ISTELive 23 Recap: Exciting information, energizing classes

ISTELive 23 ends right now, and as at all times, it was an energizing 4 days of connecting, studying, and sharing.

This 12 months we introduced numerous thrilling new developments and updates, and offered classes on the Spotlight on Solutions stage, in our Microsoft Learn Live Classroom, on the Microsoft Learn Theater in our sales space. We additionally let a whole lot of keen educators get their palms on the newest Learning Accelerators, Minecraft worlds, and extra all through our exhibit.

What everybody’s speaking about: AI

As you might need guessed, AI stole the present. It’s undoubtedly one of many important matters on many educators’ minds, and new applied sciences and instruments are being developed frequently.

A session from Microsoft Education at ISTELive 23.

During ISTELive 23, we shared a number of bulletins about new collaborations bringing AI innovation to schooling, in addition to updates to our AI-powered Learning Accelerators. We additionally shared details about new coaching alternatives to assist extra individuals acquire the abilities to make constructive use of the expertise. Some of the highlights included:

New AI course for educators: “Empower educators to explore the potential of artificial intelligence” obtainable on Microsoft Learn – roughly 200 individuals attended reside classes and accomplished the course at ISTELive 23.

AI Skills initiative: We’re excited to share information a couple of new AI Skills initiative to assist individuals and communities all over the world discover ways to harness the facility of AI. The Microsoft AI Skills initiative consists of new, free coursework developed with LinkedIn; a brand new open world problem in coordination with knowledge.org to uncover new methods of coaching employees on generative AI; and better entry to free digital studying occasions and sources for everybody to enhance their AI fluency.

Collaboration between Microsoft and New York City Schools: We had been extraordinarily proud to share that we have now been working with New York City Public Schools to assist their exploration of the event of generative AI instruments tailor-made for their very own use and to assist guarantee they will cleared the path within the accountable, secure, and progressive use of AI by implementing applicable security and safety measures.

New collaborations with PowerSchool and Kahoot!: We’ve additionally been working with PowerSchool and Kahoot! to allow their new AI-powered experiences with the Azure OpenAI Service.

• PowerSchool lately shared their imaginative and prescient to ship customized studying pathways constructed for particular person college students based mostly on their studying targets inside a safe platform. This new collaboration between PowerSchool and Microsoft offers further performance throughout the PowerSchool Personalized Learning Cloud that lets educators save time by leveraging AI to create formative assessments aligned to a desired studying goal, grade stage, topic, and normal.
• Kahoot! started weaving generative AI into their product suite as an extension of their long-lasting dedication to innovation and making studying environment friendly, accessible, and fascinating. While Kahoot! has already been on an AI journey, new capabilities supplied by the Azure OpenAI Service have enabled them to additional improve their expertise and save time for educators.

AI-powered Reading Progress updates: We introduced a number of new options coming to Reading Progress: Reading with expression, passage era, and comprehension query era.

• Reading with expression: With our forthcoming Expression replace, Reading Progress will routinely determine college students’ efficiency on elements of prosody together with monotone studying, lengthy pauses, and never pausing for a interval, comma, or exclamation factors. Student expression outcomes will probably be obtainable within the instructor evaluate expertise, alongside accuracy and proper phrases per minute. Later, this data will probably be added to the scholar’s view of their returned work and included in Education Insights so it may be simply monitored over time. Reading expression updates will start rolling out in July.

An educator’s view of the Expression tab in Reading Progress in Microsoft Teams for Education.

• Passage era: Another new function within the works is passage era, which can permit educators to generate a passage instantly in Reading Progress, and in addition leverage insights to customise it based mostly on the wants of their class and particular person college students. Passage era is in an preliminary non-public preview with our testing neighborhood.
• Comprehension questions: To help educators in evaluating studying fluency, Reading Progress will quickly embrace a brand new function that may generate comprehension questions based mostly on a particular studying passage. Educators can select the variety of questions after which evaluate them, make any vital edits, and publish to college students. Comprehension questions can also be in an preliminary non-public preview with our testing neighborhood.

Visit our latest weblog put up “Collaborating to bring AI innovation to education” to study extra particulars about these announcement and updates.

More collaborations, updates, and new instruments for educators!

The AI-related bulletins had been just some of the thrilling developments we’ve been engaged on that we shared at ISTELive 23. We additionally debuted information about our highly effective alliance with CDW, a bunch of further updates in Microsoft Teams, and the primary ever Viva Connections for schooling.

CDW is customizing their current Microsoft providers to offer education-specific session, assist, and coaching so faculties are conscious of every part they’ve entry to, and really feel assured in implementing what they have already got of their Microsoft licensing construction.

• As a part of the CDW Amplified for Education effort, the CDW Education Collaborative (previously the North American Google Technical Collaborative) has been expanded in order that faculties can discover ways to efficiently implement and handle Microsoft applied sciences side-by-side with their friends, in addition to CDW and Microsoft consultants.
• The CDW Education Collaborative is a neighborhood of Ok–12 IT professionals based mostly within the United States and Canada, offering a digital assembly place the place IT leaders can remedy issues and community. The Collaborative now serves greater than 1,250 faculty districts throughout North America to attach and assist faculty districts, and it has drastically expanded its scope to deal with these faculties and districts utilizing Microsoft’s software program and options.

Teams for Education enhancements for educators: There are a number of updates coming to Teams which might be designed to save lots of time, and assist academics arrange their assignments and sources.

