Microsoft news – Page 258

Posted on August 20, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Windows 10 Tip: Use Paint 3D to edit your snips

If you use the Snipping Tool and like to mark up your snips when you share them, now there are more ways to liven them up, thanks to the Windows 10 April 2018 Update.

With the new “edit in Paint 3D” button built into the Snipping Tool, you can take your snips to the next level. Move (or remove) objects with Magic select, augment and annotate with realistic brushes, bring in 3D objects from Remix 3D and more.

For example, someone could snip a chart from Excel, load it into Paint 3D, then add a text box to give a title to this new creation and a 3D model to make it feel different and more compelling.

Check it out in action:

A 3D bike drag and dropped onto a chart to show Paint 3D in action in a snip

Drag and drop a 3D image into your snip

If you like this, check out more Windows 10 Tips.

Posted on August 20, 2018 by — Leave a comment

‘Minecraft: Education Edition’ is coming to iPad

We’ve spent our summer building innovative tools to help students of all ages and levels get the most out of learning, the minute they walk back into your classroom. In this latest edition of What’s New in EDU, we’re excited to share a new batch of features and enhancements to help you encourage independent learning and engage your students – and we’re kicking it off with the expansion of Minecraft: Education Edition.

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Transform your classroom with Minecraft: Education Edition for iPad

Today, we are excited to announce we’re bringing the magic of Minecraft: Education Edition to iPad. Now, students can tap into the power of iPad to build historic monuments, swim through coral reefs with the Update Aquatic, bring creative stories to life, experiment with chemistry, and document their learning with the camera and portfolio features.

Educators trying Minecraft: Education Edition for the first time can get started with a beginner’s tutorial world and access a number of free class resources on education.minecraft.net. A global community of Minecraft Mentors offers year-round onboarding and classroom support, right alongside the growing Minecraft: Education Edition community – now with 35 million licensed teachers and students in 115 countries.

“Minecraft: Education Edition on iPad unlocks new and intuitive ways of collaborating and sharing and has revolutionized the way our students and teachers explore curriculum and projects,” says Kyriakos Koursaris, Head of Education Technology for PaRK International School. “The features allow for deep and meaningful learning, and the values it promotes, from inclusivity to 21 century skills, empower everyone to use technology with extraordinary results,” said Koursaris.

Here’s how to get Minecraft: Education Edition on your school’s iPads next month:

If your school district is already licensed through Microsoft:

If your school is licensed through Microsoft 365 for Education (A3 or A5), you already have access to Minecraft: Education Edition. You will be able to download the app onto iPads in September. To learn more, visit this webpage. What’s more, we’ve updated Intune for Education so it’s easier than ever for IT administrators to manage student devices from one unified, streamlined console.

If you’re interested in trying Minecraft: Education Edition on iPad in your school but have not purchased a license in the past:

Minecraft: Education Edition is licensed via yearly subscriptions that are purchased through the Microsoft Store for Education, via volume licensing agreements and through partner resellers. To learn more, visit our webpage on how to license Minecraft: Education Edition.

Minecraft: Education Edition is licensed via yearly subscriptions, purchased through Authorized Education Partners, or directly from the Microsoft Store for Education. To learn more, visit our webpage on how to license Minecraft: Education Edition.

And for Minecraft players and families who play outside of school:

We’re excited to share that players of the Windows 10 PC and Xbox console version of Minecraft can now use the Chemistry Resource Pack, released originally for Minecraft: Education Edition.

The Chemistry Resource Pack introduces lab tables, element blocks and items that are craftable only using the new chemistry features. With this added feature, players can create elements and combine them into compounds, build a periodic table and combine materials using chemistry to create new items like helium balloons, sparklers, latex, and underwater torches. Learn and experiment with the building blocks of chemistry in the world of Minecraft!

To get the Chemistry Resource Pack, go to the ‘Create New World’ option in the game and, under the ‘Cheats’ menu, toggle the ‘Education’ option.

What else is new in Microsoft Education this month?

Office 365 Education:

Microsoft OneNote helps teachers organize class content, create and deliver interactive lessons, provide feedback, and collaborate. Graphing in Math Assistant is now available in OneNote Online – this tool helps students visualize math problems and equations as they learn the steps to solving a problem.

OneNote is also making improvements to help you save valuable teaching time. Roaming Ink enables Pens and Ink preferences that follow you from device to device. You and your students can easily reuse the custom pens and ink you love, even when you switch devices. Learn more about using OneNote in your classroom.

Open Up resources:

We’re extremely excited to partner with Open Up Resources to offer high quality, free curriculum materials through Microsoft OneNote and Forms. Since the partnership announcement, we’ve been working to incorporate Open Up curriculum seamlessly into OneNote and Forms.

Using OneNote Class Notebook to access the Open Up curriculum, teachers can distribute course materials on any device. Students can write, draw, collaborate, and save their work automatically in their personal digital notebooks. Open Up content in OneNote integrates seamlessly with common LMS and SIS platforms. Using Open Up in Forms, teachers can access one-click assignment and efficient scoring. Get started using Open Up curriculum now.

