, save 85% on various Dungeons & Dragons content on Steam as part of the Stream of Many Eyes Dungeons & Dragons event!
The Stream of Many Eyes is a three-day livestreamed extravaganza full of cosplay, crazy sets and amazing stories. The Steam Daily Deal includes discounts on great games and DLC ranging from Baldur’s Gate II Enhanced Edition to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms!

Discounts end June 8 at 10am Pacific.

Welcome to Next Week on Xbox, where we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox One! Every week the team at Xbox aims to deliver quality gaming content for you to enjoy on your favorite gaming console. This coming week we can return to the arcade in Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, go on a pixel art adventure in Fox n Forests, or take on the role of a flying cupcake in Birdcakes — and these are just a few of the excellent games coming soon to Xbox One! Read more below and click on each of the profiles for pre-order details (dates are subject to change).

Games

May 29, 2018

After a picnic went horribly wrong, Pancake, the flying cupcake, will try to protect his girlfriend Cherry from hungry flies! Featuring randomly generated levels, colorful 2D art, tight shooting controls, and fluid aerial movement mechanics, you’ll be set for a wacky flight through the kitchen and beyond.

Games

May 29, 2018

A set of ancient gates have been discovered near the small village of Rynoka that lead to different realms and dimensions providing brave and reckless adventurers with treasures beyond measure in this ARPG with rogue-lite elements.  

Games

May 29, 2018

Over 50 titles across all genres from all-time classics like Sonic and Streets of Rage 2 to deep RPGs like the Phantasy Star series. New features bring modern convenience to the classics: save your game at any time, rewind those slip-ups, or customize your controls and earn bragging rights with online multiplayer and achievements.

Games

May 29, 2018

Celebrate 30 years Street Fighter, the series that revitalized arcade culture and paved way for the fighting game genre. This collection contains 12 arcade classics, including the iconic Street Fighter II and its highly competitive sequel Street Fighter III: Third Strike. Visit the game’s comprehensive museum to discover the vast history of the series, listen to nostalgic tunes, and learn more about the characters who have become known around the world.

Games

May 29, 2018

An ancient Island deity is trapped in a restless sleep and it’s down to Yoku to traverse the island using a unique blend of pinball mechanics, platforming, and open-world exploration to flip and bump his way around the stunning hand-painted island.

Games

May 30, 2018

When Quinn wakes up alone in a locked room with nothing but a computer hooked up to an internet chat room in which you’re present, you become his single ray of hope. Your choices will single-handedly shape his escape efforts… or lead him down the path to an untimely end.

Games

May 30, 2018

Embark on a quest that will lead you through strange lands where Norse Mythology collides with Lovecraftian mythos. Die for Valhalla! is an ARPG where you hack, slash, and crush your enemies. Possess and take full control of heroes, monsters, and other things to help Vikings save their realm.

Games

May 30, 2018

Fox n Forests is a 16-bit style action platformer with RPG and puzzle elements. Switch between seasons on the fly, shoot and slash with magic melee crossbow, collect valuable loot, and unveil the mystery of the fifth season in this pixel art fable.

Games

May 30, 2018

Take on the roles of in-game players taking on the roles of their characters in a traditional pen and paper RPG session in the ultimate meta roleplaying experience. As both the playing characters and the game master, players can choose which battles to fight, which class to play as which character to control and take on loads of quests and monsters.

Games

May 30, 2018

In the first chapter of The Journey Down, the search for a lost journal leads to forgotten secrets of the mysterious Underland. Follow Bwana and Kito as they puzzle their way forward and begin to uncover the true fate of their long lost father, Captain Kaonandodo in this point-and-click adventure.

Games

May 30, 2018

A mash-up of a twin-stick shooter and a tower defense, it’s up to you and a friend (with couch co-op) as space agents to exterminate hordes of bio mutants created by a mad scientist. Mix and match turrets, powers, and traps to find your preferred style of play, from close combat to long-range destruction.

Games

May 31, 2018

Someone wants you dead and you must use all your toughness to survive. Shoot, choke, and sneak your way through enemies and engage them in breathtaking car chases with an aesthetic inspired by the Italian crime flicks of the ’70s. Milanoir is a pixel-packed action game set in the violent city of Milan as you hunt for the truth and escape the ones who are chasing you through an unforgiving city.

Games

June 01, 2018

A side-scrolling shooter with a monster hunting gameplay, you must search and hunt down dreadful sea monsters and explore the post-apocalyptic underwater world of Earth Atlantis. Unlock multiple ships with special weapons and abilities for your journey and become a legendary hunter!

Games

June 01, 2018

In a land filled with Penguin Vikings, Wurst Zombies, and Hipster Ice Giants, survival is an art. Fortunately, an ancient champion with an elegant weapon has been summoned to please the Gods and restore balance to the universe. Grab your lightspear and traverse lands straight out of Germanic myths in this spear-throwing arcade game.

