Microsoft has held its annual event on education, Reimagine Educationwhich he took the opportunity to present his new category of personalized learning tools. Is about Learning Accelerators (Learning Accelerators), made up of various applications so that teachers can create, review and analyze the progress and development of their students in all subjects. In addition, it has improved other apps that were already available.
One of them is Reading Progress, which now includes comprehension questions. In this way, the company seeks to increase reading fluency, as well as students’ reading expression and comprehension. Also, soon, Immersive Reading will have a Reading Coach. Designed inclusively and available in more than 116 languages, these solutions are available to all students through Word Online, Microsoft Teams Assignments, Flip, or Minecraft Education.
Other learning tools that will improve are Search Coach and Search Progress. Available in more than 50 languages, their goal is to help students think critically, search, and strengthen their information skills. Both have Bing’s setting that filters inappropriate web content, Microsoft Bing SafeSearch, turned on by default.
Search Coach is integrated into Teams for Education, and provides real-time guidance for asking queries, and identifying and reviewing trusted sources. It offers customizable filters for teachers and students, which help adjust searches at will. Search Progress will arrive in testing at the end of 2023, and will allow students to collect and include sources in custom assignments. In addition, it will allow teachers to more easily track and review each student’s progress.
With the goal of improving public speaking and presentation skills, Microsoft has designed Speaker Progress and Speaker Coach. Both are intended to collaborate in improving students’ speaking and presentation skills. The second is integrated into PowerPoint, Teams, and LinkedIn. It makes it easy to practice presenting and speaking in private, as well as offering tips for developing a presentation.
Speaker Progress will be available in the testing phase, and will be integrated into Teams for Education throughout the 2023-2024 school year. Its mission is to streamline the process of creating, reviewing, and analyzing presentation and speaking assignments.
Microsoft also has tools to improve students’ math knowledge: Math Coach and Math Progress. They will be available in the trial version of Microsoft Teams for Education in the 2023-2024 academic year. With them, students will have more practice, real-time feedback, and tips. In addition, teachers will be able to create tasks with more agility, and speed up revision tasks.
Math Coach takes care of breaking down each piece of a math problem. For each one she will offer step-by-step text explanations, and on the operations in more detail. Thus, students will be able to think more critically about the reason and the way in which they have reached a solution.
Math Progress, designed for teachers, is responsible for facilitating the generation of questions, as well as identifying which concepts are more complicated for students. So you can offer them personalized feedback and support to speed up their learning.
Those from Redmond have also taken advantage of the event to announce updates in Education Insights Premium and Windows 11 related to education. Thus, Education Insights Premium is integrated into all versions of Microsoft 365 Education, including the free Office 365 AI license. What’s new in Windows 11 makes it faster and easier for students to sign in with third-party identity providers. To do this, starting from the end of this month, an easy sign-in function for Windows 11 Pro Education will be available.
