New Education Category in Visio Pro for Office 365

As written on blogs.technet.microsoft.com.

Years of research suggest students learn best when presented new material in diverse and interactive ways. Gone are the days of lecture-only classrooms; today, educators incorporate a variety of methods to boost learning outcomes. One of those methods, of course, is visual. We’re excited to announce new Microsoft and third-party templates for Visio Pro for Office 365 to help educators present information in highly visual and exciting ways, while helping students better engage across subjects.

New Education templates

Visio Pro for Office 365 is adding more than 20 education templates and sample diagrams that span core subjects, including algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, and physics. These tools bring subjects to life and boost comprehension. For example, in algebra, students can move pre-built shapes to better understand the Pythagorean theorem. Additionally, Visio’s latest offerings include templates and diagrams for curriculum planning, games, sports, hobbies, and music, giving institutions a breadth of solutions for driving a well-rounded education.

Interactive Learning

Visio shapes have customizable options that enable visuals to respond intelligently to changes in size and context. For example, teachers can use Visio’s smart shapes to illustrate trigonometry concepts by interacting with diagrams to change the underlying information in real time.

Here is another interactive way to learn about the Pythagorean theorem:

Powerful ecosystem

Now you can access third-party content directly from within Visio Pro for Office 365 for your specialized diagramming needs. For the initial launch, we will deliver access to eight templates and five sample diagrams from our trusted content partners. We’re also enabling even greater interactive learning with partner solutions for OneNote. Companies like GeoGebra, Desmos, and Quizlet now enable ready-made content that integrates with OneNote, helping students learn through hands-on visuals in the virtual notebooks they use every day.

Hybrid Infrastructure Automation with #Azure Resource Manager Templates

If you've ever had to set up a test or production environment for something like SharePoint, you know there are several pieces to set up - like Active Directory, SQL for your backend data, and then your SharePoint servers. While it's possible to automate this with advanced scripting or level 400 task sequencer skills, imagine just choosing a template or manifest file and clicking go to spin up a dozen or so VMs all wired together and talking to each other. That is effectively what Azure Resource Manager templates do and what Corey Sanders lead engineer for Azure compute, demonstrates on the show. He also steps back to illustrate how they work as a unified resource automation model for both Microsoft Azure Cloud resources and on premises with the upcoming Azure Stack.

Word 2013 is packed with custom content possibilities, from brochures to newsletters to labels. One of these opportunities is a dynamic, fillable form, that designates fields for you or others to fill out. It’s easy to create one of these forms from Word’s online template gallery, and the video above shows you how.

To start, you’ll need to ensure the Developer tab is visible in your Ribbon:
1.From the File tab, click Options.
2.Select Customize Ribbon.
3.On the right-hand side, under Main Tabs, check the box next to Developer and the Developer tab will appear in the Ribbon.

Next, you need to download a form template.
1.From the File tab, click New.
2.In the Search online templates box, type the name of the form you want, or just type “form” to view your options.
3.Click the template that you want to use and select Create.

Now, you have a form that you can fill out or send. If you need to make edits to the form, select the Design Mode button from the Ribbon. Check out this support article for instructions on more advanced customizations you can add to your form.