Social networks for business help enterprises collaborate securely across departments, offices and countries. Many available tools give employees a sense of online community and help forge connections between different parts of the business and your customers.
However, some business leaders struggle to understand the benefits of the “social business”. Furthermore, organizations that have made the leap often find that after embracing the technology initially, employees’ enthusiasm soon dies down and only a handful of workers continue to use the technology.
So, how can businesses develop a long-term social business strategy? We spoke to a number of experts to find out.
ROLE-BASED, GOAL-BASED
“Social tools have evolved well beyond Facebook and Twitter, this much we have to accept as a given,” said Adrian Bridgwater, an enterprise IT blogger for a number of B2B sites, including Forbes. ”We now have an opportunity to use socially-driven collaboration tools in new ways to change the way we work. Role-based, goal-based, cloud-based collaboration can now be engineered into the computing fabric that firms now centre their Line of Business architectures around.“
David Terrar,
David Terrar, founder of digital transformation and social business consultancy Agile Elephant, underlined the point, saying that enterprises that don’t embrace these technologies risked become irrelevant.
“I don't care what business you are in, your business model is under threat from a smarter, nimbler competitor with a new idea or a better use of technology. If you don't want to end up like a Kodak, a Blockbuster or your local taxi firm you need to be harnessing the collective know-how and the potential returns from the great ideas of all of your people.”
CUSTOMER SERVICE
According to Computerworld’s 2015 Forecast Study, social networking, alongside predictive analytics, will be one of the most disruptive business technologies over the next three to five years, more so than the Internet of Things and mobile payments. For many organizations, that disruption is already underway.
For those businesses that are already reaping the rewards of a social enterprise strategy, it’s not simply about providing employees with the means to interact with each other more effectively. Christian McMahon, CIO at business consultancy three25, said that in future many interactions with customers could be improved by the use of social tools.
“Harnessing social collaboration through your socially enabled cloud infrastructure is a great way to engage with and get rapid response from/to both your internal and external customer base,” said McMahon.
“Social media will soon become the main interaction point for customer service and external communication in less regulated industries, away from just being pointed at traditionally bloated websites with pages of static content and FAQs to wade through. In this more interactive and collaborative mobile world, customers now deserve more dynamic and engaging interaction beyond the traditional call centre approach,” he added.
René Büst, Senior Analyst and Cloud Practice Lead at Crisp Research, said that a cloud infrastructure with social capabilities has the potential to help improve the customer engagement by letting the customer become an integral part of the entire customer life-cycle process. “The customer is empowered to follow his request in real-time and be integrated into the process in real-time, giving him more power, influence and overview. This kind of closer, real-time, collaboration helps to accelerate the overall process to solve issues and challenges faster by working like a team together with the customer,” said Büst.
Furthermore, by becoming an enterprise that relies on social collaboration, you have the opportunity to reduce reliance on other things, like storage and even paper.
“Gone are the days when large attachments need to be sent to hundreds and thousands of employees and consume vast amounts of storage for each individual copy: single points of cloud-based storage enable short messages linking to one copy only… the risk of out-of-date manuals, procedures and processes can be mitigated by similar mechanisms,” said Daniel Steeves, a business consultant at Beyond Solutions. ”Costs in printing and posting paper contracts and agreements can also be reduced or eliminated – as well as the time lags required – by combining file sharing and e-signature capabilities.”
“With the right collaboration and sharing service, a lot of your storage and data management problems go away,” agreed Dale Vile, Research Director at IT analyst firm Freeform Dynamics. “You know where your data is, you know it is safe and secure, you don’t have to worry about long-term retention, and everything is easily accessible, subject to security policy of course. How much can you say those things in relation to all that data sitting in file shares, on personal hard disks, mobile devices, and so on.”
RIP EMAIL
So, what are the major hurdles faced by organisations striving to become a “social enterprise”? Vile said one of the challenges is weaning users off unofficial and “often insecure” communication tools, and ensuring “that the service you choose delivers the same the level of convenience.”
But even with the perfect collaboration tools in place, encouraging users to change the habit of a lifetime will be a battle, said Alan Mather, former chief executive of the e-delivery team at the UK Government’s Cabinet Office and now Director at Ardea Enterprises Limited.
