Announcing new tools to help you transform classroom time and personalize learning for all students.

We’re rolling into the first day of Bett with the first of three live episodes of What’s New in EDU! The Microsoft Education team is in London all week, where we’ll be streaming the show each day at 5:00 p.m. UTC and going deeper into all the exciting updates announced in our Microsoft Education news post on Tuesday.

For Day 1 of Bett, Mark Sparvell and the team take us through some of the newest tools to help you transform classroom time and personalize the learning experience for your students.

We know teachers are in a constant race to get their learning out every day. And that’s just meeting the standard, before more hard-fought time has to go into personalizing learning for each student. We think some of the following features can help get some of your time back:

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Present more inclusively with live captions & subtitles in Microsoft PowerPoint


This new feature, powered by Microsoft AI, enables presenters to reach and engage all audiences with live presentation captions & subtitles that appear automatically in real-time. With live captions & subtitles in PowerPoint, you can ensure your presentations are understood by everyone, across languages and hearing access needs. This feature will support presenters across 12 spoken languages and display on-screen captions or subtitles in one of 60+ languages.

Benefits include:

  • Speech recognition that automatically adapts based on the presented content for more accurate recognition of names and specialized terminology.
  • The ability for presenters to easily customize the size, position, and appearance of subtitles. Customizations may vary by platform.
  • Disfluency removal and automatic punctuation making the subtitles clear for the audience.


The ability to display live captions & subtitles joins other accessible features in Office 365, like automatic suggestions for alt-text in Word and PowerPoint, expanded availability of automatic closed captions and searchable transcripts for videos in Microsoft Stream, enhancements to the Office 365 Accessibility Checker, and more.

Live captions & subtitles in PowerPoint will begin rolling out to Insiders in late January 2019 and will be available for Office 365 subscribers worldwide for PowerPoint on Windows 10, PowerPoint for Mac, and PowerPoint Online, over the next few months.

The Presentation Translator add-in for PowerPoint will continue to be supported, as we know this is a well-loved teacher tool. It is the inspiration for building live captions and subtitles natively into PowerPoint across platforms, so that all teachers and students can access the features easily.


Learning Tools adds live translation in over 60 languages


Today’s classrooms are extremely diverse and teachers have the incredible responsibility of reaching every student. Since communication is key, we’re including Translator features in more of our Office tools!

Immersive Reader has helped many students with reading speed and comprehension. As we announced earlier in January, Translator is now built into the Immersive Reader and will be available in over 60 languages.

We’ve added the ability for anyone to translate a page or word into another language, in real-time and all within Immersive Reader. This new capability will support Read Aloud, Syllables, Parts of Speech and Picture Dictionary. This is now rolled out worldwide.

Translator in Immersive Reader will be available in Word Online, OneNote Online, OneNote for Windows 10, OneNote iPad, OneNote Mac, Outlook Online, Teams, and Flipgrid. Check out the list of over 60 supported languages.

Reach all your students with even more Learning Tools updates

Check out the recent blog on the latest Learning Tools updates to help you reach all your students:

  1. OneNote Desktop Learning Tools update – The modern Immersive Reader interface comes to OneNote Desktop Learning Tools.
  2. Line Focus in Word Desktop – This feature enables students to focus on one, three, or five lines of text at a time. It will be available in Word Desktop and will be coming soon to Word for Mac and iPad.
  3. Page Colors in Word Desktop – Students can choose from a variety of colors. This feature is rolling out in Desktop Word and coming soon to Word for Mac and iPad.
  4. Parts of Speech language updates – Syllables and Parts of Speech for Korean, Arabic, and Hebrew coming soon.


Microsoft Teams updates to help you transform classroom time


Yesterday, we shared five new Teams features designed to save teachers time and supercharge learning, including Grade Sync, the new Assignments experience, mobile grading, and new integrations with Turnitin and MakeCode. Today, we’re excited to share even more features coming to Teams thanks to great feedback from you, our educator community.

