Recent News – Page 163

Posted on June 25, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

How TV white space is helping bridge the digital divide

As technology advances, it is important not to leave anyone behind. Fast, reliable internet access is now one of life’s necessities, critical to accessing telehealth solutions, pursuing an online education, using precision agriculture, or operating a small business. And while the FCC’s most recent report found that more than 21 million Americans lack broadband access, Microsoft’s data suggest that more than 162 million are not using the internet at broadband speeds.

Wireless technologies, such as TV white spaces — unused broadcasting frequencies — are critical to closing the digital divide. According to Pew Research, wired technologies such as phone landlines, cable or broadband take longer to adopt. In contrast, wireless technologies, such as radio and color broadcast television, achieved near-universal adoption within 25 years. Waiting on the deployment and adoption of wired technologies, like fiber-optic connections, to close the digital divide is not an option when so many people across the county lack access.

The Microsoft Airband Initiative is forging partnerships focused on closing the connectivity gap. It works towards providing broadband internet coverage to unserved rural Americans through work with our partners and with a mixture of innovative technologies. By July 2022, our goal is to extend broadband access to 3 million Americans across unserved rural parts of the country.

The video tells the story of how the need for reliable internet in Essex County, New York, led to a business that services the local community with help from the Microsoft Airband Initiative and solutions like TV white spaces.

Read more on the Microsoft Airband Initiative. And follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.

Posted on June 25, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

OneDrive strengthens security with Personal Vault, boosts standalone storage plan to 100 GB with no additional charge

With the growing presence and sophistication of online threats, it’s increasingly important to have the right protection and tools to help safeguard your devices, personal information, and files from being compromised. Today, we’re excited to announce OneDrive Personal Vault—a new layer of security coming to your OneDrive personal account to further protect your most sensitive and important files.

We’re also increasing the OneDrive standalone storage plan from 50 GB to 100 GB at no additional charge, and we’re giving Office 365 subscribers a new option to add more storage as they need it.

OneDrive Personal Vault

OneDrive runs on the trusted Microsoft cloud, which has many security measures in place to keep your files safe. But we understand that some people want more protection for their most important and sensitive files, which is why we’re introducing Personal Vault.

Personal Vault is a protected area in OneDrive that you can only access with a strong authentication method or a second step of identity verification, such as your fingerprint, face, PIN, or a code sent to you via email or SMS.¹ Your locked files in Personal Vault have an extra layer of security, keeping them more secured in the event that someone gains access to your account or your device.

Plus, this added security doesn’t mean added inconvenience. All your documents, photos, and videos in Personal Vault are easy to access on Onedrive.com, your PC, or capable devices.²

Personal Vault adds to the robust privacy and security that OneDrive currently offers, including file encryption at rest and in transit, suspicious activity monitoring, ransomware detection and recovery, mass file deletion notification and recovery, virus scanning on download for known threats, and version history for all file types.

Easy to use

Just enter a PIN, or use your fingerprint, face, or a code delivered by email or SMS¹ to unlock and access your files—no need to remember multiple passwords. Additionally, Personal Vault can be unlocked with the Microsoft Authenticator app. Whichever way you choose, unlocking is quick, convenient, and helps secure your data.

Scan and shoot directly into Personal Vault

You can use the OneDrive for mobile app to scan documents, take pictures, or shoot video directly into your Personal Vault, keeping them off less secure areas of your device—such as your camera roll. It’s easy to scan important travel, identification, vehicle, home, insurance documents, and more directly into your Personal Vault. And you’ll have access to these documents wherever you go, across your capable devices.²

Extra protection on and off your PC

Personal Vault uses more than just two-step verification to help keep your files safe and private. On Windows 10 PCs, OneDrive syncs your Personal Vault files to a BitLocker-encrypted area of your local hard drive. And like all files in OneDrive, the contents of your Personal Vault are encrypted at-rest in the Microsoft cloud and in-transit to your device. For further protection on mobile devices, we recommend that you enable encryption on your iOS or Android device. Together, these measures help keep your files protected even if your Windows 10 PC or mobile device is lost, stolen, or someone gains access to it.

Automatic locking after a short period of inactivity

Personal Vault automatically relocks on your PC, device, or online after a short period of inactivity. Once locked, any files you were using will also lock and require reauthentication to access. There’s no need to worry about whether you left your Personal Vault or your file open—both will close and lock automatically after inactivity.³

Available soon

We’re excited to provide these new capabilities to people who use OneDrive on the web, with our mobile app, or on a Windows 10 PC. Personal Vault will begin rolling out soon in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada and will be available to everyone by the end of the year.