“How do you get people off email and into collaboration when email is so often the default way to communicate, exchange files, debate the contents of a document, send a version of a document for review and so on. That latter point is nothing about technology and all about how you make the collaboration space the heart of the where the company does its business - it means the CEO must be active and everyone down from him or her must be as active. It means that if you want the latest version of a document or you want an opinion on a policy or a strategy point, you can only go to that social space to get what you need.”
CULTURE OF SHARING
Forcing employees to use social tools is one way to ensure new technologies are embraced, but ultimately the challenge will be in changing the culture of the organisation.
“The way you do that is with a culture of sharing, working out loud and collaborating across the organisation, underpinned by the accessibility and connectivity of a cloud infrastructure combined with the sort of open, lightweight communication that good social tools or the right enterprise social network can bring,” said Terrar. “You need cloud, social and mobile technology to make that happen effectively, but it only works if you get the culture and leadership right too.”
CIOs and other IT decision makers face plenty of challenges in their pursuit of social enterprise collaboration. Business must understand what they’re trying to achieve before they set off on the journey, and be committed to making cultural changes to the way they work. But the message is clear – collaboration tools are likely to take over your enterprise whether you like it or not, and it’s better to be the leader rather than the follower.
“If you are not presently positioned as a socially aware organisation that offers social collaboration, your customers may force your hand and insist you rapidly change your approach,” said McMahon. “The proliferation of modern devices, always-on mobility and the way your data is consumed proves social collaboration isn’t the ideal, it’s the new norm and you had better be ready.”
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OneNote Class Notebook assignment and grading support comes to Blackbaud and eSchoolData
Over a year ago, we launched the OneNote Class Notebook add-in, with assignment and grade integration, connected to a Learning Management System (LMS) and Student Information System (SIS). Teachers from all over the world have connected OneNote Class Notebooks with their systems. We have heard requests for additional LMSes and SISes to be supported. The OneNote Class Notebook now integrates assignments and grades with over 40 LMSes and SISes—with more on the way.
With today’s OneNote Class Notebook add-in update, we are rolling out new LMS assignment and grade integration for Blackbaud onCampus and eSchoolData. To see the full list of committed education partners, please visit our OneNote Education Partners page. This page also has helpful training videos demonstrating how Class Notebooks integrate with each of the different LMSes and SISes.
Additions and improvements for the Class Notebook add-in, version 1.6.0.0, include:
Assignment and grade integration with Blackbaud onCampus.
Assignment and grade integration with eSchoolData.
Additional developments include:
Assignment and grade improvements for Google Classroom.
The rise of cyberthreats means that the people once assigned to setting up computers and email servers must now treat security as top priority
In the Appalachian mountain town of West Jefferson, N.C., on an otherwise typical Monday afternoon in September 2014, country radio station WKSK was kicked off the air by international hackers.
Just as the station rolled into its afternoon news broadcast, a staple for locals in this hamlet of about 1,300, a warning message popped up on the screen of the program director’s Windows PC. His computer was locked and its files—including much of the music and advertisements the station aired—were being encrypted. The attackers demanded $600 in ransom. If station officials waited, the price would double.
The station’s part-time IT person, Marty Norris, was cruising in his truck when he got the call that something was amiss. He rushed to the station. “I immediately pulled the plug on his computer,” says Mr. Norris.
In a quick huddle, the possibility of paying the ransom was raised, but the idea didn’t get far. “We’re a little bit stubborn in the mountains,” says General Manager Jan Caddell. “It’s kind of like being held up. We thought if we paid, they’d just ask for more.”
Despite all the money we’ve spent—Gartner estimates $81.6 billion on cybersecurity in 2016—things are, on the whole, getting worse, says Chris Bronk, associate director of the Center for Information Security Research and Education at the University of Houston. “Some individual companies are doing better,” adds Dr. Bronk. “But as an entire society, we’re not doing better yet.”
Ever greater profits from cyberattacks mean cybercriminals have professionalized to the point where they are effectively criminal corporations, says Matthew Gardiner, a cybersecurity strategist for Mimecast, which manages businesses’ email in the cloud. Instead of hackers fumbling their way through complicated financial transactions, or money whizzes fumbling their way through malware design, there is true division of labor. As in any other industry, specialization begets efficiency.
