Watch as #students collaborate across schools with #Sway and @Skype #WhotoYou

Skype in the classroom inspires learning

Thousands of teachers are inspiring the next generation of global citizens through transformative learning experiences.
Imagine taking your class on an "around the world" field trip or having your favorite author lead today's class. You can do both of these and more without leaving your classroom thanks to Skype. It's a great use of technology in the classroom!
Learn more about Skype for Education and explore ways to use Skype to transform your students everyday learning experiences. For more information on Education Technology Solutions call Managed Solution at 800-308-6107.
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.

Video: See How the Modern Classroom uses #Sway by #Microsoft as a Presentation Platform

The Modern Classroom Meets Sway by Microsoft

Sway integrates web video, text, social media and photo searches all right in the presentation platform - which means more time learning and less time searching and gluing and designing... All the stuff that took up the bulk of presentation prep.

Try it for yourself free today!

 

Clairemont High School Students Learn Critical IT Skills Through Managed Solution and Junior Achievement Job Shadow Initiative

Junior Achievement of San Diego logo

Clairemont High School Students Learn Critical IT Skills Through Managed Solution and Junior Achievement Job Shadow Initiative

The collaboration kicks off Computer Science Education Week which encourages students to pursue careers in STEM-related industries
SAN DIEGO, Calif. – In honor of Computer Science Education Week (Dec.7-11), Junior Achievement of San Diego and Managed Solution are partnering to impact the lives of 60 students from Clairemont High School by teaching critical IT skills and encouraging them to pursue careers in STEM-related industries.
The job shadow event is Tuesday, Dec. 8 at Managed Solution, located at 9655 Granite Ridge Drive, Suite 550 from 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM.
While spending a day at the business site, students will be exposed to real-world learning and technology. In addition to presentations on the various job positions at Managed Solution, one of the fastest growing IT companies in Southern California, employees will share life experiences and career advice through six project-based activities during the workday.
“In the world of technology we are constantly learning, so exposing our students early to real-world educational experiences is key,” said Sean Ferrel, President and CEO at Managed Solution. “I believe industry themed curriculum that incorporates career and technical courses with real-world application really prepares younger generations for careers in the industry.”
The job shadow program helps students recognize the link between academic subjects and actual workplace skills. The students learn dressing and speaking professionally, being on time and working as a team, are just as important as a strong academic foundation. In fact, providing young people with real-world learning experiences can be key to improving U.S. high school graduation rates. The experience allows students to spend quality time with a professional in a workplace setting, and to make valuable contacts for future employment prospects.
“Junior Achievement is excited to team up with Managed Solution on this important initiative,” said Marla Black, President and CEO at Junior Achievement of San Diego County. “Both organizations remain focused on how to drive impact and equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to be college and career ready.”
The educational program will include the following six breakout stations:
Video Editing & Filming
The session will introduce why videos are important in every industry and how Managed Solution uses them for marketing, as well as, creating “how-to videos” to show clients how to use certain technologies. During the exercise, students will film a portion of the day, upload and edit the video with the goal of creating an overall recap of Clairemont IT Day. Students will use a Cannon EOS 6D DSLR camera to record other breakout sessions and/or briefly speak about their experience at the event. They will then upload the video to the computer and edit it in Adobe Premire Pro. The final edited video will be uploaded to Youtube to showcase their workday experience.

Project Management

Students are challenged to create their own project management plan. They will be responsible for providing and setting-up a plan for a client to watch all the sports games from the office conference room. Students must provide insight into how long it’s going to take, and how much it will cost.

Coding/Web Design

At the coding/web design station, students will look at the elements of current web design trends and how third parties like WordPress are making it feasible for those without coding experience to create a website. Students will also see why knowing CSS is critical to making their own website template.

Partner Marketing

The station will give an overview of partner marketing and why it is valuable for an IT company to leverage partnerships. Students will then create their own partner program.

App Development / Go to Market Strategy</h3<

The station will cover the steps of building a successful mobile app - from conception to the go-to market strategy. This course is designed to show students what steps they need to take to create great cross-device mobile web experiences. This activity will focus on the discovery phase of App Development where they will brainstorm, conceptualize, design/lay out, and then create a marketing plan for their app.

Technical

The station will cover a brief overview of cloud services and how cloud technology is changing the marketplace for technical roles. Students will get to utilize cloud services and watch a demo for cloud on demand.