If you already have OneDrive, Personal Vault will appear as a feature update when it launches later this year in your region. And if you aren’t yet a OneDrive customer, you can download the app or go to www.onedrive.com to start using it on your PC or on the web. If you are using OneDrive’s free or standalone 100 GB plan, you can try Personal Vault with a limited number of files. Office 365 subscribers can store as many files as they want in Personal Vault, up to their storage limit.

OneDrive gets additional storage

Today, we’re also excited to share two storage plan updates.

Store more with OneDrive 100 GB plan—We’re increasing the amount of storage in the OneDrive standalone plan from 50 GB to 100 GB⁴ for the same $1.99 per month. That’s enough space to store over 50,000 pictures (at 2 MB per photo). This new plan is perfect for automatically backing up your phone’s camera roll and scanning and saving documents, receipts, and more right from your phone. You can also use it to back up your files and share and collaborate on documents. This new plan will roll out soon. If you’re currently using our 50 GB plan, you’ll automatically get 50 GB more storage added to your account at no additional cost. For more information, see OneDrive plans.

Get additional OneDrive storage as you need it—Your Office 365 subscription starts with 1 TB of OneDrive storage, and many people have asked for even more storage. Today, we’re announcing OneDrive additional storage, which lets you add more storage—as you need it—to your existing Office 365 subscription. You can add storage in 200 GB increments starting at $1.99 per month, going up to 1 TB of additional storage for $9.99 per month.

If you need 2 TB of storage, we now have an option for you. Pay only for what you need and increase, decrease, or cancel your additional storage plan anytime. OneDrive additional storage will be available in the coming months wherever Office 365 is available.

Let us know what you think

To let us know what you think or share your thoughts and ideas, visit OneDrive UserVoice. To learn more about all the advanced protection features included in Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal subscriptions, see our support page.

Notes
¹ Face and fingerprint verification requires specialized hardware including a Windows Hello capable device, fingerprint reader, illuminated IR sensor, or other biometric sensors and capable devices.
² The OneDrive for mobile app on Android and iOS requires either Android 6.0 or above or iOS 11.3 and above.
³Automatic locking interval varies by device and can be set by the user.
⁴100 GB plan offers 102,400 MB of storage.

Posted on June 24, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

New biodiversity lesson pack and world coming to Minecraft: Education Edition in partnership with World Wildlife Fund

We share our planet with millions of different species. This huge variety of animals and plants, and the places they live, is called biodiversity. The connections between these species form an intricate network that helps to protect us all. Unfortunately, in large part because of human impact, many of these species are at risk of extinction.

In partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF), we bring you a new interactive curriculum launching this summer: Extinction! A Biodiversity Crisis. This content pack includes three standards-aligned lesson plans and a purpose-built Minecraft world from the creative minds of Naturebytes, a UK-based collective of technologists and conservation scientists.

Ride a rollercoaster through different eras, meet scientists and conservationists, conduct research about climate change and ecosystems using WWF educational resources, and work collaboratively to build creative solutions to counteract threats to biodiversity.

Tour through time from the Ice Age to present day

The immersive world presented as part of Extinction! A Biodiversity Crisis is designed so that even teachers new to using Minecraft: Education Edition can get started quickly and easily. Take a rollercoaster journey through time to visit charismatic extinct species, investigate the causes of their extinction, learn about the importance of biodiversity and how it has shaped the world in which we live.

Learn about extinction, climate change, and ecosystems

Explore core concepts related to biodiversity, then apply knowledge to five threatened species biomes from around the world including the Philippine Eagle, Bison, Hawksbill Turtle, Snow Leopard, and Orangutan.

Teach students the importance of biodiversity and build towards a better future

Learn about the value, threats, and sustainable species management before building an Orangutan reserve to benefit the people, profit and planet. Players will also learn about the threats to biodiversity currently contributing to its global decline and experience how their decisions today can have an important impact on the world.

This content pack will be available for free on the Minecraft: Education Edition website later this summer. Stay tuned for updates by following us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and signing up for our monthly newsletter.