Large (legitimate) corporations have the resources to hire talent to protect their digital assets, but for small- and medium-size businesses, it’s harder. There’s no shortage of good advice on how to perform basic security hygiene, but who’s there to implement it? The solution is resource management, with a focus on cybersecurity. Dr. Bronk lays it out like this:
1. Retrain IT staff on security—or replace them. In today’s world of ever-multiplying threats and dependence on connected assets, all IT staff must now be cybersecurity staff first. “The good news is that you don’t need that dedicated person to run your email server anymore—they can run security,” says Dr. Bronk.
2. Push everything to the cloud. It used to be the job of IT personnel was to build and maintain the tools employees need. Now, pretty much anything can be done better with a cloud-based service.“I mean, even the CIA uses Amazon’s web services,” says Dr. Bronk. “If there’s a best of breed, why not use it? If you want a safe car, go buy a Volvo.”
Marty Norris tests program back up at WKSK in West Jefferson, N.C. Photo: Andy McMillan for The Wall Street Journal
3. New IT investment will need baked-in security. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates jobs in IT security are one of the fastest-growing categories in tech, up 33% in the past four years alone. That’s probably due to companies simply catching up on investing in cybersecurity after years of under-investment, says Mr. Gardiner.
Diana Kelley, global executive security adviser at IBM Security, a division ofInternational Business Machines Corp. , compares the current state of network security to graphical user interfaces in their earliest days, when they weren’t particularly intuitive. Collectively designers and engineers learned to prioritize and improve them. “Security can be like that, too,” she adds. “We can think about it upfront and weave it into the process in a much more effective way.”
WannaCry is a good example of how increasing cybersecurity can be relatively simple—thwarting it was as simple as keeping Windows up-to-date. On the other hand, it used a sophisticated exploit lifted from a hack of National Security Agency tools that allowed it to spread directly from one computer to another, infecting systems in companies that might have been prepared for other kinds of attacks. These kinds of systemic
President and general manager Jan Caddell, program director Nathan Roland and IT staffer Marty Norris monitor things at radio station WKSK in West Jefferson, N.C., on Friday. Photo: Andy McMillan for The Wall Street Journal
As for West Jefferson’s own WKSK, the station was lucky. Mr. Norris, its IT consultant, had backed up the computers. He was able to wipe the slate clean and get everyone back on the air in a few hours. It’s a good illustration of how prioritizing even the most basic cybersecurity practices can be a life-saver.
Since then, he has implemented offline backups of the station’s computers, just in case. He’s also become a keen student of the kind of attacks, such as WannaCry, that can affect small organizations. As soon as he read that it could hit older systems, he rushed to protect them at his day job—as the IT person for the local school district.
Appeared in the May 22, 2017, print edition as 'All IT Jobs Are Security Jobs Now.'
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OneNote Class Notebook supports English Language Learners at Klein Forest High School
Klein Forest High School is located in Houston, Texas. Our student body is about 3,700 students; our faculty and staff total approximately 500, and we are 1:1. We have an on-campus repair center that services our devices, but they do not teach teachers and students how to use software. That’s where we step in. As the instructional specialists in technology on campus, it is our responsibility to ensure that teachers and students can utilize the technology effectively for teaching and learning.
We first saw OneNote Class Notebook while attending the TCEA annual technology conference last February. We attended an amazing session called Personalizing Student Learning with the OneNote Class Notebook. We were in love with so many features of the class notebook, but what sold us was Learning Tools because of our high English Language Learner (ELL) population.
As our campus struggled to step away from excessive paper copies in our 1:1 environment, administrators asked us for solutions utilizing our technology more effectively. We knew OneNote was a perfect solution. Before we could sell it, we had to become experts ourselves. So, we created a Class Notebook for our 13-member, cross-content specialist PLC. Our PLC was a team of guinea pigs. Once we gained confidence in the tool, we were ready to bring it to the staff. Like any school, our teaching staff contains all kinds—from technophobes to tech enthusiasts. Knowing that, we asked a few tech enthusiasts to pilot OneNote Class Notebook with their students. This way we would have tried and true testimonials for our technophobes from within the building.
This Sway showcases the use of OneNote at Klein Forest High School.
Just like we expected, they LOVED it. One staff member, an English IV teacher, used it with her students and immediately gravitated to the collaboration space. She had her students revise and edit each other’s essays and then leave quality feedback using the Record Audio feature. Her students asked her, “Why haven’t you been using this all year?”