Introducing our first open-source LMS integration in Teams!

The folks behind Microsoft Teams strive to build experiences to help educators and students collaborate effectively in their classrooms and save them valuable time. One of the key suggestions we have received from our educators is to integrate their Learning Management Systems (LMS) into Teams. With that in mind, we are very pleased to announce the release of Moodle’s integration in Microsoft Teams!

Moodle helps educators create effective online courses – and it’s open-source. For organizations using Microsoft Teams, the Moodle integration in Teams helps educators bring their students, conversations and content — along with their Moodle courses and assignments — together in one single hub. This integration offers two core experiences:

1. Moodle Tab

Educators can easily pin their Moodle course pages in their teams, and students can seamlessly access these course pages using Office 365 Single Sign-On, without having to type in their Moodle username and password.

2. Moodle Assistant Bot

This bot helps educators and students answer questions about their courses, assignments, and grades in Moodle and keeps them updated with regular notifications. This bot can also be accessed on mobile devices, so you can be updated on the go.

To help IT admins easily set this integration up, we have updated our open-source Office 365 Moodle Plugin with the following capabilities:

  • Auto-registration of your Moodle server with Azure AD.
  • One-click deployment of your Moodle Assistant bot to Azure.
  • Auto-provisioning of teams and auto-synchronization of team enrollments for all or select Moodle courses.
  • Auto-installation of the Moodle tab and the Moodle Assistant bot into each synchronized team. (Coming soon)
  • One-click publishing of the Moodle app into your private Teams App Store. (Coming soon)


If you’d like to learn how to get started, go to aka.ms/TeamsMoodle. If you have any questions, you can find us on aka.ms/TeamsMoodleDiscussion.

Read-only files folder, Class Materials coming to your team soon

Microsoft Teams is great for collaborating with your class, including sharing reference materials to help guide students. You can easily drop these files into the folder called ‘Class Materials,’ which is read-only by default.

Join a team by code on your mobile device

Joining a team with a code has become a popular way for students to join their classes on Teams. We’ve now added this ability to the Teams app on iOS and Android.

Customize chat settings for students and faculty

In talking to educators using Teams, we’ve learned a common request is to allow student-to-teacher chat, while also having the option to prevent students from chatting with each other. IT Admins can learn how to set this up here.

Rubric sharing 

We recently launched rubric grading inside Microsoft Teams and we’ve heard so much of your great feedback on the feature already. We’ve added a new capability that allows teachers to import or export their favorite rubrics from Teams Assignments. Now you can share great rubrics with other teachers and build on each other’s ideas from year to year, for stronger and more robust curricula.

Categorize your Assignments

Teachers can now categorize Assignments. Assignment categories are an easy way to organize your assignment by type – segment by Homework, Quizzes, or a unit of study.

Safari browser support

By popular demand – you will soon be able to use Microsoft Teams on macOS and iPad with Safari!

Access ThingLink right from Microsoft Teams

ThingLink is a tool that allows teachers to enhance images, videos or virtual tours with notes, sounds, video, or links.


Microsoft Stream, PowerPoint and Microsoft Photos enhancements enrich classroom learning experiences


It’s easier than ever to use video in the classroom to create more visual and immersive experiences for both teachers and students.

Expanded features in Microsoft Stream will give teachers a new way to seamlessly add quizzes, forms or polling into classroom videos. The Forms integration into Microsoft Stream helps make videos more engaging and interactive for students, while giving teachers a way to understand how well students are learning the lessons. Learn more at aka.ms/streamquiz.

Both teachers and students will soon be able to bring their Microsoft Stream videos into classroom presentations with the new embed feature, available in PowerPoint. Seamlessly use video to enrich all your classroom content and make learning more entertaining.

Give students a way to create videos that encourages collaborative storytelling with free tools they already have. Microsoft Photos does so much more than deliver an easy way to record and edit videos – students can add music and narration, text and filters, and even add 3D effects to videos. Head to aka.ms/videoeditoredu to learn more.