For more information on teaching biodiversity, explore WWF’s Biodiversity Toolkit: https://www.worldwildlife.org/teaching-resources/toolkits/biodiversity-toolkit

Posted on June 24, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Sneak peek of ‘My World’ — new TV series and curriculum from BBC Learning and Microsoft

As technology facilitates the rapid and seamless dissemination of information, the critical requirements for success for the future workforce have been identified as social perceptiveness, deductive reasoning, complex problem solving, judgment and decision making.* These are also the skills which active and critical consumers of information need to make judgments about the validity, purpose, bias and trustworthiness of news.

Earlier this year, we announced a partnership with BBC Learning and BBC World Service to bring a new television series, My World, to classrooms around the world to support educators and students in gaining critical media literacy skills and the ability to navigate the news. And today, we’re excited to share that the series will be available in time for the new school year, and you can register today!

My World, executive-produced by Angelina Jolie and BBC World Service, will feature 10 episodes, each accompanied with learning materials for the classroom. This initiative will teach students about global news and encourage them to become engaged critical thinkers about what they see and hear in the news. Watch the video above for a sneak peek!

As students watch the weekly episodes, they will be asked to participate in exercises that build their media awareness, apply critical thinking to evaluate a story’s accuracy and help them build an understanding of global affairs while differentiating fact from fiction. The program will help students with the following core curriculum skills:

Evaluating the argument and specific claims in a text while distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not.
Following and evaluating the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognizing when irrelevant evidence is introduced.
Integrating and evaluating multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem

Media literacy is becoming an increasingly important skill for the next generation of leaders, creators, innovators and citizens to master, and we’re excited to share this pilot series with your classrooms this fall.

To learn more and sign up to use this film series with your students, visit aka.ms/myworld.

*Pearson Future of Skills: Employment in 2030

Posted on June 24, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune now managing 175 million Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices

Over the weekend, we achieved a significant milestone that I wanted to share with this community because you made it happen: Microsoft endpoint management (as I like to refer to System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune working together) is now managing more than 175 million Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices.

175 million is an incredibly big number. The chart below provides a view of how fast this ramp has happened. I am not aware of any commercial cloud service that has ramped up this quickly. The only commercial customer cloud service that I believe is bigger than ConfigMgr and Intune together is Office 365.

To put a number like 175 million in perspective: your odds of winning the Powerball Lottery are about 175 million to one. When it comes to the lotto, anyone holding a ticket is on the wrong side of that math problem—the odds are just stacked completely against you. But with ConfigMgr, the value of that 175 million is flipped—now you are the beneficiary of that giant number because all the insight we gather from so many endpoints is constantly being used to improve the features and functionality of your product.

Let me provide a little more insight into the data

For the majority of the time being measured in the graph, ConfigMgr has dominated the growth and usage. If you looked at the mix of ConfigMgr-managed devices vs. Intune-managed devices a year ago, the mix would have been three to one. Over the last couple of months, however, that mix has flipped. In the last month, for example, for every ConfigMgr managed device that has hit the server, three Intune-managed devices have come in. Don’t get me wrong, we are definitely not forcing anyone to move from ConfigMgr to Intune, but what I’ve noticed from our customers is a shift towards full-cloud solutions with Intune—and this is represented in the data where we see Intune managing millions of Windows 10 devices. The reasoning behind this is simple: the market has concluded that Microsoft has built the best management tools for Windows.

To better understand our long-term commitment to ConfigMgr, as well as how it works with Intune moving forward, check out this quick section of last week’s Endpoint Zone episode:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnmnLr2NUXk?start=733]

What 175 million means for you

This milestone isn’t just about a big number; it’s about the way it impacts how you use the technology.

Right now, there’s a lot of talk in our community about “modern management” and how it impacts the work you’re doing now and how you’ll plan for the future of work. “Modern management” is not a product but a perspective about how to manage and secure devices, and this discussion sometimes leads to the conclusion that Intune is modern and ConfigMgr is not modern. In terms of how my team builds and operates these tools, as well as how we invest in and prioritize them, nothing could be further from the truth. “Modern management” is a way to go about managing your endpoints—a great example of this is the perspective that using Windows Autopilot for PC provisioning is a modern approach, whereas traditional imaging is not.

In my mind, the most significant element that makes a management tool “modern” is that insights and intelligence from the cloud are used to automate and improve that tool in ways that were not possible in the past.