Another staff member, an ELL teacher, used it with his students who are new to the country and learning the English language. He was drawn to the Learning Tools add-in. He saw vast improvements in the students’ writing and language acquisition over time. He even made some tutorial videos as a supplemental resource for our teachers ready to jump in. A third staff member, a math co-teacher, used Class Notebook with his SPED students. He, too, liked the Learning Tools, but he loved how easy it was to organize. This proved to be extremely beneficial for his population because it made providing individual accommodations easier. Additionally, the teachers provided us feedback about potential obstacles, which allowed us to anticipate problems and have possible solutions readily available.
To prepare for our summer trainings, we decided to actively “promote” OneNote. We visited PLC meetings, made infographics, emailed the details out and posted on our website. During the summer of 2016, we provided professional development for our staff introducing OneNote and had them participate as students using a Class Notebook that we had created. Most of them fell in love with it on the spot. We also had the teachers who piloted OneNote during the previous year assist with staff development for additional buy-in.
Once school started this August, things got off to a slower start than we anticipated. Teachers were falling into old habits. Therefore, we decided to switch our approach from marketing to grassroots. We targeted specific teachers who we felt were catalysts, teachers that would share our sentiments. This proved to be successful because—just like we suspected—it spread like wildfire!
Teachers and other campuses within our district began contacting us about OneNote daily. Soon, our district’s chief learning officer asked us to do a guest blog post in The Exchange, an in-district blog. As you can imagine, we were pumped.
One question that always emerges is how we support our teachers with OneNote. The first thing we do is schedule two appointments with the teachers. We have found that initial and ongoing support are a huge indicator of success, especially for teachers that are weary about trying a new tool. OneNote can be daunting for some. Additionally, we provide supplemental trainings like Using OneNote for Accommodations or OneNote Tips and Tricks for people at various places in their OneNote journey. Another way we support teachers is sharing and showcasing their efforts and ideas on our website. Lastly, we ensure we follow up with teachers frequently, whether it is a quick conversation in the hall or an email asking, “How’s OneNote going?”
OneNote has been an excellent tool for our struggling students and co-teach classes. A few accommodations we have seen incorporated into OneNote are Read Aloud, enlarged text, graphic organizers, to-do list and use of calculator. (Did you know OneNote can solve simple equations?) OneNote helps students who may struggle with learning disabilities to keep their work organized because the teacher can distribute the work to their notebooks. Students are not losing or misplacing their work anymore. The differentiation of assignments is also made easy with the Distribute Page tool. Teachers can send out different assignments based on the needs of the students within the same class. Teachers also can watch the students work on their own computers and offer direct feedback during and after the assignment.
OneNote Class Notebook has been a powerful addition to our technology toolbox. OneNote Class Notebook integrates with many different programs and, lucky for us, it integrates with both our LMS and SIS. OneNote Class Notebook integrates with our LMS, which means it can automatically enroll students in the OneNote Class Notebook—one less thing for teachers to do. Another nice integration is our SIS/gradebook. Our teachers can grade an assignment in OneNote, and with the click of a button, have those grades automatically added to their gradebook.
What we have learned in the last 10 months is that OneNote can work for everyone. We have just about every subject represented, from our math teachers to our dance teachers. We have also learned that initial and follow-up support are important for continued success. There are so many awesome features in OneNote, and it can be intimidating for some when trying to show them everything up front. We try to scaffold them as we continue to follow up with our teachers. Without a doubt, OneNote has positively impacted our campus instructionally, for teachers and students alike.
Technology helps the UN advance the protection of human rights in new ways
Globally, human rights abuses tear apart lives, families and nations. Ensuring justice and reconciliation — and intervening early to prevent atrocities — is in the hands of the United Nations. But how can the UN know when human rights are in the balance?
Ahmed Motala leads one of the teams at the UN Human Rights Office tasked to find out. In places like Syria, Burundi and Sri Lanka, these teams are part of the world’s early warning systems. Eyewitnesses and field staff collect information and pass it on to human rights officers, who build up a picture of what is happening before calling on governments or the UN to intervene.
“It’s about putting this jigsaw puzzle together,” Motala says.
