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Where they are now: Microsoft’s Council for Digital Good 6 months later

In July 2018, we concluded our inaugural Council for Digital Good, an initiative involving 15 teens from 12 U.S. states, selected to help advance our work in digital civility: promoting safer and healthier online interactions among all people. Six months later and just weeks away from international Safer Internet Day 2019, we wanted to share what these impressive young people have done since their council term ended, as well as what they have planned for next month.

Since leaving our second council event in Washington, D.C., last July, our teens have recounted their council experiences on social media and in other online venues. Christina from Georgia penned two different blog posts for separate online safety-focused non-profits (blog #1, blog #2), and several teens conducted educational and after-school sessions for parents, students and younger kids. Jazmine, a particularly enterprising 14-year-old from Kentucky, and one of our youngest council members, started her own website. And, three council members – Bronte, Christina and Judah – were offered a once-in-lifetime opportunity for the second time and spoke with first lady Melania Trump, this time in November at the Family Online Safety Institute annual conference. (All council members spent time one-on-one with the first lady in D.C. in July.)

Council members turned counselors

Nearly all of the teens told us they’ve used their newfound knowledge to counsel friends and classmates who had encountered online risks. “I applied to the council because I wanted to make an impact on cyberbullying on social media,” said Erin from Michigan. ”Through the council, though, I’ve learned that there are so many more dangers that impact young people across a multitude of platforms and, now that I’m educated on these subjects, I can share them with the students and parents in my community.”

In a few cases, risk exposure among peers was quite serious, involving sextortion or harassment. After engaging on several occasions through the council with the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Thorn, one teen was able to share relevant resources with a friend of a friend. “I knew they (Thorn) had a text hotline and I was able to direct her to that,” this council member said. “She never contacted me afterward, which I take as a good sign.”

Council members have also been striking up deep conversations with friends and family members about weighty online issues like violent extremism. “Something I find myself talking about a lot (with friends) is the process of radicalization of youth online for hate groups,” said one teen who is now in college. “It’s a topic that is as unfortunate as it is fascinating to discuss. We talk about the geopolitics involved, the technical sophistication of (extremist groups), and what can be done online to stop them. I speak from my knowledge of our call with Public Safety Canada.”

Over the course of the 18-month council program, we held monthly conference calls with the teens and their parents. We’d often invite guest speakers so the teens could hear and learn firsthand from experts – like Thorn – about an array of online safety topics. In late 2017, officials from Public Safety Canada spoke to the teens about online hate and violent extremism and sought council members’ input on how best to reach young people with impactful counter-messages.

“To me, there was no greater opportunity than to converse and debate over the various issues that the internet has created over time,” said William from the state of Washington. “My favorite part was discussing the various issues and learning from my peers. I do miss being able to give input to various organizations … I felt like I was contributing to something much bigger than myself.”

Many of the teens have since told us that in addition to missing each other, they also miss the monthly calls and engaging with outside groups and NGOs. Some also said they miss working together on projects like their written cohort manifesto and their open letter to law and policymakers. One of my favorite responses: “I miss having a platform where I knew I was being listened to.”

Looking to Safer Internet Day 2019 and beyond

International Safer Internet Day will take place on Feb. 5, and many of our teens plan to spread the message of “Together for a safer internet” in their schools and communities. More than half of our council members are planning presentations to their PTAs, schools, clubs or other organizations, and they’re reaching out to educators, school administrators, peers and local elementary schools to arrange activities. Erin from Michigan even requested that Safer Internet Day and other important web links about online safety topics be included on her school and district calendars.

The teens each crafted their own presentations and chose discussion topics for their Safer Internet Day events. Fighting back against online bullying and harassment are popular topics, but several are equally focused on online reputation management and digital footprints. “I’m very passionate about internet safety and social activism,” says Indigo from California. “It’s important to me to make sure that every person is safe, comfortable and respected. Especially as technology and social media continue to advance, we need to continue fighting for these rights. The council and all of the things that we discussed remain with me, especially the aspect of how your online persona and reputation will no doubt affect you in real life.”

After Feb 5., a handful of council members said they’re planning information sessions for parents and other adults, given the impact these people play in teens’ lives. According to new research from our latest digital civility study, now more than ever, young people around the world are turning to their parents and other trusted adults for advice and guidance about online issues. “It’s equally important to educate the adults,” notes William.

Christina has an opportunity for an internship with an international nonprofit, and some of the teens may be tapped to discuss their council experiences with other technology companies that are considering setting up councils or other youth-focused initiatives.

At Microsoft, we’re so grateful to these teens and their parents for what they have given to us over the past two years. As a global, connected community, we can’t help but improve online safety and interactions with young people like these driving us forward.

“All I can do is improve how I act online, and how I leave my digital footprint,” said Bronte from Ohio. “I can also encourage my fellow classmates, friends, and family to act better online, and to really think before posting something that they might regret. Step by step, change can be made … it all has to start somewhere!”

Bronte, we couldn’t agree more.

Learn more

You can read the council’s cohort manifesto here, as well as their open letter to U.S. law and policymakers about working together to improve life online. To learn more about digital civility, visit: www.microsoft.com/digitalcivility, and for more about online safety generally, see our website and resources page; “like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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Scientists discover how bacteria use noise to survive stress

January 22, 2019 | By Microsoft blog editor

Noisy expression of stress response in microcolony of E. coli.