For any organization to provide insights/intelligence that you can confidently rely on to automate and amplify your efforts, that provider first has to be operating a data set that is both rich and broad. Having something like this to learn from is not just important—it’s mandatory. These 175 million endpoints provide by far the largest and broadest data set available—and then add to this what we learn from over 800 million PCs in active use, over 180 million monthly active users of Office 365, and the 640 billion monthly authentications through Azure Active Directory. Once again, the math tells a compelling story.

This big number is also a safety net for the community of people responsible for endpoint management in companies all over the world. When it comes to managing Windows devices, for example, the things we learn from running a global service allows us to anticipate the emerging needs of a specific industry, or it shows us places where we can continue to refine useful features. The depth of these types of insights simply wouldn’t be possible if we were managing a global network of devices that was dramatically smaller. It takes tens of millions of Windows 10 endpoints to get the breadth necessary to provide the holistic insights you need, as the breadth of the PC ecosystem is enormous—an incredible diversity of hardware, drivers, peripherals, agents, apps, etc.

The things learned from this type of scale is at the core of every modern management ideal: ConfigMgr and Intune are constantly refined and improved by what is learned here, and the security and management of each endpoint improves accordingly.

A couple of examples of how this benefits you

Automate compatibility testing—For nearly every IT team, the single largest cost and expenditure of time during an upgrade to a new version of Windows is compatibility testing. When we release Desktop Analytics soon, we will be able to automate your compatibility testing because of what we learn from the data sets noted above.
Zero Trust environments—The ongoing movement of data and apps to the cloud, as well as the constant use/growth of mobile devices, means that it is more important than ever to ensure only trusted users using trusted devices access your company’s apps/data. This is another area in which the size of our data sets can help you in ways that were not possible in the past—for example, human hands and human minds can no longer keep up with the speed and sophistication of many attacks. But now there’s intelligent assistance from the cloud.

There is so much more coming! We are learning and iterating quickly. Microsoft Ignite in November is going to be a really fun week as we will roll out a number of new modern management scenarios based on our learning from this incredible scale. If you have not registered—do it today!

Thank you for your willingness to partner with us, and for your trust in us and the tools we’re building. My team and I cannot express enough how sincerely we appreciate working with you. We are honored to partner with you as you work to deploy and manage your modern workplace.

Posted on June 21, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Gartner names Microsoft a leader in 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise iPaaS

Microsoft accelerates application development with Azure Integration Services

Personal computers revolutionized the way work was done. New software unlocked unprecedented levels of productivity, and for a time, business flourished. As the personal computer exploded in popularity, more and more software was created. For the individual, this was a golden age. For the enterprise, this was also a golden age … with an asterisk.

As it was when you add more people to an organization, so too it was with software. Making software work cooperatively with other unrelated software ended up being a very tricky problem to solve. The more software that was added, the more that overhead was introduced. This was an unfortunate consequence. The cost of doing business increased, meaningful results decreased, and organizational productivity plummeted.

Large businesses and enterprises were locked in this pattern, until a new category of software was created, integration software. And for many years, on-premise integration tools, such as Microsoft BizTalk Server, helped mitigate the issue created by the rapid proliferation and adoption of new software.

And then one day, everything changed. The cloud was born, and with it, the need for new ways to connect everything together.

The adoption of cloud-native integration platforms to support business workflows

As before, a new category of software has come into existence to help solve the challenges organizations are struggling with. iPaaS, or Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service tools are key to a successful integration strategy, and in turn, a successful application development strategy.

Microsoft is once again named a leader in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS.)

Microsoft is powering enterprises across industry verticals in adopting comprehensive app innovation and modernization strategies, with integration as the backbone to these efforts. In fact, most modern application design makes use of integration capabilities, without being cognizant that they are doing so. Application development and application integration are becoming more and more intertwined, making it almost impossible to figure out where one starts and the other one ends

We are continuously investing in our integration offerings, including how APIs play a role in the modern enterprise, how business units increasingly need more and more flexible rules and logic to accommodate changing market demands, and more.

Integration is the surface upon which strong application infrastructure stands

Microsoft goes way beyond just integration, and instead focuses on helping you make better applications. Companies like Finastra, Evoqua, and Vipps are using a wide variety of Azure services, such as Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure API Management, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Functions, and more to create applications faster, easier, and better connected with the rest of their application ecosystem.

“Our platform intersects a great deal of data and technology,” says Félix Grévy, Global Head of Product Management at FusionFabric.cloud, Finastra, “yet our complete integration with Azure streamlines our infrastructure, simplifies our processes and makes our lives infinitely easier.”