Motala recently supported the Office’s investigation on Sri Lanka. For over a quarter of a century, the island in the Indian Ocean was embroiled in bitter and bloody civil war, which left as many as 100,000 people dead. Technology was vital for helping him and his colleagues put the pieces together. “We are able to find leads on what may be happening,” he says. With a smartphone, anyone can be a human rights defender. “Often people in very remote places have mobile phones that have a good camera and the possibility of uploading.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, meets with relatives of missing people in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. (Photo courtesy of OHCHR)
The UN Human Rights Office has over 1,000 staff worldwide, working at every level from gathering reports in conflict zones to advocating at the UN Security Council. Technology can overcome physical barriers to access, let human rights defenders communicate securely and help verify reports of abuses. That’s one of the reasons why Microsoft is launching a five-year partnership with the UN to support its vital work in this field.
“New technologies are advancing so rapidly, and companies like Microsoft can advise us on how to use those technologies to protect human rights,” says Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Boosting his staff’s capacity to process data will make for speedier responses. A dashboard that Microsoft is helping to develop and deploy will pull in, process and compare various sources of information. Artificial intelligence and big data analytics can assist in verifying alleged human rights abuses by cross-checking against other data sets as well as searching for additional clues.
“One of the big challenges for us is, how do you develop the tools to gather information when you don’t have access?” Motala explains. With Sri Lanka, despite a UN resolution with a “very clear request to the parties to provide access, they refused — the former president even issued a public statement saying they would not cooperate with the investigation.”
Enter the power of data to find the human rights jigsaw pieces. People sent thousands of photographs and hundreds of hours of video that teams like Motala’s have to assess, along with written eyewitness accounts of what happened. Before placing them into the story, investigators must ask: Are they true? Old images may have been reused, Photoshopped, misattributed or have doctored data.
“What is fake, what is true? That’s a question we ask ourselves on a regular basis,” Motala says. Staff across the UN have received training to gauge photo and video materials to see if they’ve been altered. “We’ll get allegations like that, a video saying this is Boko Haram in Nigeria,” says Scott Campbell of the UN Human Rights Office’s Africa desk. By looking at factors like date and time, identifying the location, and checking weather conditions against records, “you say, well, wait a minute, this is a photo from 1998 in Latin America.”
Once photos are established as reliable, it’s time to place them in a narrative. “A shocking photograph of dead bodies has to be carefully analyzed to see if it discloses any clues,” Motala says. It’s a matter of searching through swathes of data for related images showing an aircraft, a gun, a bomb or a sign of whether the people involved are combatants or civilians. This is both difficult and time-consuming. Technology will be able to help the UN to sort the signals from the noise, identifying relevant points in the ever-growing quantity of digital evidence.
In Sri Lanka, there were allegations that cluster bombs had been used — so an image of a bomblet, for example, could be crucial. “What we are hoping to develop is a tool that will help us categorize photographs,” Motala says, “so if I receive thousand images and put them through the system, I can ask for ‘bomb’ and the system will pull out all the photos showing a bomb.”
All of these methods accompany more traditional tools like processing reports from media and other UN agencies, as well as human rights NGOs. In the age of social media, some clues are also provided by human rights abusers themselves. “Many perpetrator organizations are putting up a lot of information about their own exploits as part of the propaganda war,” Motala adds — and that information also needs verification.
Solving any puzzle is easier if you arrange the pieces first, and one of the first projects of Microsoft’s partnership with the UN Human Rights Office does just that. Rights View is an information dashboard that pulls together information from various sources. The idea was born in a brainstorming session at a UN Human Rights Office workshop on ICT for Human Rights back in 2013, from an idea scribbled by the participants showing the information needed to predict and assess crises.
Idea for Rights View scribbled by the participants of a brainstorming session at a UN Human Rights Office workshop on ICT for Human Rights back in 2013. (Photo courtesy of OHCHR)
Rights View will draw together internal data from across the various areas of the Office, including information collected by UN Human Rights Office field staff, and external public data, as well as social media. “By bringing this information together, we will be able to better analyze it and to promote action in relation to early warnings of human rights risks,” says Andrew Palmer of the Office’s Emergency Response Section. The overall aim is to “provide a clear human rights perspective on potential, emerging or ongoing crises, and to get the appropriate responses to them by engaging other parts of the UN and the international community more broadly.”
“We’ll also have a simple way of bringing all that information together to more easily produce reports, speaking points and briefings to bodies such as the UN Security Council,” he adds. “And it will enable us to create short, pithy, visually compelling information to have a more immediate impact on the situation.” The tool will also help the UN Human Rights Office to be more efficient at deploying its own staff to emergency situations, he adds. “Having the dashboard will mean there is a single, go-to source for country-specific information, which will ensure that staff hit the ground running.”