OneNote Class Notebook updates

 

As we announced in early January, there’s a new set of time-saving updates for teachers for OneNote Class Notebooks. These updates are rolling out in the Class Notebook Toolbar for the Windows 10 app, Online, iPad, and Mac and include:

  • The ability to distribute a page across multiple notebooks – one of our top educator requests!
  • Copy Content Library to allow quick copying of curriculum and content across multiple content libraries with a single click.
  • Improved page distribution interface and improved performance and speed of page distributions.
  • Math Class Notebook switch for teachers to control feature availability to students in OneNote UWP and OneNote Online.
  • Custom tags for OneNote Windows 10 and Mac now available.
  • The Send to OneNote Printer is now built-in to the Windows 10 app.


Updates across our Microsoft Education Tools to improve teaching and learning math


Ready to help all your students become confident in math? Check out our blog post on Teaching and Assessing Math Reimagined with Microsoft Education. We’ve included tips on how teachers can utilize new math features like:

  • Microsoft Forms:
    • Math keyboard for answering free-form Math questions.
  • OneNote for Windows 10 and Online:
    • Immersive Reader for steps-by-step solutions in Math pane.
    • The ability for teachers to control Math Assistant’s availability to students via Class Notebook.
  • OneNote Online:
    • Text to Math – the ability to type math as text, get it nicely formatted, solved and graphed using the Math Assistant.
  • Word Online:
    • Immersive Reader reading math equations from the page.


Student Voice & Expression: New stickers at Bett!


We are excited to announce two new sticker packs this week! Periodic Pals and Adventure Creatures are your new sidekicks on every educational journey. Periodic Pals are designed to encourage conversations in the classroom about the science behind how elements are present in both natural phenomena and manufacturing, with a cartoon twist.

Adventure Creatures live in a world where they take on assignments with gusto. They will charge ahead on your art projects, help you sew your footnotes together, and encourage you take a break while you roast some treats. Use these transparent stickers to combine and create your own narrative!

You can access the stickers below in OneNote Class Notebook and Microsoft Teams now. Coming soon to Microsoft Whiteboard for EDU!



Whiteboard for EDU now available worldwide!


Taking the magical simplicity of an analog whiteboard and adding interactive, collaborative technology, Microsoft Whiteboard for EDU gives the whole class a new space to engage, ideate, and create in real time. Teachers and students can brainstorm and grow ideas on this infinite canvas, coming together on lessons, projects, and more on Windows 10 devices and now iPad. Teachers can also pick up where they left off and never waste time getting back into a lesson, by securely saving boards to the cloud. There they can share them as live links or export them as images.

Supercharge your learning experience

From the ground up, Whiteboard for EDU has been designed with teachers and students in mind: to work the way you already do.

Export your board directly to OneNote Class Notebooks for safekeeping. Change Whiteboard’s background to a variety of new colors (including blackboard mode!) and reduce eye strain on large devices. Play with different line styles to support writing and graphing. Use education-themed stickers with your students to collect poll responses and give feedback in real time.

Increase the readability of quickly-jotted notes with Ink Beautification, which analyzes handwriting and automatically replaces it with more legible strokes. And for teachers and students who occasionally use analog whiteboards, you can convert pictures of your notes into real digital ink with Ink Grab, making the move from analog to digital seamless.

Get started today! Whiteboard for EDU is available today on Windows 10 and iPad! To learn more, provide feedback or become inspired by others using the app, join our Whiteboard for Education Facebook group.

This is just the beginning of our exciting Microsoft Education news this week! Be sure to tune in tomorrow and again on Friday at 5:00 p.m. UTC for another episode of What’s New in EDU Live.

  • Thursday, 1/24: New tech to support inclusive classrooms
  • Friday, 1/25: Affordable new Windows 10 devices