Register for Manage Your Microservices, a webinar about how application integration enables application innovation and development. Learn how to use Azure API Management, Azure Functions, Azure Kubernetes Service, and more, to create a comprehensive microservice infrastructure.

Posted on June 21, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Make your apps more inclusive with Immersive Reader, a new Azure Cognitive Service

This blog post was authored by Tina Coll, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Azure Marketing.

Today, we’re unveiling the preview of Immersive Reader, a new Azure Cognitive Service in the Language category. Developers can now use this service to embed inclusive capabilities into their apps for enhancing text reading and comprehension for users regardless of age or ability. No machine learning expertise is required. Based on extensive research on inclusivity and accessibility, Immersive Reader’s features are designed to read the text aloud, translate, focus user attention, and much more. Immersive Reader helps users unlock knowledge from text and achieve gains in the classroom and office.

Over 15 million users rely on Microsoft’s immersive reading technologies across 18 apps and platforms including Microsoft Learning Tools, Word, Outlook, and Teams. Now, developers can deliver this proven literacy-enhancing experience to their users too.

People like Andrzej, a child with dyslexia, have learned to read with the Immersive Reader experience embedded into apps like Microsoft Learning Tools. His mother, Mitra, shares their story:

Literacy is key to unlocking knowledge and realizing one’s potential. Educators see this reality in the classroom every day, yet hurdles to reading are commonplace for people with dyslexia, ADHD, or visual impairment, as well as emerging readers, non-native speakers, and others. In the spirit of empowering every person to achieve more, the features of Immersive Reader help readers overcome these challenges.

Azure is the only major cloud provider that offers this type experience as an easy-to-use AI service. Skooler, an ISV on a mission “to do education technology better,” integrated Immersive Reader. As Tor Henriksen, Skooler’s CEO and CTO remarks, “In 27 years of software development, this was the easiest integration we’ve ever done.” Multiple businesses to date have already started embedding Immersive Reader into their apps, including:

With millions of users like Andrzej having discovered the power of the written word with Immersive Reader, we look forward to seeing what people can achieve with what you build.

To start embedding Immersive Reader into your apps, visit the Immersive Reader product page. The service is available for free while in preview.

Posted on June 20, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

New identity threat investigation experience for security analysts announced

As the modern workplace transforms, the identity attack surface area is growing exponentially, across on-premises and cloud, spanning a multitude of endpoints and applications. Security Operations (SecOps) teams are challenged to monitor user activities, suspicious or otherwise, across all dimensions of the identity attack surface, using multiple security solutions that often are not connected. Because identity protection is paramount for the modern workplace, investigating identity threats requires a single experience to monitor all user activities and hunt for suspicious behaviors in order to triage users quickly.

Today, Microsoft is announcing the new identity threat investigation experience, which correlates identity alerts and activities from Azure Advanced Threat Protection (Azure ATP), Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Identity Protection, and Microsoft Cloud App Security into a single investigation experience for security analysts and hunters alike.

Modern identity attacks leverage hybrid cloud environments as a single attack surface

The identity threat investigation experience combines user identity signals from your on-premises and cloud services to close the gap between disparate signals in your environment and leverages state-of-the-art User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) capabilities to provide a risk score and rich contextual information for each user. It empowers security analysts to prioritize their investigations and reduce investigation times, ending the need to toggle between identity security solutions. This gives your SecOps teams more time and the right information to make better decisions and actively remediate identity threats and risks.

Azure ATP provides on-premises detections and activities with abnormal behavior analytics to assist in investigating the most at-risk users. Microsoft Cloud App Security detects and alerts security analysts to the potential of sensitive data exfiltration for first- and third-party cloud apps. And Azure AD Identity Protection detects unusual sign-in information, implementing conditional access on the compromised user until the issue is resolved. Combined, these services analyze the activities and alerts, using UEBA, to determine risky behaviors and provide you with an investigation priority score to streamline incident response for compromised identities.

To further simplify your SecOps workflows, we embedded the new experience into the Cloud App Security portal, regardless of whether you’re using Microsoft Cloud App Security today. While it enriches each alert with additional information, it also allows you to easily pivot from the correlated alert timeline directly into a deeper dive investigation and hunting experience.

User investigation priority

We’re adding a new dimension to the current investigation model that is based on the number of total alerts with a new user investigation priority, which is determined by all user activities and alerts that could indicate an active advanced attack or insider threat.