And when the Office is unable to deploy staff directly to countries of concern, Rights View will enable the Office to more efficiently monitor, analyze and report on the situation remotely, as the Office has recently done in relation to the human rights situations in southeast Turkey and northern Rakhine in Myanmar. “There is a wealth of information that can be drawn upon to better understand the human rights situation within a country from the outside, and the dashboard will improve our ability to do this,” Palmer adds.
Members of Commissions of Inquiry and fact-finding missions require access to victims, witnesses and sources, some of whom may be in detention centers. (UN Photo/Martine Perret)
Taking action is at the heart of the partnership for Microsoft. “There is a great untapped opportunity for us to use technology in new ways to protect human rights around the world,” says Microsoft President Brad Smith. “Data science and analytics can empower the UN Human Rights Office to both pinpoint the problem and understand what needs to be solved.”
As Microsoft works on new ways to help the UN find the pieces in the human rights puzzle, it reinforces the need for businesses around the world to engage in the issue. “As a global company, our business suffers when people suffer,” Smith adds. “We believe that the business community can be a constructive voice for the protection of human rights everywhere.”
Lene Wendland, who manages the UN Human Rights Office’s business and human rights team, hopes the partnership will blaze a trail. “We are working with Microsoft to also engage with a much broader range of companies to discuss the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which is our main normative framework when dealing with companies,” she says. “Private companies, in their own right, independent of what states are doing, have a responsibility to respect human rights across their operations, but many companies still find implementation of this responsibility to be challenging. Through peer-learning workshops for companies convened together with Microsoft, we want to support companies in overcoming challenges of implementation.”
Policies on non-discrimination, for example, are key. “What we are expecting any company to do is not just look at the obvious ones, but there might be other salient human rights risks, which you only identify if you go out and look for them,” she says. She also points to the wider trend of companies putting human rights at the core of their work, creating valuable allies in an era where many states “don’t always do what they commit to with regards to human rights.”
The power wielded by large companies can be an enormous incentive for everyone to do the right thing. “It’s super important to have corporations of all different sorts involved in human rights in Africa,” says Campbell. “When corporations step in and put up their own obligations around human rights and do that hand-in-hand with the governments of countries where they’re operating, they can be an incredibly strong ally in the human rights movement.”
An early mock-up of the Rights View dashboard.
Getting the right pieces to complete the human rights puzzle will become easier with Rights View. That’s just the beginning. The potential of artificial intelligence and big data analytics is in its infancy: The best intervention from the UN is one that stops the human rights crisis from occurring. And by increasing the digital capacity of human rights organizations, ordinary people will be able to participate even more effectively in human rights monitoring and reporting.
“I believe that Microsoft technology can definitely help advance the UN’s protection of human rights, but so can technology from many other companies,” says Smith. “The more we can generate support, the better the protection of human rights will be served.”
That’s something that’s needed now more than ever.
“In today’s world, the universality of human rights and respect for the institutions and norms, is really being put into question,” Campbell says. “We haven’t been using technology enough, and the Microsoft project will really bring us up to speed.”
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Where to start and what to know about Microsoft Education’s new experiences
A great classroom comes to life wherever students and educators meet. In working with our vibrant Microsoft Educator Community over the years, we’ve learned to reshape our ideas of what that great classroom looks like, how it works and even where it is. The world is changing right before us and, together, we have to recognize it as a pressing societal challenge – and our largest opportunity to prepare students for the future.
We shared our vision for inclusive, immersive learning at a Microsoft Education event in New York City today, where we announced new, affordable devices and a Windows 10 experience inspired by students and teachers – we call it Windows 10 S. We also shared new ways to work and learn together on screens, through games, and in 3D. Our ambition extends beyond simply moving the classroom from physical to digital. We believe we have an incredible opportunity to leverage technology in modern ways to provide more outcome-driven, personal learning paths for students.
It’s a lot to take in, so we’ve put it all together in five steps to get you started, with a few links to point you in the right direction. Whether you want to investigate new devices for your class or download some powerful creativity apps – or even build a complete classroom solution from beginning to end – each of the pieces below can help enable the right environment for you and support better learning outcomes.