About Managed Solution

Managed Solution is a full-service technology firm that empowers business by delivering, maintaining and forecasting the technologies they’ll need to stay competitive in their market place. Founded in 2002, the company quickly grew into a market leader and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT Companies in Southern California.

About Junior Achievement of San Diego County

Since 1950, Junior Achievement of San Diego County has provided life-changing programs to more than 730,000 youth—in the classroom and after school—to foster an understanding of how the “real world” works. To ensure youth are prepared for their future, JA teaches them how to get a job, start a business and how to manage money. Home to the popular McGrath Family JA BizTown and Mission Fed JA Finance Park, JA of San Diego will reach 70,000+ youth from 36 school districts during the 2015-16-calendar school year. JA San Diego receives support from more than 5,200 volunteers annually, including 48 board members, and has a staff of 22 and a budget of $3 million. For the latest news and information, please visit: jasandiego.org

Download the PDF press release here.

Contacts:
Danielle Hamra
Managed Solution
858.429.3067
dhamra@managedsolution.com
@MSMarketingTeam

Kristi Zimsky
Junior Achievement of San Diego
619.906.4926/office
404.944.0414/cell
kzimsky@jasandiego.org
@JASanDiego

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Case Study: Pepperdine University is Enhancing Learning and Connections In and Out of the Classroom

case study pepperdine - managed solution

Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management enrolls approximately 2,000 students, many of whom work full time. Connecting and engaging busy students can be challenging, so the business school took a page from Fortune 500 companies: it uses Yammer to foster collaboration, enhance learning, and forge tighter relationships among students, faculty, staff, and increasingly, alumni.

The Yammer Solution

In 2010, the school integrated Yammer into Graziadio’s Learning Environment and Network (GLEAN). Since then, Yammer has been virally adopted by most business school students, faculty, and staff.
“We knew students wanted broader engagement, but we did not anticipate how much they’d help each other with logistical questions, IT support, business contacts, professional advice, and moral support,” says Director of eLearning Susan Gautsch. “We also didn’t anticipate the social power of Yammer, which psychologically bridges online and face-to-face experiences. It creates a strong sense of community, regardless of students’ schedules or where they’re studying.”
Students from Graziadio’s Master of Science in Organizational Development program, who come from six countries and only meet five times over two years, stay engaged using Yammer: one class of 35 students has collectively posted 6,000 messages over an eight-month period.
One popular Yammer implementation is what the business school calls Peer Connection. “It’s student driven,” Gautsch explains. “They use it to get to know each other and set up affinity groups.” For instance, students join the Marketing group to network and swap ideas about industry news and course topics.
The school’s faculty also put Yammer to good use. Many have set up private Yammer groups to facilitate and deepen class discussions. Another popular program is Classrooms Across Borders, a way for faculty to share their expertise. Students can follow topics or professors, who post open questions or share articles to generate online discussion. “It’s a great way for faculty to have more of a presence, to get what they do out there to the wider student body,” Gautsch observes.
Yammer is also popular with staff. Academic advisors use it to communicate broadly, answering questions and sending out updates on everything from upcoming meetings to traffic snarls that may make it hard to get to campus. “Our deans are getting online more and more to engage with students and alumni, which they appreciate,” Gautsch observes. She adds that, “Alumni are a growing part of our network, since students who use Yammer want to keep using it to stay engaged with the university after they graduate.”

THE RESULTS

An end to communication silos. Yammer allows faculty, staff, and students to communicate across departments and campuses.
Deeper connections. Professors and staff use Yammer to expand on classroom discussions and tighten ties with students and each other.
New networking opportunities. Full- and part-time students make cross-program connections and network with alumni through topic-driven conversations.
An ever-growing data repository. Due to its search functionality and ease of contributing content, Yammer is a valuable living knowledge base.

ABOUT YAMMER

Yammer (https://about.yammer.com) is a best-in-class Enterprise Social Network (ESN) used by more than 500,000 organizations worldwide —including approximately 85 percent of the Fortune 500 —to connect and communicate. Yammer brings together employees, content, conversations, and business data in a single location. Founded in 2008, Yammer was acquired by Microsoft and is available with Office 365, to deliver a comprehensive, seamless social experience across the applications people already use.
For more information about Pepperdine:
http://bschool.pepperdine.edu
For more information about Yammer:
https://about.yammer.com
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.