Technology can be a wonderful tool to help personalize learning for every student in your class. To help students customize reading even more, we’ve added additional colors for page themes in Office Lens. Choose from the expanded selection with the latest update of Office Lens (version 2.15) for iPhone or iPad. Read more details here.

Closed captioning in Stream is also now available so you can make a lesson more accessible by recording it and adding captions.

Microsoft Teams:

Microsoft Teams is the digital hub that brings conversations, content, assignments, and apps together in one place. Educators can create collaborative classrooms, connect in professional learning communities, and communicate with school staff – all from a single experience in Office 365 Education. Check out all the new updates in the Teams back-to-school blog post.

Rubric Grading now available. Built directly into Teams, rubric grading helps increase assignment transparency for students and allows teachers to give more meaningful feedback. Customize your grading criteria with your own rubric to enable skills-based grading of your assignments.

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Updates to the assignments experience on mobile: With new updates to iOS and Android apps, you can now access all of your assignments directly when you launch the Teams app and see a simplified list of upcoming tasks, across all of your classes. Students can work on their assignments directly on their phones and turn in.
Archiving teams: Instead of deleting older teams, you can now archive the team, placing it in a read-only state. This way you can go back and reference what you covered last year, any time you want.
Reusing assignments: Reuse assignments from current or archived class teams, bringing over instructions, attachments, and customizations from previous assignments to your new assignment.

New Class Notebook and Staff Notebook tab app: Teachers can enjoy the new and improved Class Notebook and Staff Notebook settings directly inside of Teams. Just select “Manage.”

Skype in the Classroom:

Skype in the Classroom (SITC) is an online community that enables thousands of teachers to inspire the next generation of global citizens through transformative learning over Skype.

New Activity Plans for your favorite Skype in the Classroom activities. Whether you are going back to school or in the middle of the academic year, make learning relevant and fun for your students by participating in one of the Skype in the Classroom LIVE learning experiences. Use the new Activity plans, written by teachers, to enrich your students’ learning experiences with activities and assessments aligned to ISTE standards. They can be followed step by step, or you can adjust them based on your classroom’s needs. Explore all activity plans here.

Microsoft Photos App:

The Microsoft Photos App makes it easy to tell stories with photos and videos. There is a built-in video editor, making it easy for you and your students to create movies using photos, video clips, music, 3D models, and Hollywood-style special effects. Whether it’s a group history project, a lab report, or a music video just for fun, the Photos app makes it easy to quickly assemble content, add titles, drop in music, enhance your story with special effects, and share. If you liked making videos with Movie Maker, you’ll love what you can do with the Microsoft Photos App.

Newsroom-inspired 3D effects. We’ve added newsroom-inspired offerings to the 3D effects built into the Photos app. Now your class can add “LIVE” overlays to their video projects, and identify breaking news, 24-hour coverage, or inspiring sports stories.
Video Editor tile: Jump directly into video projects, or start a new one quickly, with the new Video Editor Tile. Your next big story is only a click away.

Surface Go

When we sit down with our education customers, many tell us that they’re looking for hardware that seamlessly integrates with their larger ecosystem of Microsoft-powered devices. Beyond that, our education customers need a device that’s small and sturdy while still providing the performance their students need. And all of this has to be at the right price. That’s why we’re excited about what Surface Go offers for schools, and the magic that it unlocks within each student who uses it.

Surface Go equips both students and teachers with the quality and productivity that Surface is known for in a more compact – and affordable – package. At just 1.15 pounds and 8.3 mm thin, Surface Go packs amazing portable performance into a 10” device. Starting at just $399 MSRP for education customers, it represents a new entry point for the Surface family, while keeping the premium qualities that have come to define Surface.

Surface Go is a great device for schools looking for a Windows 10 device that offers tablet to laptop flexibility, pen and touch input, a natural typing experience with the Surface Go Type Cover, seamless digital inking, and the ability to run full desktop applications.

Early reception to the device has been positive and tech journalists across the world are excited for what Surface Go can do for education.

More information about Surface Go is available here. Education customers who are interested in purchasing Surface Go should contact their Microsoft sales representative or device reseller today.

Intune for Education makes it easy to set up and manage Windows 10 devices in just a few steps, including deploying apps or settings to users, and managing shared devices.

iOS device management features are now available in Intune for Education. Intune for Education is already a great way to manage your school’s Windows 10 devices, and you will now be able to use it to manage apps and settings on your classroom iOS devices. With these new features, Intune for Education continues to grow as a unified, streamlined administrative console to manage your school devices.

Posted on August 20, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Reflections on Microsoft’s inaugural Council for Digital Good event in D.C.

It’s been a month since our inaugural Council for Digital Good met in Washington, D.C., to unveil an open letter to law- and policymakers about improving life online which was a culmination of the teen council’s work over the past 18 months. While I summarized the event and the open letter in a blog post last month, I wanted to share more details about the council’s time in D.C., as well as a few thoughts on the pilot program overall.