Games

June 01, 2018

Hop into your mine cart and drive at high speed along the railway track, getting through the mine to the exit and down to the valley. The track is steep, the curves tight, and forces will try to take your vehicle out of the bend. A good pilot knows how to shift the weight, tilt the cart, and manage every tricky part of the track.

Games

June 01, 2018

Play as one of many famous – but for legal purposes, slightly different – pop culture icons and verbally spar with other Hollywood elitists using a deep battle system. Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast is a spin-off to the surprise indie hit, Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator. This time around the game is taking tinsel town down a few notches.

Recently there’s been a bunch of community discussion around what kind of games we’re allowing onto the Steam Store. As is often the case, the discussion caused us to spend some time examining what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we could be doing it better. Decision making in this space is particularly challenging, and one that we’ve really struggled with. Contrary to many assumptions, this isn’t a space we’ve automated – humans at Valve are very involved, with groups of people looking at the contents of every controversial title submitted to us. Similarly, people have falsely assumed these decisions are heavily affected by our payment processors, or outside interest groups. Nope, it’s just us grappling with a really hard problem.

Unfortunately, our struggling has resulted in a bunch of confusion among our customers, developer partners, and even our own employees. So we’ve spent some time thinking about where we want to be on this, and we’d like to talk about it now. But we also think it’s critical to talk about how we’ve arrived at our position, so you can understand the trade-offs we’re making.

The challenge is that this problem is not simply about whether or not the Steam Store should contain games with adult or violent content. Instead, it’s about whether the Store contains games within an entire range of controversial topics – politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and so on. In addition, there are controversial topics that are particular to games – like what even constitutes a “game”, or what level of quality is appropriate before something can be released.

Common questions we ask ourselves when trying to make decisions didn’t help in this space. What do players wish we would do? What would make them most happy? What’s considered acceptable discussion / behavior / imagery varies significantly around the world, socially and legally. Even when we pick a single country or state, the legal definitions around these topics can be too broad or vague to allow us to avoid making subjective and interpretive decisions. The harsh reality of this space, that lies at the root of our dilemma, is that there is absolutely no way we can navigate it without making some of our players really mad.

In addition, Valve is not a small company – we’re not a homogeneous group. The online debates around these topics play out inside Valve as well. We don’t all agree on what deserves to be on the Store. So when we say there’s no way to avoid making a bunch of people mad when making decisions in this space, we’re including our own employees, their families and their communities in that.

So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam, and more recently as we worked on Steam Direct to open up the Store to many more developers: Valve shouldn’t be the ones deciding this. If you’re a player, we shouldn’t be choosing for you what content you can or can’t buy. If you’re a developer, we shouldn’t be choosing what content you’re allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.

With that principle in mind, we’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling. Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see. We already have some tools, but they’re too hidden and not nearly comprehensive enough. We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you’re not interested in. So if you don’t want to see anime games on your Store, you’ll be able to make that choice. If you want more options to control exactly what kinds of games your kids see when they browse the Store, you’ll be able to do that. And it’s not just players that need better tools either – developers who build controversial content shouldn’t have to deal with harassment because their game exists, and we’ll be building tools and options to support them too.

As we mentioned earlier, laws vary around the world, so we’re going to need to handle this on a case-by-case basis. As a result, we will almost certainly continue to struggle with this one for a while. Our current thinking is that we’re going to push developers to further disclose any potentially problematic content in their games during the submission process, and cease doing business with any of them that refuse to do so honestly. We’ll still continue to perform technical evaluations of submissions, rejecting games that don’t pass until their issues have been resolved.

So what does this mean? It means that the Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don’t think should exist. Unless you don’t have any opinions, that’s guaranteed to happen. But you’re also going to see something on the Store that you believe should be there, and some other people will hate it and want it not to exist.

It also means that the games we allow onto the Store will not be a reflection of Valve’s values, beyond a simple belief that you all have the right to create & consume the content you choose. The two points above apply to all of us at Valve as well. If you see something on Steam that you think should not exist, it’s almost certain that someone at Valve is right there with you.

To be explicit about that – if we allow your game onto the Store, it does not mean we approve or agree with anything you’re trying to say with it. If you’re a developer of offensive games, this isn’t us siding with you against all the people you’re offending. There will be people throughout the Steam community who hate your games, and hope you fail to find an audience, and there will be people here at Valve who feel exactly the same way. However, offending someone shouldn’t take away your game’s voice. We believe you should be able to express yourself like everyone else, and to find others who want to play your game. But that’s it.

In the short term, we won’t be making significant changes to what’s arriving on Steam until we’ve finished some of the tools we’ve described in this post. As we’ve hopefully managed to convey, navigating these issues is messy and complicated. Countries and societies change their laws and cultural norms over time. We’ll be working on this for the foreseeable future, both in terms of what products we’re allowing, what guidelines we communicate, and the tools we’re providing to developers and players.

