Get ready to suit up and start an incredible adventure! Anthem has just launched on Xbox One, and we’ve got the details you need to get a successful head start in this dangerous and beautiful new world.
Javelins
Javelins are at the center of both combat and mobility in Anthem. They’re built to protect you from almost anything the world can throw at you as well as allow you to soar through the sky, swim through underwater tunnels, and unleash your power against enemies.
There are four javelins, the Ranger (the most balanced and versatile suit), Interceptor (an agile melee specialist), Colossus (the hard-hitting tank), and Storm (and elegant long-range fighter), and each has its own specific strengths and weaknesses. You’ll unlock your first at level 2, another at level 8, a third at level 16, and finally, a fourth at level 26.
Gear and Weapons
Once you’ve unlocked your javelins, you’ll need to add gear and weapons and (if you want) give it a unique look with the game’s customization and personalization options. You can find them in the Forge (accessible at Fort Tarsis or the Launch Bay) under the Loadout and Appearance tabs. You can save multiple loadouts with gear and weapon combinations that may come in handy in specific combat situations.
Gear comes in six rarity levels: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Masterwork, and Legendary. The rarer the gear, the more powerful it is and the higher the chance it will come with inscriptions (randomly rolled stat boosts and bonuses) or added ability bonuses (you can spot these in orange text on the description).
You’ll very likely spend a great deal of time searching for the gear you need, but keep in mind that crafting is an option, too. You can dismantle and salvage gear you don’t need, take on Challenges, visit the Crafting Shop, and explore the world to find nodes to harvest for crafting materials.
Once you have the right materials, you can start crafting. Completing Challenges will also help you unlock blueprints, to make exactly what you need. Of course, the rarer the gear, the more difficult the Challenge.
Combat and Combos
Next, it’s time to learn about your javelin’s capabilities, particularly the combinations of moves that lead to powerful and devastating combo attacks. There are two foundations for any successful combo, the primer (generally an elemental attack that inflicts a status effect on your enemies) and the detonator (basically the trigger that sets off the combo).
Keep in mind that the javelin that primes an enemy or group of enemies does not have to detonate it; any member of the squad can. Once it’s been triggered, your enemies will need to be primed again before your squad can use another detonator. And, unsurprisingly, lower level enemies will be much easier to prime than higher level ones.
Stronger Together
Teamwork is one of the major foundations of Anthem, and the farther you progress in the game the more important it will become. This is especially true for Strongholds, challenging dungeons with multiple objectives to complete in order to progress all the way to a climactic final battle. While Strongholds are the toughest challenges you’ll face, they’ll also give you the greatest rewards. Taking them on with your squad of four increases your likelihood of finding amazing weaponry and gear.
Using a headset and mic with your squad is the easiest way to make the most of everyone’s combat abilities and take out even the strongest enemies. Communicating with one another means lining up the perfect combos, covering teammates under fire, and flanking enemies more effectively.
Unleash Your Power
Now’s your time, Freelancer, so suit up and start exploring the world of Anthem today!
In my state of Maharashtra, India, the school year starts in June. I was teaching 1st grade class in the village, a rural area, between 2016 and 2017. By the time it was July, we only had three admissions in my classroom.
I started to visit parents and discuss the issue with them: Why are you not sending your child to my school? I came to learn and understand that parents were disappointed with teachers. They believe that teachers from the government school, such as mine, are not well educated and that sending their children to these schools would not lead to sustainable development. Well, all teachers here are post graduates – they completed a professional degree, and yet parents hesitate to send their child to my school. And despite a lack of transportation to schools, parents started sending their kids to the school far away from this village, about two to three kilometers. If I could convince them, parents could bring 14 kids to my closer classroom instead.
I started working with Microsoft tools like PowerPoint. I started to prepare animations on our syllabus. I prepared animated videos. I started to record students’ activities and prepared interesting videos. I started to send these classroom activities to parents.
As a result, kids were happy and started to come to school regularly. In the village area, we are always facing electricity problems and, at times, the internet connection can’t be counted on. Thankfully, I was able to keep working on my laptop. In 2017, I started working with the Microsoft Educator Community, earning my first badge and Certificate of MIE (Microsoft Innovative Educator).