Our July event consisted of two panel discussions led by the teens and focused on the state of online civility today and what we hope for in the future. During the first panel, four teens shared what they discussed with peers, parents and their broader communities at various workshops and discussion groups that they led on and around international Safer Internet Day in February. We then asked three adult panelists to react to and question the teens about what they’d presented. Representatives from Google, Columbia University and Born This Way Foundation responded with praise, feedback and a few thought-provoking questions. Here are a few highlights:

Teens stress awareness-raising, education and communications

Jazmine, a 14-year-old from Kentucky, stressed the need for awareness-raising of online risks and formal, in-school education about online safety and digital civility. “There’s no silver-bullet solution to protecting kids online,” she said. “I want to offer my feelings of empowerment to other students.” That’s why going forward, Jazmine is committed to leading activities in her school and school district on Safer Internet Day every year. We look forward to Jazmine’s progress, as well as the responses from her peers, teachers and others.
Judah, a 14-year-old from Tennessee always brought a unique perspective to our discussions because Judah does not have technology or social media. We selected Judah for the council for his somewhat atypical teen experiences and he shared some of those in D.C. As we at Microsoft also often note, Judah said age limits exist on social media for a reason. “If you’re not abiding by them, you’re not helping yourself.”

Judah also spoke of the need for parents to model good digital behavior in front of their children and teens. “When a kid sees a parent on the phone, it’s a competition for (the parent’s) attention: the kid versus the cellphone.” Judah said young people immediately start asking questions of the parent, seeking permission for one thing or another. “Kids actually want the parent to say no” because that would mean the parent was truly listening and paying attention to them. In addition to addressing a fourth-grade class on Safer Internet Day 2018, Judah joined his parents‘ online safety program and organization, Parents Who Fight, at four other informational events they’ve held this year.

Asked what more might be done to connect positively with young people about online safety and the need for digital civility, Christina, a 17-year-old from Georgia, said high-schoolers are “set in their (digital) ways,” and will likely be more difficult to reach with proactive messages. “Until something happens to them, kids think they’re immune” from online ills. Christina also noted that young people fear judgment and punishment from their parents for risky online behaviors, so she suggested “no condescension” when coaching kids through online life. Following the event, Christina was approached by a D.C.-based nonprofit to write a guest blog about her council experience and she’s been offered an internship opportunity with another nongovernmental organization. (More on this discussion and the entire D.C. event when we post some new videos to our YouTube channel.)

Council members share their unvarnished views

Our second panel featured six teens, three discussing the cohort’s written manifesto for life online released in January, and three others presenting the open letter. Introducing the written manifesto, Sierra, an 18-year-old college student from North Carolina, highlighted the need for resilience-building in young people, mindfulness and digital civility – all key ingredients for helping to reduce exposure to online risks and abuse.

Highlighting the importance of reporting concerns to technology companies about content and conduct on their services, the young people said they’d like to receive acknowledgement emails from companies that the teens’ reports were received and are being addressed. They also noted the need for tech firms to promote awareness within their individual products and services that reporting illegal and abusive material and activity is warranted, necessary and useful. We first discussed reporting terms-of-use violations with the teens at our Redmond, Wash., summit last August. Initially, we didn’t seem to be connecting with the teens on the topic, but over the course of the next several months, the youth clearly gave some thought to the issue. In fact, during the D.C. forum, William, a soon-to-be high-school junior from Washington state, admitted, “I didn’t even realize I had these opinions until someone asked to hear them.”

Indeed, we wanted others to hear firsthand what these impressive teens have been learning and clearly internalizing for at least the last 18 months. The opinions and perspectives that they shared in D.C. and throughout the council program were their own and those of others in the cohort. Even when drafting the open letter, we at Microsoft provided only directional guidance and feedback. We wanted clarity of thought and authenticity to shine through with our group, so we made it a point of requiring only two things: active participation and timely completion of assignments. How members went about accomplishing their work – individually or as a full council – was up to them. And, we emphasized open dialogues, the sharing of experiences and focus group-style interactions.

Most importantly, and being mindful of a comment from one applicant, we treated our council members like the informed and interesting young adults that they are. In her application, one council member said that she had opinions and she wanted adults to hear and listen to them. Again, the impact of the event in D.C. and that of the entire program underscores the importance of the youth voice and the need for young people to have a say in policy matters that affect them.

Dr. Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University, followed the council’s progress online and was energized to learn of its next steps.

“It is so encouraging to see that the students – while aware of the breadth and scope of online risks and vulnerabilities out there – are motivated to find and implement solutions among their peer groups and communities,” Hinduja said. “Interestingly, the best strategies to positively change attitudes and actions of youth online aren’t rooted in technology, but in the development of character traits such as grit, gratitude, empathy, integrity and emotional self-regulation. These youth clearly know this and will now move to translate their ideas into actionable efforts that have the potential to change their generation’s ‘default’ approach to social media use into one marked by thoughtfulness, inclusivity and kindness.”

Although this inaugural pilot program formally concluded following our D.C. event, many of the individual council members are joining other organizations to continue to learn, grow and advocate for these critical societal issues. We’ll be sure to follow up with a ‘Where they are now’ post in a few months.

Learn more

In the meantime, you can read the council’s full open letter here and learn more about digital civility at www.microsoft.com/digitalcivility. For more about online safety generally, visit our website and resources page; “like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Posted on August 16, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Celebrate the power of youth with WE Day broadcast this Friday on ABC

Get ready to be inspired and to inspire your students to do good.

