The What’s New in EDU crew is back from Bett, the world’s biggest education technology event where educators, ideas and edtech solutions came and left us with inspiration to spare – and share! If you’d like to catch up on all the Microsoft Education from the show (there was kind of a lot), check out our big Bett episode or the individual links below:

We can’t all go to London for Bett, but there’s still a trove of help, information, and useful technology waiting for educators at their local Microsoft Store. That’s where Microsoft Innovative Educators spearhead digital literacy programs that include coding and free field trips.

Our latest addition is FREE STEM Saturday learning experiences: to help teachers ignite students’ interest in STEM, while saving time and money in the classroom. Students learn how to code in Minecraft, build a robot using inexpensive household items, and manage cyber-bullying.

Learn more about fun, teacher-tested STEM workshops at your local Microsoft store.

There’s another event we’re celebrating in this episode of What’s New in EDU: Skype in the Classroom’s Literacy Month! Our global community of educators and their classes will connect virtually to read books and share stories with one another over with Skype in the Classroom, and many will even get the chance to talk to real-life authors and storytellers.

What kind of authors? Well, how about Cressida Cowell, author and illustrator of the hugely popular “How to Train Your Dragon” series? Skype in the Classroom is partnering with Little Brown Young Readers for a free broadcast event and live Q&A with Cressida Cowell on March 6th. Cressida will inspire students to tap into their boundless imagination and will show how using character development and details in stories make them more believable and fun.

Learn more about how students can meet the author of “How to Train your Dragon” and hundreds of authors for Skype in the Classroom’s Literacy Month.

We can’t wait for you to connect with others around the world and help inspire a love of reading and writing for your students.

We’re always looking to bring new features and sources of delight to our collaborative tools, so we also have an update for Flipgrid, the leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families around the world. Flipgrid promotes fun and social learning by giving every student an equal and amplified voice on the topics you define!

We all know that #StudentVoice is 🔮MAGIC 🔮and the Flipgrid design team has conjured up loads of new selfie stickers! Search and choose from hundreds of stickers (including emoji!) when you decorate your Flipgrid selfie!

https://twitter.com/Flipgrid/status/1095799792725307393

If you’ve watched this episode of What’s New in EDU you’ll also have seen that it’s almost time for Microsoft Education Exchange (E2). We’re inspired by educators who innovate in the classroom and provide the best learning opportunities for their students. For this year’s E2, educators from all over will come to Paris. Paris is home to many of the world’s top-rated schools and educational facilities and France is committed to public schooling as a free service to its citizens, providing equity to all residents.

The theme for this year’s E2 discussions is the importance of ensuring all students have a voice, and how educators can address the social and emotional well-being of students. If you’re unable to join, here’s some info on how to participate online:

  • Facebook Live – We will be hosting a live stream from E2 on both Wednesday, April 3rd and Thursday, April 4th on Facebook Live! Please amplify this with your educators and networks.
  • Share your #Road2E2story on Twitter!
    • Have a Twitter account (if you haven’t used Twitter yet, this is a great time to get started)
    • Share a video of yourself and the town/country you are from along with a message about how you feel about coming to E2
    • Post to https://twitter.com using #Road2E2 and #MicrosoftEDU
    • Once we have everyone registered for E2 and assigned to their Challenge Teams, we will create a Flipgrid of everyone coming to E2!


Get more details on Microsoft Education Exchange (E2) 2019.

To cap off the episode, we also covered our recent announcement for IT professionals: We will be bringing the BrightBytes Data Management platform, DataSense into the Microsoft Education family. With both Azure and the DataSense platform your school can better collect, manage and control your data to help drive the best possible learning outcomes for students.

Learn more about BrightBytes coming to Microsoft Education’s family of products.

Phew, and that’s another episode done. Thank you for watching, sharing and being inspiring. Stay tuned for the next episode of What’s New in EDU soon by following @MicrosoftEDU or the Microsoft Education Blog.