To calculate the user investigation priority, each abnormal event is scored based on the user’s profile history, their peers, and the organization. Additionally, the potential business and asset impact of any given user is analyzed to determine the investigation priority score.

The new concept is included on the updated user page, which provides relevant information about who the user is, the investigation priority score, how it compares across all users within the organization, and abnormal alerts and activities of the user.

In the image below, the user’s investigation priority score of 155 puts them in the top percentile within the organization, making them a top user for a security analyst to investigate.

Identity threat investigation user page.

The score is surfaced on the main dashboard to help you get an immediate idea of which users currently represent the highest risk within your organization and should be prioritized for further investigation.

Top users by investigation priority on the main dashboard.

Improved investigation and hunting experience

Beyond signal correlation and a redesigned user page, the new identity threat investigation experience also adds new and advanced investigation capabilities specifically for Azure ATP customers, regardless of whether you choose to use Azure AD Identity Protection and or Microsoft Cloud App Security.

These capabilities include the:

Ability for security analysts to perform threat hunting with greater context over both cloud and on-premises resources by leveraging advanced filtering capabilities and enriched alert information.
Visibility and management of Azure AD user risk levels with the ability to confirm compromised user status, which changes the Azure AD user risk level to High.
Creation of activity policies to determine governance actions and leverage built-in automation capabilities via the native integration with Microsoft Flow to more easily triage alerts.

New threat hunting experience to analyze alerts and activities.

Get started with the public preview today

If you’re one of the many enterprise customers already using Azure ATP, Microsoft Cloud App Security, and/or Azure AD Identity Protection and want to test the new identity threat investigation experience, get started by checking out our comprehensive technical documentation.

If you’re just starting your journey, begin a trial of Microsoft Threat Protection to experience the benefits of the most comprehensive, integrated, and secure threat protection solution for the modern workplace.

We would love your feedback! Find us on the Azure ATP Tech Community and send us your questions or feedback on the new experience.

Posted on June 20, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft Education and NASA create 8 classroom lessons about exploring and living in space

Celebrating eight new lesson plans from Microsoft Education in partnership with NASA

Recently, my mom gave me a box of papers from my childhood, and I discovered—preserved among the mementos, letters and drawings—a copy of Time Magazine’s “To The Moon Special Supplement” (July 18, 1969) and the front section of the New York Times from July 20, 1969. I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten these treasures.

I spent the four days before the moon landing binge-watching TV anchors and their guest experts’ scientific explanations and animated simulations. As a middle schooler, I had done my best to absorb and unpack the vast number of details that were discussed. Within the first day it was clear—this context was necessary to interpret the constant stream of readings, measurements and color commentary in the exchanges between the astronauts and Mission Control in Houston, Texas.

Each step of the astronaut’s journey was a risk, and by Sunday the 20th, Earth-bound armchair explorers the world over were already exhausted. In four days, we had watched with bated breath as the Saturn V rocket launched, multiple Apollo modules were shed, the communications blackouts passed, the astronauts successfully positioned themselves in the moon’s orbit and, at last, they flawlessly landed in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon’s surface.

That Sunday evening, I became one of the estimated 650 million people worldwide who watched the live feed of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descending from the lunar module onto the surface of the moon. When the exterior camera went live, I remember struggling to pick out any human form within the grainy, black-and-white broadcast image.

And then, there it was, Neil Armstrong’s left boot dangling from the ladder. In that moment, I was overcome by the wonder of what I was witnessing. I also realized that there was now a real possibility that humans could live in space.

As we approach the 50^th anniversary of the moon walk, the 20th anniversary of humans living continuously aboard the International Space Station and the inaugural launch of NASA’s commercial crew program, it is hard to remember that not long ago many of these ideas were science fiction. We often forget that some of our everyday technologies like satellite television, infrared cameras and fire-resistant foam were developed by NASA to aid in the execution of these historic milestones. Research and exploration have always been at the heart of the space program. The launch of the International Space Station established an orbiting laboratory dedicated to studying how humans could live in space, testing advanced technologies for future explorations and understanding more about the Earth. Unlike my experience 50 years ago, we now have instantaneous access to live views of Earth, live maps to track the station’s orbit and, of course, real-time access to the astronauts via their social media channels. For today’s students, the distance between the low-orbit lab and the classroom grows smaller as their probability of spending time in space increases.