1. Find affordable, easily set-up devices powered by Windows 10 S
Many computers have a use in the classroom, but not all are built with students and educators in mind. We believe in the power of simplicity, which is why we’ve announced Windows 10 S, a bespoke version of Windows inspired by students and teachers. Windows 10 S, coming in time for the new school year, is designed to run only Windows Store apps verified for security by Microsoft, which makes software secure without compromising performance.
We’re also making it easy to find a broad range of affordable Windows 10 S devices for you and your students. Our powerful productivity toolkit, Office 365 for Education, is free for students, faculty and staff. We also announced today that, for devices currently used by schools, Windows 10 S will be available for free on any compatible, genuine Windows 10 PC. It’s also free for devices like our new Surface Laptop, which you can pre-order starting today.
We’ve heard from educators and administrators who want to bring our devices to their classrooms with an easy setup that doesn’t ask for constant attention throughout the year. That’s why we also spent some time today discussing Microsoft Intune for Education, which helps you get Windows 10 devices up and running with apps and settings managed more easily. Windows 10 S is streamlined for consistent performance and, when paired with Microsoft Intune for Education, schools can deploy new Windows 10 S devices in as little as 30 seconds per device.
See how an IT Admin and two teachers set up 24 Windows 10 Creators Update PCs in an hour: https://aka.ms/setupinanhour
Today we also announced a preview of Office, coming to Windows 10 S this summer through the Microsoft Store for Education. Once the preview is available, teachers and students will be able to enjoy the power of fully-installed Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps on Windows 10 S devices. Stay tuned to learn about more apps coming to the Microsoft Store for Education including: Adobe Photoshop Elements, Minecraft: Education Edition and many other apps for the classroom.
2. Create collaborative classrooms with Microsoft Teams
This summer we’ll introduce new classroom experiences, designed specifically for educators and students, into Microsoft Teams. We’ve already released Teams to the education community through their Office 365 for Education subscription, which is free for students, faculty and staff.
Microsoft Teams is a digital hub that brings conversations, content, and apps together in one place. It’s built on Office 365, which means your school can benefit from integration with familiar Office apps and services. It can be and customized to fit the needs of any school.
The education-focused features for Teams – like creating, distributing and grading quizzes, or collecting grade assignments all in one place – ensure that students, teachers and staff can get the most out of Teams. Educators will be able to manage classes and project workflow, and collaborate with other teachers and staff from a single experience in Office 365 for Education, while students can develop the communication and collaboration skills they’ll need to be successful in the future.
3. Create and learn in Minecraft: Education Edition with Code Builder
There’s much more coming to the ever-expanding worlds of Minecraft: Education Edition. Today we announced the upcoming launch of Minecraft: Education Edition Code Builder – on May 22 – and introduced a new way to learn coding within Minecraft’s inspiring worlds. Learning to code becomes part of your students’ creative exploration in Minecraft, where code is represented as – what else? – blocks that can be used to execute commands and lead to new ways to explore, create and learn. Code Builder connects to learn-to-code platforms like Tynker, ScratchX, and a new open source platform we’ve come up with, called MakeCode.
A free trial of Minecraft: Education Edition and beta of the new Code Builder extension are available to schools today. Students receive a one-year subscription to Minecraft: Education Edition when their schools purchase new Windows 10 devices, starting today.
At our Microsoft Education event we shared a blend of the familiar with the bold. With Windows Ink on Windows 10 devices, we took the handwriting experience into the digital realm, with an intuitive pen-to-paper feel that preserves note taking as a critical learning process. According to IDC (International Data Corporation) research, 93 percent of educators say digital inking allows them to improve the quality of their curriculum and materials. As the next step, we’re inviting you to expand learning into three dimensions to fill the whole classroom with ideas and creations.
You can help students express themselves with an almost tangible touch through Paint 3D, which can transform the strokes of a digital pen into complex 3D sculptures. It’s also compatible with 3D printing, so statues and other objects can be brought into the classroom as a hands-on example. A Michigan Technological University study (PDF link) tells us that test performance and passion for learning is improved among students who experience 3D content and enhance their spatial skills, with female students enrolling in math and science at a higher rate after learning in 3D.
We also announced something for the near future: We will offer mixed reality curriculum for the 2018 school year through a new strategic partnership with Pearson Education.
5. #HacktheClassroom through hands-on lesson plans and a live ISTE event
If you’ve seen anything today that inspires you to learn more about our vision for education, or to join our Microsoft Educator Community, the upcoming #HacktheClassroom event is a great place to get going.