The rise of access management in education

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The rise of access management in education

By Dean Wiech as written on Exclusive.multibriefs.com
The often-undiscussed importance that administrative technology has on school districts might be tantamount to suggesting that the only use for technology in a school district is in its classroom. There are far-reaching solutions that provide overwhelming benefits to the classroom, even if these technologies are not used to deliver homework to mobile devices or tally the marks of a classroom's population.
The day-to-day management of software solutions and management protocols have a dramatic impact on educational entities. And there's more to the management of learning technologies than simply passing out tablets to students.
The IT technologies required to power a school district are often not covered, yet there's a whole world of information technology and systems working in every district in the country that are doing more for the students served by the well-publicized technology of the classroom.
California's Chino Valley Unified School District has user accounts that let students access class discussions and syllabuses by email, let staff access grading systems, and even allow parents to communicate with teachers and view student grades. The challenges of managing these 34,000 user accounts was growing increasingly difficult and time-consuming for the school district.
The management of all user accounts was an entirely manual process, creating enormous inefficiencies for district IT leaders. They lacked any clear standards and consistency, and third-party scripts did nothing to simplify the situation or help with the management of accounts in other applications, such as Renaissance Learning, Riverdeep, Orchard and Easy Grade Pro.
Constant growth and limited staffing to manage the problem created a breaking point, meaning a change was needed. The district needed to streamline and find a solution allowing it the ability to automate its entire user-account life cycle.
Moving to an access management solution to automatically manage user account creation and deletion across the district and securely delegate day-to-day administrative tasks to employees proved to be the secret ingredient in the sauce. Automating operations to run in the background along with the ability to integrate the student information database and other applications saved countless hours for the IT staff each day.
The user-account provisioning process, including account creation with all group memberships, was also fully automated. As a result, students use the same user name across all applications and can use one login credential to access all accounts required by the district. Additionally, from the start of a school term or student's entrance into a school, all access points are set up correctly the first time and all subsequent updates are automatic.
Giving staff the ability to manage user access and system rights had an immediate impact for the entire district. Teachers can now solve problems with student accounts — such as a forgotten password or locked-out user account — without any technical training or administrative privileges. What used to take hours to solve involving the IT department, now takes seconds with the click of a single button.
Likewise, Culver City Unified School District, in Culver City, California, had trouble with managing an overwhelming amount of account creation and management manually. The district encompasses four elementary schools, two middle schools, two high schools and several other schools, such as a language program and adult education. Among the 10 schools, they manage 800 staff members and more than 7,000 students.
The process was slow. It was extremely inefficient. In the summer of 2014, the district leadership decided it wanted to implement Google Apps for its staff and students to enhance the learning experience.
"We had originally planned to do manual exports and imports through our SIS and Google manually," Robert Quinn, technology director at the school district said. But district leadership quickly realized this would be a tremendous undertaking.
Quinn was proactive. He decided the district should look into a solution that would assist with the account creation and management process. Contacting a professional peer at a nearby school district, Quinn was told to explore access and automated password management solutions.
With the technology, Culver City USD has been able to automate its entire account management process so that no manual action is required. When a new student begins at the district, that student's information is simply entered into the student information system, and all necessary accounts and access rights are automatically created in the school's role management system. Students automatically receive a Google Apps account, and they are placed in the appropriate groups, class systems and any other actions or groups required of the district.
"When a new student joins the district, within 24 hours they have their accounts created and everything set up for them," Quinn said. "(The access management system) has been a huge life-saver for me. It probably has saved hours of my work schedule every week."
The newly automated processes ensure students quickly have their necessary accounts created and updated throughout the school year so they are able to engage in their classroom activities and after-school work. They can also engage in the education process by simply uploading documents and assignments required of the coursework.
"The teachers love how easily student accounts are created," Quinn said."They probably don't realize how difficult it would be without the access management solution."
This is no small problem, and it likely is bigger than many of the in-classroom technology solutions or issues often and overzealously covered. Access management is larger than the sample offered by Chino Valley and Culver City, and the thousands of other entities that suffer from overwhelming management and burden of these "tiny" issues.
Hutto Independent School District serves 5,411 children in the greater Hutto area of Texas. The area near Austin is one of the fastest-growing in the state.
Hutto ISD sought a secure a solution that would allow the IT staff to proactively manage its users rather than work in a reactive cycle. Hutto administrative staff had been manually creating and managing user accounts to systems and applications.
Data was often out of sync and insecure, and master info cleanups were disorganized and inconsistent. Likewise, managing more than 6,300 user accounts — students, faculty and staff — became time-consuming and forced the district to consider adding a software solution that would provide automated support and could connect with the district's Skyward student information system.
Travis Brown, network administrator for Hutto ISD, said the access management system's connection to Skyward has "saved our district considerable man hours and resources by connecting to the Skyward Student Information System to be able to automatically manage our user accounts, and we began saving immediately."
Faced with increasing budget constraints, it was important to Hutto district leaders that they chose a solution that was efficient, but cost-efficient, and could show ROI within weeks, not months or years. They also needed to implement a solution that was scalable as they increase in size and bring on new technologies for their users. They also decided they needed a solution that could have a user-managed Web portal that would take some tasks off the IT plate and put it in the hands of the faculty and staff.
Hutto ISD implemented an access management solution to manage bulk user creation, modifications and deletions. What was once a manual process has now become an automated project that runs daily for the school district.
The access management solution also has allowed the IT staff to push password reset questions and user modifications to the staff via Web portal. The Web portal lets faculty and staff reset student passwords without having to wait for an IT staff member to fulfill the request. This, on average, is saving two to three hours per request. And, because passwords can be reset by the faculty and staff, there is little to no down time for students.
Hutto ISD also added the provisioning of user accounts to Google Apps. By implementing a Google Apps user provisioning project to connect AD and Google Apps they will continue to advance technology to the school district in a smart, proactive way without exhausting man hours or additional resources. The connection to Google Apps projects will run daily with the previous synchronization projects.
The point of these technology implementations is there are many more complex issues with IT and technology challenges within school districts than are often discussed or covered. While the in-classroom technology is the current sexy topic, it's only one small portion of the challenges faced by districts throughout the country.
Additionally, without such "internal" solutions to handle many of these management and access issues, students wouldn't be able to use their devices and other technologies in the classroom anyway.