To inspire and engage your students, Microsoft Education and NASA have partnered to develop eight new lesson plans to introduce the considerations astronauts need to think about when living in space. The collection of standards-aligned, middle and high school materials integrates core academic concepts with hands-on experiences. Students are challenged to design in 3D, analyze data, build sensors, use virtual reality and work with a machine learning and AI module while engaging in discussions about the challenges of living in space.

Included in the collection are:

Two design challenges: The “Astro Socks” project has students investigate solutions to reduce the impact of working in microgravity on astronauts’ feet, while the other challenges students to work in 3D to build their own modules for the International Space Station.
A lesson that introduces the phenomenon of microgravity that incorporates hands-on experiments and a virtual-reality experience.
Four data-collection and analysis lessons that engage your students with hands-on experiments, to prove the ideal gas law, measure radiation in our environment and examine the light waves and frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum. They’ll use sensors to capture live data and relate their observations about life in space to their own on Earth.
A lesson that introduces the Earth’s biomes through photographs taken from space and challenges them to explore the techniques scientists employ to predict climate change with AI.

50 years ago, I witnessed the possibility of living in space take a “giant leap” towards becoming a reality. As we mark these major space exploration milestones, I hope you will bring this rich collection of educational materials to your classroom to inspire our first generation of commercial space travelers.

Designing Astro Socks to protect astronauts’ feet in microgravity

Video

Using materials science engineering to determine heat resistance

Video

Understanding adiabatic compression and the Ideal gas law

Video

What is the electromagnetic spectrum?

Video

Detecting Alpha, Beta and Gamma Radiation

Video

Minecraft build challenge: Design your Space Station

Video

Analyzing astronauts’ photos of Earth to predict climate change

Video

Experiencing Microgravity by understanding Newton’s 2nd and 3rd laws of motion

Video

For a live demonstration of the lessons we’re sharing at ISTE, tune into “What’s new in EDU” live from ISTE on Monday at 6PM EST on our Microsoft Education facebook channel.

Posted on June 20, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

First Microsoft cloud regions in Middle East now available

This blog post was co-authored by Paul Lorimer, Distinguished Engineer, Office 365.

Azure and Office 365 generally available today, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform available by end of 2019

Today, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Office 365 are taking a major step together to help support the digital transformation of our customers. Both Azure and Office 365 are now generally available from our first cloud datacenter regions in the Middle East, located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, offering the next generation of intelligent business applications and tools, are anticipated to be available from the cloud regions in UAE by the end of 2019.

The opening of the new cloud regions in Abu Dhabi and Dubai marks the first time Microsoft will deliver cloud services directly from datacenter locations in UAE and expands upon Microsoft’s existing investments in the Gulf and the wider Middle East region. By delivering the complete Microsoft cloud – Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365 – from datacenters in a given geography, we offer scalable, highly available, and resilient cloud services for organizations while helping them meet their data residency, security, and compliance needs.

Our new cloud regions adhere to Microsoft’s trusted cloud principles and join one of the largest and most secure cloud infrastructures in the world, already serving more than a billion customers and 20 million businesses. Microsoft has deep expertise in data protection, security, and privacy, including the broadest set of compliance certifications in the industry, and we are the first cloud service provider in UAE to achieve the Dubai Electronic Security Center certification for its cloud services. Our continued focus on our trusted cloud principles and leadership in compliance means customers in the region can accelerate their digital transformation with confidence and with the foundation to achieve compliance for their own applications.

Local datacenter infrastructure stimulates economic development for both customers and partners alike, enabling companies, governments, and regulated industries to realize the benefits of the cloud for innovation, as well as bolstering the technology ecosystem that supports the innovation. We anticipate the cloud services delivered from UAE to have a positive impact on job creation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth across the region. The International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that cloud services could bring more than half a million jobs to the Middle East, including the potential of more than 55,000 new jobs in UAE, between 2017 and 2022.

Microsoft also continues to help bridge the skills gap amongst the IT community and to enhance technical acumen for cloud services. Cloud Society, a Middle East and Africa focused program building upon Microsoft Learn, has trained over 150,000 IT professionals in MEA. The community will further benefit from the increased availability and performance of cloud services delivered from UAE to help realize enterprise benefits of cloud, upskill in migration, and more effectively manage their cloud infrastructure.

You can learn more by following these links: Microsoft Middle East and Africa News Center, Microsoft Azure United Arab Emirates, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform.