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#134 Microsoft in Education posts this week

Posts of interest to teachers

What’s New in EDU: Celebrate learning without barriers with Skype-a-Thon, Microsoft Translator and Minecraft: Educati...

Borders and barriers can’t slow us down in the November episode of What’s New in EDU, our monthly round-up of the latest efforts and products from Microsoft Education. In this episode: Students and educators from across the world get ready to unite for Skype-a-Thon, Microsoft Translator looks to improve communication in the classroom, and Minecraft: Education Edition debuts a new tutorial for aspiring coders-to-be.

Microsoft's new 'Sets' feature kills standalone application windows

Microsoft is testing a new "Sets" feature that groups multiple applications into the same window, similar to how you'd organize tabs in a browser. Microsoft is only teasing a very early preview of the feature for now — it's rolling out to a small subset of Microsoft's Insider program that seeds betas of new Windows versions to those who opt-in — but it's already clear the feature will be a huge change.While Windows 10 has had multitasking features like Task View baked in from the very beginning, these features have been more focused on making it easier to switch between applications. Sets promises to cut out many of the extra steps required by app switching by letting you group multiple apps in the same window.

Microsoft Garage: Presentation Translator - an Office add-in for PowerPoint 

Presentation Translator is an Office add-in for PowerPoint that enables presenters to display translated subtitles in real time while giving audience members the opportunity to follow along in their own language, on their own device. 

Minecraft: Education Edition Builds A New Parliament – SamuelMcNeill.com

In New Zealand it's been pretty hard to avoid what has become a spectacularly unconventional general election, all culminating with voting happening on this coming Saturday, 23rd September 2017. No fewer than three major parties have had leadership changes in the last couple of months before the voting begins and that excludes the stepping down… To further engage the younger population of New Zealand in the democratic process, the NZ Parliamentary Services partnered with Microsoft NZ to deliver a Minecraft: Education Edition solution whereby they could recreate virtual parliaments with their own unique twists on how these 11-13yrs think it should look. This was covered by our local media here, and NZ Parliamentary Services own news coverage here, which includes a good video walk through of one of the M:EE worlds:

OneNote & Microsoft Teams to the Rescue! – Teach 4 Tomorrow

I’ve been suffering from a horrible cold and cough and it got worse last night, which unfortunately resulted in me missing school today. But there is indeed a silver lining in every dark cloud because I got to do an amazing lesson through Microsoft Teams and OneNote to my class while I was comfortably sitting on my bed! In my school, when a teacher is absent a ‘Relief Teacher’ sits in her place. My students are used to coming into class and login onto Microsoft Teams. Just to make sure things go smoothly, I left word for the relief teacher to instruct my students to login and see my instructions in ‘Converstaions’

8 Microsoft Teams tips and tricks | Computerworld

A latecomer to the group chat scene, Microsoft Teams has become a powerful corporate chat application. Teams enjoys one significant advantage over competitors like Slack and Convo: It comes with a Business Essentials, Business Premium or Enterprise Office 365 subscription, which means many companies already own it. Like other chat tools, Teams lets you set up multiple channels (discussion areas) for your team, share and store files, and conduct live voice and video meetings. As part of the Microsoft Office suite, Teams integrates with other Microsoft apps like Word, OneNote, Planner, and SharePoint. Indeed, Microsoft has announced that Teams will eventually replace Skype for Business as the primary communications client in Office 365...Is your team using Microsoft Teams for collaboration? These tips can help you get the most out of it.

SchoolNet SA - IT's a Great Idea: Get your learners involved in the Hour of Code

Microsoft is once again teaming up with Code.org to support the Hour of Code. Although the activities on code.org/minecraft can be completed at no cost at any time, learners around the world are encouraged to be part of an initiative to get students learning the basics of coding during Computer Science Education Week – between 4 and 10 December 2017. You may have got your learners doing the Minecraft themed Hour of Code activities last year, and if you would like to use these tutorials again, they are still available. This year, however, Minecraft is supporting the Hour of Code with a NEW Minecraft tutorial that introduces a new character: the Minecraft Agent! This tutorial is focused on helping students learn to write code that will help their Agent overcome obstacles. Using the Minecraft world they know and love, students of all ages and any experience level can learn the basics of coding, and how to use problem solving and critical thinking to achieve their goals.

5 amazing books I read this year | Bill Gates

Bill Gates shares five amazing books he read in 2017 including “The Best We Could Do” by Thi Bui, “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond, “Believe Me” by Eddie Izzard, “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen, and “Energy and Civilization” by Vaclav Smil.

5 Great reasons for students to use OneNote - Technology Enhanced Learning

Whether you are a tutor or a student, and whatever your discipline, it’s likely that you are going to have to make notes. Paper and pen can be convenient and it’s something we’re all used to, but digital notes have a lot to offer.
1. OneNote is free for Sussex University students and staff
Staff and students at the University of Sussex have access to a free Office 365 account which includes the Microsoft Office suite of software for personally-owned computers and mobile devices as well as 1TB of cloud storage. You may be familiar with Office programs such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, but perhaps you haven’t explored Microsoft’s digital notebook, OneNote yet.