Source: http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/the-rise-of-access-management-in-educatio

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Microsoft YouthSpark expands youth programs for computer science education

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Microsoft YouthSpark expands youth programs for computer science education

by Suzanne Choney, Microsoft News Center Staff as written on Microsoft.com
It gave Victoria Tran confidence and a possible career path. It’s giving Joey Cannon the opportunity he has long wanted. They’re among the high school students around the country benefitting from computer science education, something in short supply around the world, and in the U.S., where less than a quarter of high schools teach it.
On Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced an expansion of the YouthSpark program to increase access to computer science education for all youth worldwide, and especially for those from under-represented backgrounds, with a $75 million commitment in community investments over the next three years.
In the U.S., where the TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) program brings computer science education to high school students and teachers, this flagship program of YouthSpark will increase mightily, going from 131 schools in 18 states to nearly 700 schools in 33 states in the next three years.
“If we are going to solve tomorrow’s global challenges, we must come together today to inspire young people everywhere with the promise of technology,” said Nadella. “We can’t leave anyone out.”

Excerpts from an interview conducted by computer science students, as part of Microsoft YouthSpark’s support of Roadtrip Nation.
YouthSpark is a global initiative to increase access for all youth to learn computer science, empowering them to achieve more for themselves, their families and their communities.
With the TEALS program, tech industry volunteers are needed to team-teach computer science to 30,000 students, a message Nadella shared during the annual Dreamforce conference hosted by Salesforce, where he called upon thousands of tech professionals to serve as TEALS volunteers.
Those TEALS volunteers create a ripple effect – you could even call it a tidal wave, really – with what they do. They teach not only students, but prep teachers as well to go on to lead their own computer science classes in subsequent years.
Since the program began in 2009, “We’ve had an amazing response from schools and teachers, as well as volunteers from across the industry, without which none of this would be possible,” says Kevin Wang, the very first volunteer, and the founder of TEALS who works for Microsoft.
Boston technology teacher Ingrid Roche says TEALS volunteers are superb. “Either that, or they’re magically phenomenal,” she says. “They have a ton of knowledge, and they are able to share it with me and the students without being condescending in any way, or judgmental.”
Roche teaches at the Boston Latin Academy, part of Boston Public Schools. The school has about 1,700 students in grades 7-12. The student population reflects the area’s diversity – including students who are black, white, Latino and Asian.
TEALS volunteers, Roche says, “have a sensitivity” to students from different backgrounds.
“That’s really helpful with TEALS having that on their radar,” Roche says. “If it’s always the student who went to computing summer camp raising his hand in class every single time, if he always gets called on – he’s going to get better, and the others won’t.”
By taking a TEALS class, Victoria Tran of San Francisco, and the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, learned about career paths she might not otherwise have considered – or been self-assured enough to try.
“I’m getting better and better. I feel more confident in my abilities. I’ve never been so sure of myself and what I can do,” says Tran, who is contemplating majoring in computer science or electrical engineering in college.
In the state of Washington, TEALS is in its second year at the public International School in Bellevue, where teacher Janet Roberts has been working with TEALS volunteers to teach computer science.
“I have some ancient programming experience in Fortran, and without the expertise of the TEALS people, it would have been very difficult to launch this course,” says Roberts, who also teaches math.