Want the best of all Chromebooks? Then get Google’s Pixelbook.

Now, I’ve liked Chromebooks since the experimental Cr-48rolled out in late 2010. And, when Google released its first high-end Chromebook, 2013’s Pixel, I was sold. I slowly but surely put away my Linux-powered Lenovo ThinkPads and started replacing them with Google’s high-end Chromebooks. Why? Because they’re better than any other laptop out there.

Besides, as my tech buddy Mike Elgan points out, today’s high-end Chromebooks “run more apps without dual- or multi-booting than any other computing platform. Chromebooks can run apps from Android, Linux, and Windows concurrently in the same session.”

Read more at ZDNet

Scott Guthrie recently shared one of my favorite anecdotes on his Azure Red Shirt Tour. A Microsoft customer regularly invokes 1 billion (yes, that’s with a “B”) Azure Functions per day. The customer reached out to support after the first month thinking there was a bug in the billing system, only to find out that the $72 was in fact correct. How is that possible? Azure Functions is a serverless compute platform that allows you to focus on code that only executes when triggered by events, and you only pay for CPU time and memory used during execution (versus a traditional web server where you are paying a fee even if your app is idle). This is called micro-billing, and is one key reason serverless computing is so powerful.

Curious about Azure Functions? Follow the link https://aka.ms/go-funcs to get up and running with your first function in minutes.

Scott Guthrie on the Azure Red Shirt Tour

In fact, micro-billing is so important, it’s one of three rules I use to verify if a service is serverless. There is not an official set of rules and there is no standard for serverless. The closest thing to a standard is the whitepaper published by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation titled CNCF WG-Serverless Whitepaper v1.0 (PDF). The paper describes serverless computing as “building and running applications that do not require server management.” The paper continues to state they are “executed, scaled, and billed in response to the exact demand needed at the moment.”

It’s easy to label almost everything serverless, but there is a difference between managed and serverless. A managed service takes care of responsibilities for you, such as standing up a website or hosting a Docker container. Serverless is a managed service but requires a bit more. Here is Jeremy’s Serverless Rules.

1. The service should be capable of running entirely in the cloud. Running locally is fine and often preferred for developing, testing, and debugging, but ultimately it should end up in the cloud.
2. You don’t have to configure a virtual machine or cluster. Docker is great, but containers require a Docker host to run. That host typically means setting up a VM and, for resiliency and scale, using an orchestrator like Kubernetes to scale the solution. There are also services like Azure Web Apps that provide a fully managed experience for running web apps and containers, but I don’t consider them serverless because they break the next rule.
3. You only pay for active invocations and never for idle time. This rule is important, and the essence of micro-billing. ACI is a great way to run a container, but I pay for it even when it’s not being used. A function, on the other hand, only bills when it’s called.

These rules are why I stopped calling managed databases “serverless.” So, what, then, does qualify as serverless?

The Azure serverless platform includes Azure Functions, Logic Apps, and Event Grid. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at Azure Functions.

Azure Functions

Azure Functions allows you to write code that is executed based on an event, or trigger. Triggers may include an HTTP request, a timer, a message in a queue, or any other number of important events. The code is passed details of the trigger but can also access bindings that make it easier to connect to resources like databases and storage. The serverless Azure Functions model is based on two parameters: invocations and gigabyte seconds.

Invocations are the number of times the function is invoked based on its trigger. Gigabyte seconds is a function of memory usage. Image a graph that shows time on the x-axis and memory consumption on the y-axis. Plot the memory usage of your function over time. Gigabyte seconds represent the area under the curve.

Let’s assume you have a microservice that is called every minute and takes one second to scan and aggregate data. It uses a steady 128 megabytes of memory during the run. Using the Azure Pricing Calculator, you’ll find that the cost is free. That’s because the first 400,000 Gigabyte seconds and 1 million invocations are free every month. Running every second (there are 2,628,000 seconds in a month) with double memory (256 megabytes), the entire monthly cost is estimated at $4.51.

Pricing calculator for Azure Functions

Recently I tweeted about my own experience with serverless cost (or lack thereof). I wrote a link-shortening tool. It uses a function to take long URLs and turn them into a shorter code I can easily share. I also have a function that takes the short code and performs the redirect, then stores the data in a queue. Another microservice processes items in the queue and stores metadata that I can analyze for later. I have tens of thousands of invocations per month and my total cost is less than a dollar.

A tweet about cost of running serverless code in Azure

Do I have your attention?

In future posts I will explore the cost model for Logic Apps and Event Grid. In the meantime…

Learn about and get started with your first Azure Function by following this link: https://aka.ms/go-funcs