Next, I started a journey with Skype in the Classroom and connected classrooms all over the world. In a textbook, we found a picture of a penguin – my students had never seen penguins before! We had to see more of the, so I looked up a virtual field trip through the Microsoft Educator Community. Using Skype, our class was able to visit a Penguin Park, located in Scotland. It was a great experience for us and my students were excited to see a penguin in their classroom. They started to dance! Meanwhile, parents became convinced and happy that teachers from the government school were trying to develop themselves.
Skype in the Classroom activities helps us explore my classroom activities with other schools. We’ve been arranging lot of classroom activities, including one focused on protecting the environment. We learned to recycle plastic, in a way, by making a lotus out of waste spoons. We did a Skype Lesson related to plastic, in which my students learned how plastic can be harmful to living beings.
The programs also helped me to explore and advance my own skills and interested. I prepared a lesson plan in English and Marathi and published it through the education portal. Now, hundreds of countries and more than 500 schools have virtually traveled through that lesson. It’s my pleasure to teach not only my classroom, but to reach out globally. Technology and social media is making a powerful impact on education and helping to change the minds of parents and students alike. Skype In Classroom helps me to collaborate, communicate, present creativity and pursue critical thinking.
Today at Microsoft Business Forward in Paris, France we connected with hundreds of global business leaders to share our vision for Microsoft Business Applications. In addition, I had the privilege to unveil new Dynamics 365 AI and mixed reality applications, and new solutions to help businesses unlock deeper insights from data across their organizations.
The new capabilities we introduce biannually in our October and April releases advance our commitment to remove barriers to innovation and operational excellence; a vision reinforced by amazing stories of companies evolving their business as usual.
More organizations than ever before are deploying Microsoft Business Applications to help foster innovation by unlocking siloed data and enabling a holistic, 360-degree view of the business, customers, and employees. Built on a unified data platform, businesses can apply intelligence across workloads, giving people the ability to reason over data wherever it resides, predict trends, and drive action. And with adaptable business applications, business professionals can build and customize solutions, allowing people and processes to stay ahead of trends and market forces.
Moving business forward with AI, mixed reality, and data insight solutions
Today’s announcements accelerate our vision and the impact we can deliver to customers, building on Dynamics 365 AI and mixed reality solutions announced in September 2018. The following new solutions are reflected in the updated April 2019 release notes available starting today.
Dynamics 365 + AI
This spring, we are continuing to invest in new and expanded data and AI services for unprecedented business intelligence, security, and insight-driven innovation and customer experiences.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provide anyone—from non-technical business users to analysts and data scientists—with a deeper understanding of customers, enabling intelligent insights and action that can help you personalize experiences, retain customers, and build loyalty. Tivoli, the Denmark-based operator of the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world, aims to be one of the first organizations to leverage Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. They are working to utilize artificial intelligence and the application to unify guest data siloed across databases, generate actionable insights, engage guests intelligently, and deliver personalized experiences, whether in marketing messages, loyalty offers, or during face-to-face interactions at the park. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is now available for preview and coming to general availability in April. Visit the Dynamics 365 Customer Insights web page to learn more.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service empowers business users to easily create and manage AI-powered virtual agents that resolve routine problems and requests. With an initial focus on customer service, future capabilities will extend virtual agent solutions across a range of customer experience scenarios to automate problem solving. This new cloud service, launching in public preview in April, empowers those closest to the customer to create, deploy, and manage virtual agents that automate solutions to problems without the need for data science or coding expertise. This will help reduce the time and costs to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection is a new cloud-based anti-fraud solution for e-commerce merchants designed to drive down fraud loss, increase bank acceptance rates to yield higher revenue, and improve the online shopping experience of its customers. Enterprises will benefit from the same technology deployed within Microsoft to dramatically reduce fraud loss rates and false positive rates while increasing bank acceptance rates, an achievement recognized by The Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) as a finalist for the 2019 Franz Edelman Award for achievements in advanced analytics, operations research, and management science. A public preview will be made available in April 2019.