Invite your friends and families to join me and millions of Americans on August 17 to watch WE Day on ABC, a celebration of the transformative power of young people.

Microsoft is proud to support WE’s mission to empower youth to create a positive impact at home and around the world through service-learning. A supporter of the organization since 2013, we continue to help WE by equipping them with Microsoft technology that lets them bring the benefits of their programs to schools, families and youth around the world.

I am particularly excited about our work with WE to inspire students to make our world more inclusive through the WE Are One Campaign. Today, thousands of youth are learning, creating and ideating on ways they can leverage technology to make their classrooms and communities more accessible and inclusive for all.

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The WE Day Special features a great example of the WE Are One Campaign at work.

Johnny (featured above) is a glowing example of a student using technology for good. He built a social networking app for people with disabilities and their families, motivated and informed by his brother, Christian.

I invite our passionate education community to take part in the free WE Schools program, including the WE Are One Campaign. Through service learning, students learn to take action on the issues that matter to them, while learning critical academic and life skills along the way.

The WE Day Special on ABC will inspire action through the stories of everyday Americans making extraordinary impact in their communities. And you can catch host John Stamos, alongside Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, The Chainsmokers, Dierks Bentley, and WE co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger on the WE Day stage as they celebrate youth and families committed to changing the world!

Join the WE Movement: Watch the WE Day Special August 17 at 8/7c on ABC @WEmovement #WEAreOne Click To Tweet

Posted on August 15, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Here’s what’s new in education apps

With the new school year fast approaching for the Western Hemisphere, we thought it would be useful to look at some of the most recently released apps on the Microsoft Store for Education. These apps work seamlessly within the Microsoft Education ecosystem to enable us all to empower every student to achieve more.

	Cashtivity is passionately focused on preparing students for success, in college, career and beyond. It’s this focus that drives them every day. They recently released Mindsets Learning – a digital library of inquiry based, real-world lessons for K12 math, science and STEM. Students collaborate, predict, analyze and apply their math skills to solve a real-world challenge using design thinking and an entrepreneurial mindset. Educators are able to mentor & monitor students using real time data and facilitation tools provided in the app.
	Music lessons will never be the same again with Flute Master from Classplash, a company founded by an educator with a passion for creating sustainable digital content for music education. With Flute Master, students will learn how to play the soprano recorder! It’s easy and a lot of fun! They play a real recorder, and the sound will be recognized through the microphone. Flute Master presents an immersive story, lovely animations and includes 30 original music tracks that gradually teach each note on the recorder. Besides learning how to play a real instrument, they will improve their music, fine motor skills and make progression in sight-reading by using the sheet music play-along for each track.
	In Rhythmic Village you’ll discover the crazy and happy music notes named “Rhythmiacs.” In this adventure you’ll learn the basics of sheet music reading, play percussion instruments and improve your sense of rhythm. Use your device and start right away in the app.
	Shape robotics journey started in 2011 just outside of Copenhagen, at the Technical University of Denmark. Moises Pacheco and David Johan Christensen, an Associate Professor and Robot Researcher respectively, shared the same vision: to develop a robot system that was extremely easy-to-use, even for younger school pupils. This resulted in the launch of the Fable Robotics System, a modular robot that allows you to build advanced custom robots in seconds. Fable Blockly is the official programming Windows 10 app that enables Fable to become a walking Fable, a social Fable, Fable as a snake, and even an industrial Fable who can perform tasks such as sort colors.
	Many teachers teach using text ,but 65 percent of students learn by visuals. Squigl solves this problem. Squigl is software that utilizes AI to allow teachers and students the ability to transform their text into animated visual presentations in minutes. A user inputs text into Squigl, and with a couple of clicks, an animated video is produced. Squigl allows anyone to make animated videos in minutes with ease. A student enters text into Squigl or through Word, and within a couple of clicks an animated video is produced. Squigl generates a full package that includes an MP4, sound file, a specially formatted PDF document, and the digital assets used in the project for consumption in other systems.
	Vidigami is a collaborative, private and secure media management platform designed exclusively for schools. It is a cloud-based, members-only application available on web and mobile that allows staff, faculty, families, and students to crowdsource authentic school memories. Photos and videos of everything from sporting events and field trips to class projects and artwork can be easily captured, centralized in on place, intelligently organized, and finally, privately shared with other members of the community, so they can be easily archived and transformed into incredible content for engagement, education and more.

To learn more about these solutions and thousands of other apps that could support you, please visit the Microsoft Store for Education.

Posted on August 15, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Schlumberger boosts global collaboration with Microsoft 365

With more than 80 years of pioneering innovation in reservoir characterization, drilling, production, and exploration, Schlumberger is the leading provider of upstream products and services in the oil and gas industry. It’s a highly collaborative business, both internally, with more than 100,000 employees working in 85 countries, and externally, with the world’s leading global oil and gas customers depending on Schlumberger products and services. Moving data and expensive resources through a complex network of delivery systems calls for reliable, real-time collaboration and communication for all stakeholders. That’s one reason why standardizing on Microsoft 365 is a major step forward in the company’s strategy to harness the cloud and drive efficient customer service.