The hack is back in our big hands-on event, bringing together the best innovators, disrupters and hackers in your education community to share their tips, tricks and clever shortcuts for building a bolder, better classroom without boundaries. It’s happening live at ISTE on Tuesday, June 27th, online and for free for those who can’t attend in person.
We also have our ongoing Hacking STEM initiative, developed in partnership with educators to help bring Science, Technology, Engineering and Math projects down to earth. That doesn’t mean projects aren’t cool, though – the monthly lesson plans call for accessible materials like spools and cups to create fun and fascinating devices like robotic hands and earthquake simulators.
The Hacking STEM portfolio aligns with academic standards and encourages students to use computational design thinking, ideal for a breadth of careers in the future. Each lesson plan maps to the Next Generation Science Standards and the International Society for Technology in Education standards, comes with detailed instructions for the maker activity and codeneeded for the project, and includes a hacked Excel worksheet with a prebuilt dashboardthat contains meters, counters, charts and graphs for real-time data.
Beginning on Saturday, May 6, Microsoft Store will host STEM Saturdays throughout May in all full line locations, in addition to the range of free programs year-round that empower students and educators by providing direct access to technology and hands-on learning. STEM Saturdays bring Microsoft Education’s pop-up classrooms to Microsoft Store and give participants a hands-on experience as they build a sensor that measures the flexion and extension of a finger. In the process, they learn about the anatomy of a human hand. Anyone, including teachers, students and parents can attend STEM Saturday workshops at a Microsoft Store, every Saturday in May.
Attend a STEM Saturday event at select Microsoft Store locations for parents, student and teachers. Learn more here: https://www.microsoft.com/stemsaturdays
Thank you for being part of this journey
We are excited about today’s announcements and the impact these new offerings will have on the digital transformation taking place in education. Though we know technology is important, we also know the people who use it matter most. We continue to be inspired by teachers all over the world and remain driven to empower today’s students to achieve more.
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Microsoft’s killer feature for its Chromebook competitor is Office
Microsoft just unveiled a new operating system at a press event this morning. Windows 10 S is a streamlined and more secure version of Windows 10. But it still looks and feels like a normal PC. And it runs essential apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
While I haven’t used Office apps for years, I spent most of my days using them back when I was in a student. I used Word to write papers, PowerPoint to prepare presentations and Excel to calculate stuff. And this is a great way to convince companies to buy Office subscriptions as most employees are already familiar with Office apps.
Microsoft is fully aware of that and plans to take advantage of that with its Chromebook competitors.
Sure, you can use Word Online, Google Docs and other web apps on your Chromebook. And Google has been saying for years that you’ll soon be able to run Android apps on your Chrome OS device. But very few Chromebooks currently support Android apps, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Android.
Microsoft is restricting Windows 10 S devices to Windows Store apps. It means that you won’t be able to download app from the your browser and install it. Developers will have to submit their apps to the Windows Store first.
But the company instantly reassured everyone by saying that Office apps are coming to the Windows Store soon. So it means that you’ll be able to buy a $189 Windows 10 S laptop and run full-fledged Office apps. And if you’re a student or teacher, Office 365 is free.
Microsoft is probably going to use Office apps in its advertising campaigns for Windows 10 S devices as it’s a sweet deal if you want a cheap device that runs Word. This is going to be Microsoft’s killer feature when it comes to selling those devices and eating up Chromebook’s market share.
Now it’s still going to take years as schools don’t take this kind of decisions lightly. Districts don’t switch to another vendor because Microsoft is slightly ahead of the competition. It’s going to be a long fight, but it looks like Microsoft thinks it’s worth starting it.
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Case Study: Urban Refuge
Microsoft teamed up with Urban Refuge to bring urban refugees in Amman, Jordan, access to local assistance opportunities via a Xamarin cross-platform mobile application. Urban refugees make up 78% of the 655,000 registered Syrian refugees in Jordan and 66% of refugees worldwide. Evidence from the field shows this population has access to mobile devices, yet largely share information via word of mouth. Urban Refuge's mission is to enable access to aid by leveraging technology to address information asymmetries in the urban refugee experience.
Idea for Rights View scribbled by the participants of a brainstorming session at a UN Human Rights Office workshop on ICT for Human Rights back in 2013. (Photo courtesy of OHCHR)