Dynamics 365 + Mixed Reality
The adoption of mixed reality solutions for Microsoft Business Applications in 2018 has been inspiring, with real-world success in sectors ranging from manufacturing, automotive, and energy, particularly with a field service workforce. Toyota’s North America Production Engineering team has been using Dynamics 365 Layout and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on Microsoft HoloLens in their North America manufacturing centers. Dynamics 365 Layout can improve business processes in valuable ways, such as the layout of digital twins of equipment on the manufacturing floor for safety and process verification, and creating innovative AR training practices through the use of holographic equipment instead of physical equipment in space. Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is in the early phases of being used to improve safety and reduce costs through the use of remote experts for equipment verification and incident response.
Today we’re announcing that we’re extending our Dynamics 365 mixed reality applications to mobile devices, so businesses can leverage mixed reality technology on devices they already have. Customers continue to tell us that HoloLens is the best mixed reality device for business, and that it’s a breakthrough for their many areas that require heads up, hands free work. But we also know that many employees carry AR-capable phones and tablets everywhere they go. These two new solutions will further enable employees to adopt mixed reality at work, no matter what device they use.
Dynamics 365 Product Visualize (coming to iOS in preview) empowers sellers to showcase and customize products in their actual environment, helping create a shared understanding between buyer and seller to accelerate complex sales processes. In industries like manufacturing, healthcare, and automotive where products are often complex, and highly configurable or simply too cumbersome to carry around, the need for product visualization is key. It builds a buyer’s confidence early in the sales process so costly change orders are reduced, and customer satisfaction is higher.Using Product Visualize, sellers can show products to customers directly within their Dynamics 365 for Sales workflow and spatial and configuration notes are all saved directly within the associated sales opportunity. Since sales commonly requires more than just one individual, sellers can leverage session content directly in Microsoft Teams to improve internal collaboration to deliver customer-oriented solutions that are critical to accelerating the sales process.
Dynamics 365 Product Visualize
Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for mobile devices (coming to Android in preview) extends the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to Android mobile devices and allows employees to work together from anywhere, empowering technicians to solve problems faster the first time. With Remote Assist, technicians can use either Microsoft HoloLens or an Android mobile device to collaborate with remote experts and troubleshoot issues in context. This latest release of Remote Assist for mobile devices and HoloLens will also include mobile annotations, group calling, deeper integration with Dynamics 365 for Field Service, and improved accessibility features for the HoloLens app.
Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for mobile devices
Empowering people with data insights
One of the reasons Microsoft Business Applications are so powerful is the ability to integrate intelligent tools and generate insights from data sourced from every corner of the organization, including customer transactions, marketing engagement, lead generation activities, and financial and operational data. We continually add new capabilities to bring data insights to life, such as the new Microsoft Forms Pro, that will be available in public preview this spring. This enterprise survey tool makes it easy for organizations to collect feedback across customer touchpoints using surveys, quizzes, and polls, correlate the feedback with business transactions, and derive actionable insights from the combined data. Additional details are available via the Microsoft Forms Pro preview.
The momentum continues with enhancements to the Microsoft Power Platform, combining Power BI, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Common Data Service into an unmatched palette of tools to extend, customize, and integrate Dynamics 365 and Office 365 into your environment. These three applications form a framework that allows users to analyze data to gain insights, act on insights to drive intelligent business processes from the apps they build, and automate tasks to lower costs while reducing errors.
Today at Microsoft Business Forward, we shared how Virgin Atlantic is leveraging the Microsoft Power Platform to speed up application development and empower non-developers to create applications and automate workflows. From customer service and gate agents to maintenance crews and operations, teams across the company can leverage PowerApps and an extensible platform to get insights from data, and share those insights across the highly mobile workforce, enabling secure use of data by employees at airports, on planes, and in offices around the world—all with different roles and information requirements.
Teams have consolidated customer data into a single source of truth, providing service agents with a 360-degree view of customer preferences, enabling a travel experience as seamless and enjoyable as possible. On the operational side, the engineering compliance team is using PowerApps to replace paper-based safety and compliance audits. See today’s post to the PowerApps blog for a detailed look at how Virgin Atlantic is reimaging the passenger experience one PowerApp at a time.
