Not a day goes by that Microsoft doesn’t announce new ways of engaging students and educators with Microsoft-based technology tools! Here are some of the ways Microsoft is engaging in education!
Get your free Office.com/teachers account and get started! Students and teachers, get the online versions of Office plus 1 TB online storage for free! And, there are 100s of education apps in the Microsoft Store.
Whether you are a classroom teacher or professional learning facilitator (or coach), you can use free Microsoft tools to create an online teaching and learning space. Take advantage of a “light” learning management system (LMS) option to make it easy for you and your students to gather, share, and collect resources for students and colleagues. Schools are depending on one of the solutions below to create a digital presence for staff and/or student sharing.
MS Classroom plus OneNote Class Notebook make it easy to issue assignments, track those assignments in calendars, engage students in conversations, aligned to individual assignments or for group work. With OneNote Class Notebook, teachers can distribute handouts, resources, as well as grade student work using digital ink, and that syncs to MS Classroom gradebook!
And, staff/students have access to Word, Powerpoint, Excel Online, OneDrive cloud storage and Microsoft Forms with built-in quiz and QR code functionality.
We'll introduce you to Microsoft Sway so that you can create and share interactive reports, presentations, assignments, projects, and more.
What is Sway?
Let's get started!
Sway is 100% teacher friendly and can be used in variety of different ways. Check out my top ten ideas below to get you thinking of ways to use Sway in your teaching.
The INSERT menu enables you to search the Internet and add a wide variety of content (check list below) to your Sway.
One neat point is that Sway keeps track of the source of the item that you add to your Sway!
You can insert all sorts of content into Sway!
Sways are composed of multiple cards that are combined into a storyline. Cards are containers that hold text, images and videos.
You can combine cards into groups. A collection of cards make up the storyline.
In addition to adding text, media, and group cards, you can easily incorporate tons of external content! See list below.
Interactive Multimedia in Sway - https://sway.com/IoxJQBigNCnNnrgZ
Create data in an Excel chart and you can get the "embed code" for that place it in the Embed Card.
These card types allow you to quickly insert content.
This card set allows you to add headings and text content.
Group cards let you combine your cards as shown to organize and present your message. You can use embedded slideshows, a grid, and several others.
This set allows you to incorporate image, video, tweets, audio, and embed content. This last item (embed) gives you access to a wide variety of sources on the Web.
Sway currently supports embedding content from the following sites:
Get a Free Office 365 Account or Microsoft Account
1.Go to Office.com/teachers (or use your existing Microsoft account)
2.Enter your school email address
3.Click on Get Started
4.Click on I’m a Teacher
5.Check your email for a confirmation link
Source: Pip Cleaves