The TEALS volunteers, Roberts says, “have been amazing, dedicated and patient” in working with both her and the students. Last year, there were two classes in AP Computer Science offered, with 55 students in both classes at the high school, which has about 300 students.
Joey Cannon, 18, took the TEALS class last year at the International School and is helping with it this year as a teacher’s assistant.
Without the TEALS program, he says, the school’s AP Computer Science class “wouldn’t be possible,” Joey says. “Even if we just had one teacher who knew all of it really well, it would have been hard for them to be able to provide all the help that students needed.”
Making computer science education the rule and not the exception is achievable, but it takes everyone’s help.
Says TEALS founder Wang: “We need to get to a point where computer science classes are offered alongside other classes like biology, chemistry and physics. We have a long road ahead of us. Microsoft is sort of seeding this investment, but in order for this problem to be solved, we’ve got to have everybody joining us.
“You can think of this is as a movement, and Microsoft is supporting a movement,” Wang says. TEALS “is really there to help our local schools, all of our local schools, wherever they may be, to prepare our kids to make sure they’re ready for what comes next, no matter what they do with their lives.”
Microsoft extends this commitment to the workplace as well through its Explore Microsoft 12-week summer internship program, specifically designed for college students. Explore Microsoft offers a rotational experience that enables the students to gain experience in different software engineering roles.
That’s where Chuma Kabaghe, a native of Zambia attending the University of Illinois, got her start.
“The Explore program exposed me to the three core technology disciplines at Microsoft. I also learned about various areas in the technology sector,” said Kabaghe. “The Explore program allowed me to see what is possible and gave me an opportunity to prove to myself that I really do have what it takes to be a successful software engineer.”
And she does. Kabaghe has now joined Microsoft in that role.
Lead image: Victoria Tran at a TEALS coding event in San Francisco.

Source: http://news.microsoft.com/features/microsoft-youthspark-expands-youth-programs-for-computer-science-education/

5 Things to Learn in Office 365 for Back to School via @365ninja

5 Things to Learn in Office 365 for Back to School

Whether you’re an eager student, a busy teacher, or an on-the-go parent, Office 365 has tools that can help make the transition back to school easier. Many children and adults have already begun their school years, but it’s still beneficial to take a few moments to brush up on some of these skills. Read on for tips with time management, presentation creation, and more.

Download and install the full versions of Office 2013 apps

If your version of Office 365 comes with full 2013 installation, you’ll definitely want to take advantage of it. Some plans come with up to five installs so you can use Word, PowerPoint, Excel and more across all your devices. While using Office Online is sufficient for many students, being able to use the familiar and full-featured 2013 versions of the Office suite applications can be beneficial.

Create to do lists in OneNote to manage your work

Creating checklists is a built-in capability of OneNote that you can use for all sorts of different things. Perhaps the most obvious use is a to do list, and in fact, the checkbox is actually called a To Do tag in OneNote. You can use this tag throughout a OneNote page; it doesn’t have to be used only in a line-by-line list format. For example, you may take lecture notes and use the To Do tag to flag and track pieces of information to follow up on.

Master the art of the PowerPoint

It can be challenging and intimidating to create a PowerPoint presentation that is informative, effective, and attractive. But you don’t need to be a graphic designer to create beautiful PowerPoint slides as long as you keep in mind a few key tips. You’re sure to encounter a situation where you need to create an effective presentation as the school year kicks into gear. Click the link above to visit our post containing a plethora of PPT pointers.