Explore the Microsoft Business Applications April 2019 release
We look forward to sharing more updates and customer stories in the weeks and months ahead, including at the Virtual Launch event on April 2nd. In the meantime, view the April 2019 release notes for details about all features releasing from April 2019 through September 2019 for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
Given the accelerating pace of change around the globe, the worlds of school and work are undergoing massive transformations. New technologies such as artificial intelligence are empowering today’s students to address big challenges that motivate them, such as reversing climate change and slowing the spread of disease. At the same time, collaboration tools, mixed reality and social media are bringing them closer to one another than ever before.
To successfully navigate these changes and to leverage the opportunities ahead of them, we need to prepare students with the diverse skills they will need in the future.
To better understand how to prepare today’s kindergartners to thrive in work and life, last year we released research about the Class of 2030.
Our findings highlighted two core themes: Student-centric approaches such as personalized learning and the growing importance of social-emotional skills.
Social-emotional skills such as collaboration, empathy and creativity have long been essential, but our research revealed they have become newly important to employers and educators alike. Social-emotional skills are also necessary for well-being, which is a key predictor of academic and employment success.
So this year we decided to dig deeper, to better understand what educators and schools worldwide are doing to enhance students’ skills and well-being and to understand how technology can help. We worked with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to survey more than 760 educators in 15 countries. From Mexico to Sweden and from Indonesia to Canada, we listened to the voices of educators. We also interviewed leading experts on and reviewed 90 pieces of research.
What we learned is that educators around the globe are placing a high priority on student well-being and they are actively seeking ways to nurture it in their classrooms, across the school environment, and in their communities.
According to the survey, 80 percent of educators believe that well-being is critical for academic success, for developing foundational literacies and for cultivating strong communication skills, and 70 percent of educators say well-being has grown in importance for K-12 students during their careers.
At the same time, school systems have not moved as quickly as educators to prioritize well-being. Only 53 percent of educators said their schools have a formal policy in place to support students’ well-being. Individual educators can do great things in their own classrooms. But to impact well-being at scale, systemic approaches are needed.
We identified some common barriers that educators encounter in trying to help improve their students’ well-being:
64 percent of educators said they lack the resources or time to support students’ well-being
71 percent of respondents said changes to enhance student well-being need to be driven by school leaders
And, we asked educators what technologies they find most beneficial in overcoming these barriers. Three areas stood out:
58 percent mentioned immersive experiences that allow students to explore scenarios from the perspective of others, which show strong promise for promoting social-emotional skills, particularly empathy
49 percent cited tools that foster collaboration among students
46 percent of educators favor tools that help collect and analyze data about students’ emotional states
In addition, technology provides the critical scale to take any of these approaches beyond a single classroom.
To help identify best practices, we took a close look at schools where teachers report their students enjoy higher-than-average well-being. We found several common threads. These leader schools are more likely to:
Have a formal plan to promote well-being
Measure and monitor well-being as well as academic achievement
Support inclusive classroom practices that amplify student voice
Engage purposefully with the community
Take a whole-school approach to professional learning
A complete summary of our research results will be released in March. In the meantime, we invite you to join our free webinar series on Teaching Happiness, starting February 25, 2019, for a broader exploration of the skills that empower students to lead happy and fulfilling lives.
We are excited to be on this journey together with all of you, to learn from you, and to contribute our insights and our technologies to help every student on the planet achieve more.
Savvy Business Leaders is a five-episode thought leadership podcast series featuring industry-leading influencers and some of the leading brands tackling emerging business challenges facing leadership teams today.
Host Bill Detwiler, Managing Editor of TechRepublic and Tech Pro Research, interviews leading experts to dive into key areas of business transformation, from relationship selling to connected field service, and beyond. He speaks with business leaders that have successfully navigated the business challenges using Microsoft technology, sharing insights uncovered in their digital transformation journey.
How to listen:
You can listen to individual episodes and view the transcripts with related content below. Or, listen on the go by searching for “Savvy Business Leaders” in the podcast category on iTunes, Google Play Music, and Spotify.
Renowned data journalist David McCandless shares simple strategies for leveraging data visualizations to reveal the meaningful insights organizations need to drive their business forward. Stuart Stock, CIO at Veolia UK, will share how the environmental resource management company is using Microsoft Power BI to transform the way their employees and customers analyze data to make data-driven decisions.
David McCandless
Data Journalist, Founder of Information is Beautiful
Sales strategist Jill Konrath orients us to the changing landscape of sales relationships. She explains how access to information empowers salespeople to connect with and provide the greatest value to customers. Next, Jennifer Deutsch, CMO, and Michael Cantor, CIO of global data center maintenance organization Park Place Technologies, share how embracing sales enablement technologies brings new opportunities to advance their business goals.
Jill Konrath
Relationship selling expert, keynote speaker, and author
Sucharita Kodali discusses the digital disruption of the retail industry. She provides valuable insight into building a data strategy to address these emerging challenges, including key considerations and guidance on where to start. Learn about the role of AI in the retail sphere, how connecting and consolidating data can ensure its integrity, and why automating processes improves customer experiences.
Sucharita Kodali
Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, retail industry analyst
Host Bill Detwiler talks field service management with Brian Solis, Principal Analyst and Futurist at Altimeter Group, and Paul Bean, CEO of Mining Worldwide at Sodexo. Brian Solis explains how disruptive technologies are enabling connected field service and unlocking new business models. Then, Paul Bean explains how they are harnessing these technologies to make early, informed, and holistic decisions.
Brian Solis
Author, The End of Business as Usual and X: The Experience When Business Meets Design
Brian Solis discusses how customer experience is guiding digital transformation, with companies using data to be more accessible on mobile platforms and best meet customers’ expectations. Jaclyn Wainwright, CEO of AiR Healthcare Solutions, explains how customer engagement tools enable her healthcare delivery company to anticipate patient needs.
Brian Solis
Author, The End of Business as Usual and X: The Experience When Business Meets Design
Principal Analyst and Futurist, Altimeter Group
Jaclyn Wainwright
CEO, AiR Healthcare Solutions
Series host:
Bill Detwiler
Managing Editor of TechRepublic and Tech Pro Research
Daimler AG is both a world leader in commercial vehicles and premium cars, and a pioneer in innovative mobility. The work requires processing enormous amounts of confidential, business-critical data, but until recently, the automaker had a problem. Its on-premise data platform, built five years ago, lacked the flexibility and scalability needed for big data projects, while Daimler’s strict security standards – more rigorous than what’s legally required – prevented the company from moving data into the cloud.
To solve the problem, Daimler launched eXtollo, the company’s new cloud platform for big data and advanced analytics. Developed with Microsoft, the platform uses Azure Key Vault, a service that safeguards encryption keys and secrets, including certificates, connection strings and passwords.
Guido Vetter, head of Daimler’s Corporate Center of Excellence Advanced Analytics & Big Data.
The solution paved the way for Daimler to migrate its data lake to the cloud, with eXtollo now serving internal business units around the world, including production, finance, sales, marketing and research. Hosted on Azure, the platform also enables more artificial intelligence (AI) projects that help Daimler accelerate innovation, better serve its customers and shape the future of mobility.
To learn more about eXtollo and Daimler’s work with big data, Transform chatted with Guido Vetter, head of Daimler’s Corporate Center of Excellence Advanced Analytics & Big Data.
TRANSFORM: What challenges did you have with your on-premise data platform?
VETTER: We had a monolithic environment and limited capacity. The requests and demands for service from Daimler’s business units were so massive that we were not able to scale the calculation power to what we needed. We had our units competing for calculation resources and we had to schedule and plan who was calculating when. But with Azure, the big advantage is we scale up, we compute, we pay, we scale down.
TRANSFORM: How did Azure Key Vault help?
VETTER: Azure Key Vault was the lever for us to move into the cloud. The biggest challenge for us internally is that we process confidential data. We don’t want this data to leak anywhere. But with “bring your own key” in Azure Key Vault, we are in control of the data and encryption material. Nobody but us can use the data. Combined with services like Azure Active Directory, it gives us all the data protection and security we need to make sure everything is to our highest standards of security.
TRANSFORM: How long did it take you to develop eXtollo?
VETTER: We launched the idea of eXtollo in workshops with Microsoft in January 2018. Then we went live for Europe in April. It was a three-month exercise and a lot of the time we spent validating concepts. We went live in the U.S. in October and later in Asia. So, we have in nine months of almost-global coverage. It was lightning-fast. Cloud is really bringing us the speed and the flexibility to do that.
TRANSFORM: What are some use cases for eXtollo?
VETTER: We do a lot of forecasting cases. In the past, it took days to calculate forecasts in the finance or production areas, which the algorithms can now do in minutes and seconds. We also do driving behavior analytics and forecasting with AI on what a customer potentially wants to buy and that gives us a better portfolio of sales.
The best use case scenario is error code forecasting for the vehicle. When you take your car to the workshop for a repair, the mechanic can download an error code log from the car and immediately see how to solve the problem. The computer program is based on a machine-learning algorithm that analyzes historical, diagnostic data of cars to give targeted suggestions for faster, better service.
The cloud really enables the potential of AI for all levels of the organization. That’s one of the advantages of Azure – we have all the tools we need, whether we use AI algorithms or normal advanced analytics algorithms.
Soon millions of Europeans will head to the polls to cast their ballots in the European Parliament elections, as well as several key national elections. We believe it’s critical that organizations underpinning the democratic process have access to state-of-the-art cybersecurity protection as we’ve seen and continue to see efforts by nation-states and others to influence elections in democracies around the world including in Europe. Today we’re announcing the expansion of Microsoft AccountGuard to twelve new markets across Europe, providing comprehensive threat detection and notification to eligible organizations at no additional cost and customized help to secure their systems.
Continued cyberattacks against European organizations
We all saw hacking and disinformation attacks on the French presidential election in 2017, and European leaders have recently warned that attacks will continue across Europe in 2019. At Microsoft, we’ve seen recent activity targeting democratic institutions in Europe as part of the work our Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) carry out every day to protect all of our customers.
These attacks are not limited to campaigns themselves but often extend to think tanks and non-profit organizations working on topics related to democracy, electoral integrity, and public policy and that are often in contact with government officials. For example, Microsoft has recently detected attacks targeting employees of the German Council on Foreign Relations, The Aspen Institutes in Europe and The German Marshall Fund.
The attacks against these organizations, which we’re disclosing with their permission, targeted 104 accounts belonging to organization employees located in Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Serbia. MSTIC continues to investigate the sources of these attacks, but we are confident that many of them originated from a group we call Strontium. The attacks occurred between September and December 2018. We quickly notified each of these organizations when we discovered they were targeted so they could take steps to secure their systems, and we took a variety of technical measures to protect customers from these attacks.
Consistent with campaigns against similar U.S.-based institutions, attackers in most cases create malicious URLs and spoofed email addresses that look legitimate. These spearphishing campaigns aim to gain access to employee credentials and deliver malware.
The attacks we’ve seen recently, coupled with others we discussed last year, suggest an ongoing effort to target democratic organizations. They validate the warnings from European leaders about the threat level we should expect to see in Europe this year.
Expanding Microsoft AccountGuard offering
We’re making Microsoft AccountGuard available starting today in twelve more European markets: France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain. The service is already available in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and the UK – bringing the total number of European countries with access to the service to fourteen. The markets for which we’re announcing AccountGuard today represent places where we’ve been able to expedite the work needed to offer AccountGuard quickly, and we plan to expand AccountGuard to additional markets in Europe in coming months.
Microsoft AccountGuard, which is part of our Defending Democracy Program, is a state-of-the-art cybersecurity service available at no extra cost to all political candidates, parties, and campaign offices operating at a local or national level. It is also available to think tanks, non-profits, and nongovernmental organizations working on issues related to democracy and electoral integrity. Microsoft AccountGuard is offered free-of-charge to organizations using Office 365.
The service provides notification of cyber threats, including attacks by known nation-state actors, across both email systems run by organizations and the personal accounts of these organizations’ leaders and staff. Eligible organizations can invite selected staff and other associates to enroll, and notification will only occur with the consent of the account owner. Organizations can get protection for external individuals helping with a campaign, board members of non-profit organizations, or volunteers. When we detect threats, we will work directly with participating organizations to notify them and help them secure their systems.
AccountGuard also provides covered organizations guidance to help make their networks and email systems more secure. This can include applying multi-factor authentication, installing the latest security updates, and guidance for setting up systems that ensure only those people who need data and documents can access them. AccountGuard also provides briefings and training to address evolving cyberattack trends as well as preview releases of new security features on a par with the services offered to our large corporate and government account customers.
To register for the service or to learn more, click here. You can find more information about Microsoft AccountGuard in my previous blog post. While AccountGuard is currently available for the campaign accounts of elected officials, we hope in the near future to offer it for government-run accounts, like official accounts of the European Parliament.
Protecting the birthplace of democracy
Europe is regarded as the ‘birthplace of democracy’. It was here that the principles of representative democracy were laid down – principles that have since been replicated across the globe. However, as the ongoing attacks demonstrate, this idea is increasingly under threat.
We believe the work of organizations like The German Marshall Fund and its Alliance for Securing Democracy are an essential part of efforts to secure democracies against those who seek to undermine it. Many organizations essential to democracy do not have the resources or expertise to defend themselves against cyberattacks. That is why we believe that technology providers have a responsibility to help. Microsoft AccountGuard offers additional security measures tailored to how these organizations operate. However, we recognize that we cannot solve this problem alone. That is why we are committed to continue working with local, national, and regional authorities as well as our industry peers to help protect democratic processes.
We have launched a new series of Math activities aligned to all grade 3 Common Core math standards. The first collection of resources features over 30 activities including lesson plans, rubrics, student worksheets, and downloadable worlds. Learn how to round numbers, find variables, use fractions and more, all in immersive and creative Minecraft: Education Edition lessons.
Download the guide to discover a list of applicable standards along with links and descriptions of Minecraft: Education Edition activities that focus on each objective.
Educators can access these lessons for free at any time via our math subject kit. (Hint: Control+F, or Command+F on a Mac, is the perfect tool to help you search for a specific standard or math topic.)
Below are a few lessons to get you started teaching math with Minecraft:
Repeated Addition With Parkour Standard: 3.OA.A.1 Students analyze math models and build their own parkour course in Minecraft using arrays to demonstrate understanding of multiplication.
Round Number Video Standard: 3.NBT.A.1 Students will learn how to round to the nearest 10s and 100s by building math models in Minecraft and recording a video.
Fraction Pixel Art Standard: 3.NF.A.1 Students design pixel art images in Minecraft then discuss number patterns and unit fractions to develop an understanding of fractions as numbers.
We will be sure to update you as content for additional age levels are released. In the meantime, share your classroom creations with us on Pinterest or Twitter via @playcraftlearn and #MinecraftEDU.
For the 2018 racing season, NASCAR imposed a new set of regulations on competitors, including limiting the number of team members allowed on the track during races. For legendary race team Hendrick Motorsports, this meant that many of the race-day crew would now need to perform their critical duties remotely from the team headquarters in Concord, North Carolina.
As Hendrick Motorsports grappled with how to adjust to the new regulations Matt Cochran, head of IT, and Alba Colon, leader of Competition Systems group, saw technology as the answer. That’s when they took the proverbial wheel and made Microsoft Teams the new hub for all race communications and decision-making.
Earlier this week, we joined members of the Hendrick Motorsports team in Concord, North Carolina, and at the track in Daytona, Florida, as they prepared for the exhibition race called the Clash, and for qualifying rounds for this weekend’s Daytona 500. And it was inspiring to see how they’re using Teams to connect the team across hundreds of miles.
As you saw from the video, now during competitions, Hendrick Motorsports race engineers, mechanical experts, and strategists take their positions in the Team Operations Center (TOC), a new state-of-the-art facility built to optimize race-day operations. The TOC enables the team to view the on-track action, quickly gather and analyze massive amounts of data, and communicate in real-time with the team at the track.