• Classwork: The Classwork app is a one-stop answer to create and arrange class content material and assist handle your curriculum in Teams. Classwork will permit educators to create and arrange class sources together with Assignments, Files, Links, Channels, Class Notebook pages, and extra. In Classwork, educators can arrange sources into modules aligned with their curriculum construction in order that college students can extra simply navigate the category and discover related sources. This new function will probably be rolling out beginning subsequent week.
• Assignment workflow updates — actionable Ready to Grade checklist view: Want a one click on place to see all assignments which have submissions that you would be able to act on? We’ve added a brand new tab to the checklist view known as Ready to Grade. This checklist will solely present assignments (previous or upcoming) the place college students have submitted work that has not but been graded. We’ve additionally up to date the Past Due checklist to solely present assignments which might be previous their due dates and nonetheless have a number of college students that haven’t but submitted their work. Additionally, we’ve up to date the Assignments Card to offer extra data at a look, such because the variety of submissions which might be able to grade or the variety of submissions which might be overdue. These updates can be found now.
   

The Ready to grade and Past due tabs in Assignments in Microsoft Teams for Education.

• Alternative grading scheme: We are engaged on a brand new function for Assignments and Grades that enables educators to make use of completely different grading schemes for grading inside Teams. Today in Assignments we assist the power to make use of factors (and rubrics) in your grades, however some faculties do not use factors or use completely different grading techniques. We at the moment are including the power so that you can add mappings to completely different customizable schemes which might be all customizable for every class, in addition to added assist for a number of schemes per class. These options are anticipated to start out changing into obtainable round August 2023.

Adding a brand new grading scheme in Assignments in Microsoft Teams for Education.

• Viva Connections for Education: Microsoft Viva Connections for Education is a digital residence that centralizes all of the sources college students want in a single place, instantly inside Microsoft Teams. With intuitive design and easy accessibility, the dashboard is customized for every pupil’s particular person wants, giving them a digital residence the place they will begin and finish every day—serving to them keep related to their academic establishment at each step alongside their tutorial journey. Microsoft is blissful to announce that Viva Connections for Education is now obtainable to all prospects as a part of our Teams for Education providing. Read extra within the Viva Connections weblog.

Most talked-about classes

It’s unattainable to select a favourite from the various informative and fascinating classes that the staff offered, however a number of highlights had been:

• In our standing-room-only Spotlight on Solutions session: “Unlocking AI’s potential: Transform learning experiences and prepare for the future,” representatives from NYC Public Schools, Kahoot!, PowerSchool, and Microsoft shared a few of the thrilling particulars of tasks and collaborations which might be tapping into the immense potential of AI to empower Ok-12 academics to create transformative and fascinating studying experiences.
• Another Spotlight on Solutions occasion that precipitated loads of buzz was: “The future of learning with Microsoft Flip”. In this session, consultants shared how Microsoft Flip leverages AI capabilities equivalent to Topic Copilot, Reading Coach, and up to date improvements to assist academics and college students create partaking and significant studying experiences.
• In the Microsoft Learn Live Classroom: “Discover Learning Accelerators: Search Coach and Search Progress” was an enormous hands-on hit. Demonstrations confirmed attendees the right way to take advantage of these new Learning Accelerators, and shared methods to construct data literacy into studying in partaking methods.
• “Back-to-safe: Starting the year with Minecraft’s new cyberskilling K12 Lessons” demonstrated how Minecraft worlds, together with new “Privacy Prodigy” might help impart important digital citizenship and cybersecurity expertise, together with managing display time, social interactions, on-line spending, and recognizing malware. The presenters even shared details about how the cybersafe assortment could be built-in into back-to-school motions and household assist of digital studying.

Code & Connect with Microsoft MakeCode and Flip

Outside the Microsoft Learn Live Classroom classes, attendees had the chance to get hands-on with game-based studying and computational considering with Microsoft MakeCode Arcade. Educators skilled how straightforward it was to code their very own online game inside 5 minutes, after which add the sport they created to a retro Arcade machine in order that they and others might play their video games utilizing a joystick and buttons. Educators additionally had the chance to mirror on their experiences by recording a video on Microsoft Flip and coming into the ISTE Fliphunt for an opportunity to win a Surface machine. Many educators walked away from the expertise with a brand new appreciation for the way straightforward it’s to include inclusive, partaking computational expertise, game-based and social studying into their school rooms.

An educator coding a online game with Microsoft MakeCode at ISTELive 23.

ISTE Learn Challenge

The ISTE Learn Challenge is a set of modules and key learnings based mostly on the content material from ISTELive 23. Whether you had been at ISTELive 23 or not, develop your expertise toolbox and sharpen your expertise with this curated assortment of free asynchronous studying modules. Explore how one can assist all learners in your classroom.

Looking towards subsequent 12 months!

All of the updates, developments, and bulletins we shared this 12 months made ISTELive 23 really feel particularly thrilling. It’s laborious to think about what unbelievable developments we is perhaps speaking about subsequent 12 months! For now, it’s time to take the summer season to soak up the affect of those improvements, take heed to suggestions, and work to make them much more helpful instruments to empower educators and interact college students. We hope the summer season is a good time so that you can chill out a bit, meet up with all of the unbelievable new studying alternatives like the brand new AI course constructed for educators, and a few of the classes within the ISTE Learn Challenge. Thanks for making this an unbelievable ISTELive, get pleasure from your summer season!