Get comfortable with Word collaboration

One of the most significant components of the evolution of the Microsoft Office Suite in recent history is the inclusion of collaboration and co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel (Online versions, specifically). Working together in these programs is a large part of many academic projects. Check out the video above and the linked post for more on collaborating in Word Online for essays, lab reports, and more.

Back up your files in OneDrive for Business

If you’re using Office 365, you should be syncing your files with OneDrive for Business. Not only does it allow you to access and work on documents from anywhere, it’s also a backup method. Most of your files will be synced manually once the ODfB sync client is installed, but you can check out the video above to learn how to perform a manual sync if necessary, and navigate to find your OneDrive for Business files on a PC.

Source: http://www.365ninja.com/5-things-to-learn-in-office-365-for-back-to-school/

Microsoft Hackathon 2015 winner extends OneNote to improve learning outcomes for students

One_Note_Cape_Kids-1600x700 managed solution

Microsoft Hackathon 2015 winner extends OneNote to improve learning outcomes for students

By Athima Chansanchai as written on Microsoft.com
Education is a must-have ingredient for success. And to succeed in education, reading and writing is essential. The challenges that come with language barriers and learning disabilities such as dyslexia are vast and varied, but luckily technology is able to help many students overcome literacy obstacles.
One solution is coming from a team at Microsoft that spans collaboration between Windows, OneNote, Bing and Microsoft Research: the OneNote for Learning extension. The team and their project emerged victorious over more than 3,300 other projects and 13,000 other hackers around the world competing in the company’s second annual //oneweek Hackathon during the last week of July.
Sebastian Greaves, a Vancouver-based OneNote developer, thinks of the extension as a toolbox with many small tools that can solve big problems. It has special text formatting tools that can make reading, writing and note-taking easier. Features include enhanced dictation powered by Bing speech recognition services, immersive reading that uses Windows services of simultaneous audio text playback with highlighting, and natural language processing that relies on Microsoft Research.
“One of the key things we wanted to achieve is to make sure no student ever got behind in their education because of difficulties with reading,” says Greaves, who drove down to Redmond, Washington, with others from his office to work side-by-side with the entire team during Hackathon. “We wanted to make sure that was as little a barrier as possible, so they can focus on what they’re learning.”

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More than a dozen of Greaves’ teammates worked together for more than eight weeks to create the free OneNote extension, which will debut this fall in several schools in the U.S. and France.
“One of the great things about this project was that we utilized loads of different services,” Greaves says. “It meant that we could do so much more than we could’ve done if we had to write it all from scratch.”
By connecting with so many existing technologies across Microsoft, the team was able to do a lot in a short period of time. Every team member made key contributions to push the project forward, says Jeff Petty, the accessibility lead for Windows for Education and the program manager who led the grand prize-winning team.
“It takes a tremendous amount of work to envision it, pull it together and then deliver it in such a way where it just makes sense for people,” says Petty. “I don’t think we could have done something as powerful without having real breadth and depth on the team.”
OneNote Hackathon finalists OneNote team in Redmond, Wash. (left to right) Jeff Petty, Rob McKaughan, Chris Quirk, Mira Shah, Mike Tholfsen, Greg Hitchcock, Kevin Larson and Daniel Hubbell on August 11, 2015. (Photography by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)

OneNote Hackathon finalists OneNote team in Redmond, Wash. (left to right) Jeff Petty, Rob McKaughan, Chris Quirk, Mira Shah, Mike Tholfsen, Greg Hitchcock, Kevin Larson and Daniel Hubbell on August 11, 2015. (Photography by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)