Recently, Schlumberger’s VP of Information Technology Sebastien Lehnherr had this to say about driving teamwork and productivity on a global scale:

“Operational efficiency and agility are requirements in a highly regulated service industry striving for performance and service quality. We use Microsoft 365 as a core element of our digital strategy—Microsoft Teams, Enterprise Mobility + Security, Power BI, and Windows 10 empower our employees globally with the intuitive, feature-rich tools that help them collaborate more efficiently and be more productive working in the office or while on the road.”

With highly secure, collaborative cloud apps at their fingertips, Schlumberger employees working in the field and at head offices in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague are empowered by agile digital connections that accelerate service delivery and keep customers’ products moving to market. Unimpeded communication helps connect the big-picture expertise from Schlumberger’s leadership centers with local experience at production sites, adding value to customer relationships. We’re also excited to see how Schlumberger’s global Windows 10 deployment will add value to its Microsoft cloud business productivity platform.

Posted on August 15, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Go behind the scenes with ‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider’ enhanced for Xbox One X

Many of gaming’s most compelling stories come from those who’ve helped to create our favorite Xbox One games. In our Inside Xbox One X Enhanced series, these creators will share the behind-the-scenes accounts of the work involved in enhancing these epic games for Xbox One X, how they’ve helped chart the course of the world’s most powerful console, and what that means for the future of gaming. Today, we’ll be chatting with Eidos-Montreal Programming Director Frédéric Robichaud on the highly anticipated Shadow of the Tomb Raider which sees Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider.

What specifically is your development team doing to enhance Shadow of the Tomb Raider for Xbox One X?

To ensure that Shadow of the Tomb Raider looked crisp and amazingly polished on Xbox One X, we have worked incredibly hard to fully support HDR mode. We’ve revamped the entire pipeline to be HDR from the get go: realistic lights intensity calibration, HDR textures and global illumination energy conservation.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we offer two modes for players: High Resolution and High Framerate mode. With the GPU power of the Xbox One X, we were able to get 4K at a constant 30 FPS and with the CPU boost, we are targeting 60 FPS with full HD (1080p) in High Framerate mode.

We’ve been able to improve the quality of certain algorithms on the Xbox One X like stochastic screen-space reflections and atmospheric effects. With the extra memory, we have increased the shadow maps and texture resolution to enhance the visual quality.

Audio wise, we are fully supporting Dolby Atmos to create real 3D audio immersion.

How do these enhancements impact the gaming experience, and why did your development team choose to focus on these enhancement areas?

The recent Tomb Raider games are known for their high quality graphics and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, as the final entry in the origin trilogy, pushes the visual boundaries more than ever before. Supporting 4K was mandatory for us. Players that do not own a 4K TV will still see the visual improvements, mostly with less aliasing and more details in the image.

If the player chooses the High Framerate mode, they will enjoy the fluidity and reactivity of the controls in a seamless gameplay experience.

The audio immersion is perfect with Dolby Atmos, especially in the jungle areas which are dense with wildlife like the locusts below and birds above. Spatial audio is best experienced with a home theater system; however, all players will still hear those effects and an overall increase in audio fidelity.

How do you expect fans of Shadow of the Tomb Raider will respond to playing it on Xbox One X with these enhancements?

Those playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the Xbox One X will be blown away by the visual quality in High Resolution mode or the fluidity if they choose the High Framerate mode. Players will not want to go back to the previous generation of consoles!

What enhancement were you most excited about to explore leveraging for Shadow of the Tomb Raider on Xbox One X?

Without a doubt, High Framerate mode. Maximizing the CPU power to target 60 FPS with a huge, living crowd like in the Cozumel café or Paititi was an interesting challenge. A lot of optimization to our engine was done to achieve these stunning results.

What does 4K and HDR mean for your game, games in the future and development at your studio?

We completely revamped our pipeline to integrate HDR from the beginning of production. Shadow of the Tomb Raider looks more real and better than ever before because of 4K and HDR. Better resolution, less aliasing, more intensity and more nuance. We hope that players are blown away by the visual fidelity of the most recent edition to the Tomb Raider franchise.

It is only the beginning; 4k and HDR will become standard to all the games, especially when all developers begin to follow a common HDR standard.

Thanks to Frédéric for taking the time to chat with us about Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which releases on September 14. We’ll bring you more interviews with more developers in the future, as well as more on Shadow of the Tomb Raider, so stay tuned to Xbox Wire!

Posted on August 15, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Breakthrough ideas wanted: Join the Microsoft AI Idea Challenge for cool prizes, exposure

This post is authored by Tara Shankar Jana, Senior Technical Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft.

All of us have creative ideas – ideas that can improve our lives and the lives of thousands, perhaps even millions of others. But how often do we act on turning those ideas into a reality? Most of the time, we do not believe in our ideas strongly enough to pursue them. Other times we feel like we lack a platform to build out our idea or showcase it. Most good ideas don’t go beyond those initial creative thoughts in our head.

If you’re a professional working in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), or an aspiring AI developer or just someone who is passionate about AI and machine learning, Microsoft is excited to offer you an opportunity to transform your most creative ideas into reality. Join the Microsoft AI Idea Challenge Contest today for a chance to win exciting prizes and get your project featured in Microsoft’s AI.lab showcase. Check out the rules, terms and conditions of the contest and then dive right in!

The Challenge

The Microsoft AI Idea Challenge is seeking breakthrough AI solutions from developers, data scientists, professionals and students, and preferably developed on the Microsoft AI platform and services. The challenge gives you a platform to freely share AI models and applications, so they are reusable and easily accessible. The ideas you submit are judged on the parameters shown in the figure below – essentially half the weight is for the originality of your idea, 20% for the feasibility of your solution, and 30% for the complexity (i.e. level of sophistication) of your implementation.

The Microsoft AI Challenge is accepting submissions between now and October 12^th, 2018.

To qualify for the competition, individuals or teams are required to submit a working AI model, test dataset, a demo app and a demo video that can be a maximum of three minutes long. We encourage you to register early and upload your projects soon, so that you can begin to plan and build out your solution and turn in the rest of your materials on time. We are looking for solutions across the whole spectrum of use cases – to be inspired, take a look at some of the examples at AI.lab.

Prizes

The winners of the first three places in the contest will respectively receive a Surface Book 2, a DJI Drone, and an Xbox One X.

We hope that’s motivation to get you started today – good luck!

Tara

Posted on August 14, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Back to School tips and tactics coming in Aug. 21 #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet

It’s a big planet, so we don’t all go back to school at the same time. Sooner or later, though, students and educators inevitably head back to the classroom – hopefully with maximum momentum intact. The #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet of August is a great way to broaden your horizon to encompass different ideas, approaches and opinions about getting Back To School and hitting the ground running.

Our next #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet, starting on Tuesday, August 21, at 10:00 a.m. PDT (check your time zone here), will focus on good tips, tactics and ideas for heading Back to School with aplomb. (Sounds great, but what’s a TweetMeet?)

We’re still taking a global approach to the TweetMeet by offering 13 simultaneous language tracks for the event. This month we’re adding עִברִית (Hebrew), norsk (Norwegian), svenska (Swedish), Nederlands (Dutch) and Deutsch (German).

For each language track, we have one or more hosts to post the translated questions and respond to educators. We’re once again most grateful to all current and former hosts who are collaborating closely to provide this service.

The #TweetMeetXX hashtags for non-English languages are to be used together with #MSFTEduChat so that everyone can find the conversations back in their own language. For example: French-speaking people use the combination #TweetMeetFR #MSFTEduChat. English-speaking educators may all use #MSFTEduChat on its own.

Our #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet with Back to School tips is on Tuesday, August 21 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT. Everyone is welcome to join. #BackToSchool Click To Tweet

Why join the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeets?

TweetMeets are monthly recurring Twitter conversations about themes relevant to educators, facilitated by Microsoft Education. The purpose of these events is to help professionals in education to learn from each other and inspire their students while they are preparing for their future. The TweetMeets also nurture personal learning networks among educators from across the globe.

Our hosts often use Flipgrid to share their excitement and thoughts around TweetMeet topics, and you’re welcome to participate above!

When and how can I join?

Join us Tuesday, August 21 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT on Twitter using the hashtags#MSFTEduChat, #BackToSchool and #MicrosoftEDU (which you can always use to stay in touch with us). To find the event time for your specific location, use this time zone announcer.

How can I best prepare?

To prepare for the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet, have a look at the questions we crafted this time.

You can also revisit our blog post, Back to School season gets easier with live tips and hands-on help from #MicrosoftEDU, and check out all event sessions and relevant resources from the Microsoft Educator Community: aka.ms/backtoschoollive2018

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You can also catch up on the latest Back to School features for:

TweetMeet Questions

Time	#	Question
10:00	Ice Breaker	What excites you about going back to school? Share an image, GIF or story.
10:06	1	What tools and strategies do you use to welcome new students?
10:15	2	What is your main focus this coming schoolyear?
10:24	3	How will you improve communication and collaboration?
10:33	4	How can technology help you meet your goals for this schoolyear?
10:42	5	What’s your best tip to create an inclusive classroom?
10:51	6	What new idea are you eager to try in the new schoolyear?
11:00	Takeaway Question	Who or what has inspired you in today’s TweetMeet?

Hosts and coaches

Matching this month’s topic, we have invited 20 global educators to be our hosts. They can’t wait to engage with you and share ideas about Back to School. Check out their profiles and projects, follow them all on Twitter, and check their tweets in this Twitter list.

Can Van Truong @CanVanTruong (MIE Expert, Thach Xa junior high school teacher – Passionate about helping teachers use technology to empower students – Thach That, Ha Noi, Viet Nam)
Chandni Agarwal @chandni1910 (Head IT Department & teaching Computer Science Grade 12, National ICT Award Winner 2016, MIELA Winner, MIE Expert, Master Trainer, Cyber Security Resource Person, Love to implement Microsoft tools for Power to Empower – Delhi, India)
Elsabé Hart @HartElsabe (Former Teacher Ambassador and Microsoft Learning Consultant, Microsoft Certified Educator, MIE Master Trainer and MIE Expert. Minecraft Certified Trainer and an advocate for Game-Based Learning and 21st Century Learning Design – Cape Town, South Africa)
Erin Holland @erinjurisich (Digital Learning and Teaching Facilitator (DLTF) for Onslow County; passionate about helping teachers utilize technology that empowers students, both in the classroom and beyond! – North Carolina, USA)
Esam Baboukhan @soslearning (e-learning manager, lifelong learner and passionate advocate of meaningful, relevant and engaging teaching, learning and assessment – augmented through the use of accessible Edtech, MIE Expert – United Kingdom)
Ferdinand Stipberger @stipberger (MIE Expert, Middle School Teacher up to 10th grade – helping teachers and students to redefine their teaching and learning by using technology. I love all things the Microsoft Education world is about. – Neunburg v. Wald, Bavaria, Germany)
Jeni Long @jlo731 (Instructional Technologist with EMSISD. Passionate about technology integration and making learning accessible and fun for all! MIE Expert, MIE Trainer, & Flipgrid Ambassadors – Ft Worth, Texas, USA)
Kim Aarberg @KAarberg Teacher (I teach a global classroom. I’m a Flipgrid ambassador, Soundtrap expert and Google-certified teacher. Students learn in a collaborative environment. – Norway)
Kristina Johansson @johfam (Teacher. Interested in how technology can help us learn together. We don’t know what the future will be like! MIE Expert – Sweden)
Lucian Duma @lucianecurator (Teacher for SEN students, MIE Expert, MIE Trainer, Social Media Manager and Curator – Romania)
Luis Oliveira @loliveira55 (ELL HS Teacher, Tech Coach and Director, MIE Expert, MIE Trainer, Flipgrid Ambassador, Certified Newsela, Flipgrid, and Formative Educator. Passionate about providing a voice to all – Middletown, RI USA)
Manuela Valentim @fatela1971 (Interested in PBL and Digital Citizenship. Coordinator of UNESCO’s Projects, MIE Expert, Skype Master Teacher and Teach SDG’s Ambassador – Portugal)
Michel Girard @theMoat (Computer science teacher at DIIAGE, Office 365 administrator, MIE Expert, love sharing teaching practices and empowering students and teachers in their learning paths – Dijon, France)
Natalija Budinski @NatalijaNovta (Math teacher and External Adviser of Serbian Ministry of Education, My fields of interest are STEM disciplines, teaching math through origami and other art disciplines. MIE Expert, Skype Master Teacher, Scientix ambassador, blogger – Serbia)
Noa Lahav @supervxn (Working for the Innovative Tech Unit in the Ministry of Education, MIE Expert, Minecraft Global Mentor and Flipgrid Ambassador – Israel)
Rhea Flohr @RheaFlohr (Teacher in secondary school, EdTech Specialist, OneNote-lover. I am curious and I love to share my classroom experiences always wondering: could technology enhance learning? otherwise don’t use it! – Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Sachelle Dorencamp @SachelleD (Digital Learning and Teaching Facilitator (DLTF) for Onslow County Schools. I am a fangirl of all things Microsoft Education and love helping teachers positively impact the lives of students. I am a Microsoft Innovative Educator and Microsoft Master Trainer – North Carolina, USA)
Sallee Clark @SalleeClark (Instructional Technologist with Eagle Mountain Saginaw ISD. As an MIE Expert & MIE Trainer, I am passionate about making learning accessible and fun for all! – Fort Worth, Texas, USA)
Thuy Nguyen @NguynTh10903062 (English teacher from Minh Dam High School, BRVT; MIE Expert; MIE Trainer; SDGs Ambassador. I love inspiring teachers and engaging students with technology in order to transform education together with the global educator community – Vietnam)
Vicent Ferrís @vicent_fd86 (Technology and Mathematics teacher in Maristas Algemesi. A lover of new technologies in education. I love innovating with my students. Microsoft Innovative Expert and MIE Trainer. Lover of Microsoft Teams – Valencia, Spain)

Finally, we’re introducing Francisco Texeira (@fcotexeira) to help us coordinate the TweetMeet. He is a former TweetMeet host himself and has already been assisting hosts in their preparations for the event. Francisco is a multilingual high school teacher and IT coordinator based in Spain and very passionate about professional development. Thanks for joining us!

What are #MSFTEduChat TweetMeets?

Every month Microsoft Education organizes social events on Twitter targeted at educators globally. The hashtag we use is #MSFTEduChat. A team of topic specialists and international MIE Expert teachers prepare and host these TweetMeets together. Our team of educator hosts first crafts several questions around a certain topic. Then, before the event, they share these questions on social media. Combined with a range of resources, a blog post and background information about the events, this allows all participants to prepare themselves to the full. Afterwards we make an archive available of the most notable tweets and resources shared during the event.

The #MSFTduChat event time is 10:00 a.m. PT. If this time isn’t convenient for you, please follow your local channel or even consider hosting your own #MSFTEduChat in your country and language. Please connect with TweetMeet organizer Marjolein Hoekstra @OneNoteC on Twitter for more info on hosting in your language and time that works best for the educators and MIE Experts in your country.

Posted on August 14, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle and Salesforce issue joint statement for healthcare interoperability

Photo credit: ITI
Pictured, L-R: Dean Garfield (ITI) – Alec Chalmers (Amazon) – Mark Dudman (IBM) – Peter Lee (Microsoft) –– Greg Moore (Google)

Interoperability is an overlapping set of technical and policy challenges, from data access to common data models to information exchange to workflow integration – and these challenges often pose a barrier to healthcare innovation. Microsoft has been engaged for many years on developing best practices for interoperability across industries. Today, as health IT community leaders get together at the CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference here in Washington, DC, we’re pleased to announce that Microsoft has joined with Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce in support of healthcare interoperability with the following statement:

We are jointly committed to removing barriers for the adoption of technologies for healthcare interoperability, particularly those that are enabled through the cloud and AI. We share the common quest to unlock the potential in healthcare data, to deliver better outcomes at lower costs.

In engaging in this dialogue, we start from these foundational assumptions:

The frictionless exchange of healthcare data, with appropriate permissions and controls, will lead to better patient care, higher user satisfaction, and lower costs across the entire health ecosystem.
Healthcare data interoperability, to be successful, must account for the needs of all global stakeholders, empowering patients, healthcare providers, payers, app developers, device and pharmaceuticals manufacturers, employers, researchers, citizen scientists, and many others who will develop, test, refine, and scale the deployment of new tools and services.
Open standards, open specifications, and open source tools are essential to facilitate frictionless data exchange. This requires a variety of technical strategies and ongoing collaboration for the industry to converge and embrace emerging standards for healthcare data interoperability, such as HL7 FHIR and the Argonaut Project.
We understand that achieving frictionless health data exchange is an ongoing process, and we commit to actively engaging among open source and open standards communities for the development of healthcare standards, and conformity assessment to foster agility to account for the accelerated pace of innovation.

Together, we believe that a robust industry dialogue about healthcare interoperability needs will advance this cause, and hence are pleased to issue this joint statement.

While I’m new here at Microsoft, I’ve been focused over the past decade on lowering the barriers to innovation in healthcare, working closely with open source and standards development communities. I’m happy that my first blog post here at Microsoft aligns so well with my charter to collaborate on open cloud architecture with the healthcare community.

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are approaching universal adoption in US hospitals and ambulatory practices, thanks in part to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs. The 21st Century Cures Act will make digital health data even more accessible with the call for open APIs.

In the context of US healthcare, many health record systems have focused on consistent representation for a key set of data elements defined by the Meaningful Use Common Clinical Data Set. As support for this common data set grows, it becomes easier to plug new tools into clinical workflows, analyze clinical histories, collect new data, and coordinate care. Many of these technical capabilities have been available within small, tight-knit health systems for a long time – but developing these capabilities has required complex, custom engineering and ongoing maintenance and support. Driving toward open architecture makes adoption faster, easier and cheaper.

As a medical student, I used to practice what I called “rogue interop” – connecting to services where I could, and cobbling together the data platform I wanted. It all worked, but it was a nightmare to maintain. Later when I joined the research faculty at Boston Children’s Hospital and started work on the SMART Health IT Platform, we wanted to build a robust platform to isolate app developers from the underlying details of an EHR system, so we started by designing new, open APIs from scratch and bridging to the underlying vendor system.

This work caught the attention of Health Level Seven (HL7), the healthcare standards development organization responsible for several generations of health data standards. When HL7 convened a “Fresh Look Task Force” to invite perspectives about newer, API-based approaches to data exchange, I was pleased to participate, sharing my experience from SMART.

This task force (among many influences) ultimately inspired the creation of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) – a more open, agile approach to the development of healthcare standards. I got involved with the FHIR community early when I wrote the first open-source FHIR server. Five years later, it’s been inspiring to see so many vendors, including Microsoft, supporting the emerging FHIR standard.

I joined Microsoft because it is among the largest contributors to open standards and open source. We actively contribute innovative technology to standards efforts in many industries, and we implement thousands of standards in our products that are formulated by a broad diversity of standards bodies. Just over the past year we’ve seen deep commitments to cross-cloud consumer data portability through the Data Transfer Project, an interoperable ecosystem for AI models through the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX), and the world’s leading software development platform through the acquisition of GitHub.

We at Microsoft are taking a collaborative approach to building open tools that will help the healthcare community, including cloud-hosted APIs and services for AI and machine learning. Microsoft understands that true interoperability in healthcare requires end-to end solutions, rather than independent pieces, which may not work together.

Most recently, we’ve added support for FHIR to the Dynamics Business Application Platform through the Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator, and developed an open source Azure Security and Compliance Blueprint for Health Data and AI for deploying a FHIR-enabled, HIPAA/HITRUST in Azure. These solutions are results of Microsoft teams working closely with our partners to ensure all components of our product portfolio work together to serve the unique needs of healthcare scenarios.

Transforming healthcare means working together with organizations across the ecosystem. Today’s joint interoperability statement reflects the feedback from our healthcare customers and partners, and together we will lay a technical foundation to support value-based care. We expect that the assumptions from our joint statement will continue to evolve and be refined based on this open dialog with the industry.

Please join the conversation. You can find me on Twitter @JoshCMandel. If you want to participate, comment or learn more about FHIR, you can reach our FHIR Community chat at https://chat.fhir.org.