Teams was the digital hub for it all—in the TOC, in the garage, in the pit, and in the cars. Jimmie Johnson, seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and winner of this weekend’s Daytona Clash race said, “The relationship we have with Microsoft and our use of Teams is to win, plain and simple. That’s what we’re here to do. Communication and speed are everything for us to make those instant decisions. We look forward to kicking butt with [Teams] this year.”
Engineers like Zac Brown, who supports Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron on the #24 car, relies on Teams to stay in constant contact with Byron, his crew chief, and pit crew at the track. He uses Teams to easily share large files and says that because Teams is integrated with the full Office 365 suite, it saves critical seconds otherwise lost in toggling between apps.
This weekend, stock car racing fans all over the country will tune in to watch the Daytona 500, an annual 500-mile long NASCAR Cup Series race known as the Super Bowl of the NASCAR race season. In qualifying heats, Hendrick Motorsports swept the top four spots at the starting line, and we wish them the best of luck in Sunday’s big race!
The What’s New in EDU crew is back from Bett, the world’s biggest education technology event where educators, ideas and edtech solutions came and left us with inspiration to spare – and share! If you’d like to catch up on all the Microsoft Education from the show (there was kind of a lot), check out our big Bett episode or the individual links below:
We can’t all go to London for Bett, but there’s still a trove of help, information, and useful technology waiting for educators at their local Microsoft Store. That’s where Microsoft Innovative Educators spearhead digital literacy programs that include coding and free field trips.
Our latest addition is FREE STEM Saturday learning experiences: to help teachers ignite students’ interest in STEM, while saving time and money in the classroom. Students learn how to code in Minecraft, build a robot using inexpensive household items, and manage cyber-bullying.
There’s another event we’re celebrating in this episode of What’s New in EDU: Skype in the Classroom’s Literacy Month! Our global community of educators and their classes will connect virtually to read books and share stories with one another over with Skype in the Classroom, and many will even get the chance to talk to real-life authors and storytellers.
What kind of authors? Well, how about Cressida Cowell, author and illustrator of the hugely popular “How to Train Your Dragon” series? Skype in the Classroom is partnering with Little Brown Young Readers for a free broadcast event and live Q&A with Cressida Cowell on March 6th. Cressida will inspire students to tap into their boundless imagination and will show how using character development and details in stories make them more believable and fun.
We can’t wait for you to connect with others around the world and help inspire a love of reading and writing for your students.
We’re always looking to bring new features and sources of delight to our collaborative tools, so we also have an update for Flipgrid, the leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families around the world. Flipgrid promotes fun and social learning by giving every student an equal and amplified voice on the topics you define!
We all know that #StudentVoice is 🔮MAGIC 🔮and the Flipgrid design team has conjured up loads of new selfie stickers! Search and choose from hundreds of stickers (including emoji!) when you decorate your Flipgrid selfie!
If you’ve watched this episode of What’s New in EDU you’ll also have seen that it’s almost time for Microsoft Education Exchange (E2). We’re inspired by educators who innovate in the classroom and provide the best learning opportunities for their students. For this year’s E2, educators from all over will come to Paris. Paris is home to many of the world’s top-rated schools and educational facilities and France is committed to public schooling as a free service to its citizens, providing equity to all residents.
The theme for this year’s E2 discussions is the importance of ensuring all students have a voice, and how educators can address the social and emotional well-being of students. If you’re unable to join, here’s some info on how to participate online:
Facebook Live – We will be hosting a live stream from E2 on both Wednesday, April 3rd and Thursday, April 4th on Facebook Live! Please amplify this with your educators and networks.
Share your #Road2E2 story on Twitter!
Have a Twitter account (if you haven’t used Twitter yet, this is a great time to get started)
Share a video of yourself and the town/country you are from along with a message about how you feel about coming to E2
To cap off the episode, we also covered our recent announcement for IT professionals: We will be bringing the BrightBytes Data Management platform, DataSense into the Microsoft Education family. With both Azure and the DataSense platform your school can better collect, manage and control your data to help drive the best possible learning outcomes for students.
Phew, and that’s another episode done. Thank you for watching, sharing and being inspiring. Stay tuned for the next episode of What’s New in EDU soon by following @MicrosoftEDU or the Microsoft Education Blog.