Petty was interested in finding opportunities to deliver better learning outcomes for students and teachers. He focused on dyslexia, which affects as much as 20 percent of the population. He connected with a team in OneNote that was working on solving problems for dyslexic readers, such as visual crowding. That team found ways to put more space between letters, which makes words more readable.
That team had won an internal OneNote hackathon in the spring for that idea, led by Valentin Dobre, a software engineer, and Greaves.
Petty recognized this was a great start, but soon he and the expanding team also realized they could do more to pull together a more wide-reaching solution for students.
“When you address challenges with reading and writing, the benefits extend far beyond the original audience you had in mind,” says Petty. “By solving a problem for one audience, we’re actually going to make life easier for many more people.”
In his work with Windows, they were able to take advantage of the immersive reading function, with the ability to highlight text and have it read aloud, which increases reading comprehension. The next big connection was finding font and reading experts in Windows research.
“They helped us gel,” Petty says. “They backed up our solutions with science. Nothing that we built came from what we just thought was a good idea. It’s all based on prior research. These are proven interventions for students with dyslexia and also techniques that create a better reader for everybody.”
The researchers provided additional ideas for improving the team’s tool chest, like breaking words down into syllables to improve word recognition, and reading comprehension mode, which highlights different parts of speech like verbs and subordinate clauses.
Mira Shah was the team’s user research expert and formerly a speech pathologist. She gave them a real-world perspective with her experience in schools and seeing firsthand what worked and what didn’t.
Petty served as the glue to the team, bringing a broad perspective to reading and writing, and kept them on track with guiding principles, such as developing something backed by science, and keeping everyone focused on delivering something that would make a difference in people’s lives – something they could all be proud of, regardless of the outcome.
“I think we can make reading and writing better for everybody,” Petty says. “And if we really focus on people with disabilities, and we understand what works for them, we can bring those designs and solutions to our products that benefit everyone.”
Once the team came together, they shared a common drive to finish what they started.
“At no point did we think we were not going to ship,” Petty says. “OneNote was not interested in doing this as an experiment. Hackathon forced us to create a prototype they could polish to take it to schools in the fall.”
During the three very intense days of the //oneweek Hackathon, everyone on the team met each other for the first time, working practically nonstop under the Redmond tents that housed 3,000 people during the working sessions. Having the Vancouver-based OneNote development members – Greaves, Dominik Messinger and Pelle Nielsen – join the rest of the team was critical to their success.
“We could not have done it without them being there,” Petty says. “It was a completely different way of working, to get rapid feedback and iterate and iterate and iterate. We’d give them protected blocks of time where they got no additional feedback. Then we’d come back together for joint review. We were doing iterations while they were coding, then we had to decide to either refine functionality or bring new features. There is no way we could have made the same progress had we not all been there.”
At the Hackathon, the team also met the mother of a daughter who has severe dyslexia, working with another team. She believed what the OneNote for Learning team was doing was going to make a difference, and her reaction gave them even more confidence they were on the right track.
OneNote Hackathon finalists OneNote team in Vancuouver, Canada (left to right) Mark Flores, Alex Pereira, Sebastian Greaves, Pelle Nielsen, Scott Leong, Dominik Messinger, Reza Jooyandeh, Ken Wong on August 11, 2015. (Photography by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)

OneNote Hackathon finalists OneNote team in Vancuouver, Canada (left to right) Mark Flores, Alex Pereira, Sebastian Greaves, Pelle Nielsen, Scott Leong, Dominik Messinger, Reza Jooyandeh, Ken Wong on August 11, 2015. (Photography by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)

And for developer and team member Dominik Messinger, whose native language isn’t English, the project provided him with better tools to improve his own language skills, such as dividing words into semantic units for better comprehension – and pronunciation.
“I caught myself reading out some notes for OneNote documentation, and just listening to it, discovered some words I’ve totally pronounced wrong. Text to speech is pretty useful,” Messinger jokes. “Also, having short term goals and having all this energy, coding really fast and collaborating really, really fast – that was quite an experience. We can be proud of what we achieved in so few days.”
For the whole team, the Hackathon exemplified the best things about being able to tap into the entire company for resources.
“I think there’s a lot of strength in working across orgs and teams, and getting to work with people we might otherwise not get to work with, such as the accessibility team,” Nielsen says. “Learning how important it is to choose the right color scheme or font was eye opening.”
While everyone brought their own strengths to the project, its ultimate purpose served as a north star that maintained the team’s focus.
“We wanted to make sure this was a non-stigmatizing feature. This is something anybody could use. Someone using the extension wouldn’t raise a big red flag that they’ve got a disability,” Nielsen says. “For me, the most important thing was recognizing the value of our goal. It doesn’t matter how cool the tech is if it doesn’t help anyone. That’s what is so compelling about this project. We’re making learning easier for every single student.”

Source: http://news.microsoft.com/features/microsoft-hackathon-2015-winner-extends-onenote-to-improve-learning-outcomes-for-students/