Mutations in the genome of an organism give rise to variations in its form and function—its phenotype. However, phenotypic variations can also arise in other ways. The random collisions of molecules constituting an organism—including its DNA and the proteins that transcribe the DNA to RNA—result in noisy gene expression that can lead to variations in behavior even in the absence of mutations. In a research paper published in Nature Communications, researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Cambridge have discovered how bacteria can couple noisy gene expression with noisy growth to survive rapidly changing environments.

“We have taken advantage of advances in microfluidics technology, time-lapse microscopy, and the availability of libraries of genetically modified bacteria that have happened in the past decade or so to provide unprecedented detail of how single cells survive stress,” says Microsoft PhD Scholar Om Patange. “We hope this will help fellow researchers see that studies of bacteria at the single-cell level can reveal important aspects of how these organisms live and contend with their environment.”

Cells stochastically turn on their stress response and slow down growth to survive future stressful times. A montage of E. coli grown in a microfluidics device illustrates this phenomenon.

Using a microfluidic device, Patange—together with colleagues and cosupervisors Andrew Phillips, head of Microsoft Research’s Biological Computation group, and James Locke, research group leader at Cambridge’s Sainsbury Laboratory—observed single Escherichia coli cells grow and divide over many generations. They found that a key regulator of stress response called RpoS pulsed on and off. When these happily growing cells were exposed to a sudden chemical stress, the few cells ready for the stress survived. This is a striking example of a microbial population partitioning into two populations despite being of the same genetic makeup. The researchers further discovered that the surviving population was paying a cost to survive: They grew slower than their neighbors.

To uncover the mechanism causing the cells to grow slowly and turn on their stress response, the researchers developed a stochastic simulation of biological reactions inside single cells. They found that a simple mutual inhibitory coupling of noisy stress response and noisy growth caused the pulses observed and also captured more subtle observations.

This study, for which single-cell datasets are available on GitLab, has both pure and applied implications. The stress response phenomenon may be related to persistence, a strategy used by bacteria to evade antibiotics without mutations. Understanding the connection between persistence and stress response may lead to more nuanced approaches to antibiotic treatments. The idea that bacteria have evolved a population-level phenotype governed by single-cell actions is also intriguing. Understanding the benefit gained by the population at the expense of single bacteria may yield insights into the evolution of cooperative strategies.

“The bacteria might teach us about cooperative strategies we haven’t already come up with,” says Patange. “We might also learn how to use and defend against bacteria better if we can see the world from their perspective.”

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What’s New in EDU – Bett Edition: Announcing new Windows 10 devices and tools to drive better learning outcomes

We’re introducing seven new affordable Windows 10 devices to our portfolio for schools, faster assignments and grading tools in Microsoft Teams, and new programs to empower inclusive, personalized learning.

Our Microsoft Education team is in London for the annual Bett conference, the world’s biggest education technology event and an unmissable gathering of educators, ideas and edtech solutions.

We’ll be coming to you live each day with the biggest news we could squash into our suitcases. Tune in on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to learn about a number of new Windows 10 devices for education, new software updates to transform classroom time, and new ways to personalize the learning experience for your students while preparing them for the jobs of the future.

We kick things off with an overview of the biggest news we’ve brought for Bett. Don’t miss the surprises that follow!

Jump to section:

Introducing seven new Windows 10 devices for education and the Microsoft Classroom Pen

We’re growing our portfolio of affordable, easy to manage Windows 10 devices for the classroom that start at $189*. Together with our partners at Acer, Dell and Lenovo, we are offering seven great new Windows 10 devices for the upcoming school year. This includes two brand new 2-in-1 devices from Acer and Lenovo that start under $300 USD and give students the versatility to convert from tablet to laptop mode! Our newest Windows devices include:

  • Lenovo 100e
  • Lenovo 300e​ (2-in-1)
  • Lenovo 14w
  • Acer TravelMate B1​(B118-M)
  • Acer TravelMate Spin B1​ (B118-R/RN)
  • Acer TravelMate B1-141​
  • Dell Latitude 3300 for Education

With Windows 10 devices, schools can get the best prices without having to compromise on features like inking. Inking in particular has proven to increase student scores by as much as 38 percent, compared to only using a keyboard. These devices are also a great way to use our free accessibility technology like Learning Tools in Office 365, which has been shown to improve reading comprehension by 10 percentile points for students of all abilities. Plus, with S Mode for Windows 10, schools can reduce the risk of bloatware and speed up boot times, improve battery life, and enjoy better device performance.

One of the most unique devices coming to our portfolio is the Lenovo 300e. Not only is it a convertible 2-in-1, but it also includes a garaged stylus. And if the stylus gets lost, students can write on the screen with a regular No. 2 graphite pencil!

We’re also unveiling three new 13-15” PCs from Acer, Dell and Lenovo, all in the $300 price range, giving you bigger screens and added functionality for the same low price as many smaller devices.

In today’s What’s New in EDU, you’ll get a sneak peek at a few of these new devices – tune in later this week to see them all!

In addition to these great new devices from our partners, we’re introducing the Microsoft Classroom Pen, an all-new pen designed specifically with K-8 students and schools in mind, and optimized for use with Surface Go. The Microsoft Classroom Pen is designed for students who put their learning tools through heavy wear and tear and features a durable, hardened pen tip and a replacement tip for each pen included in the box. Plus, a built-in slot at the end makes for easy tethering to students’ device cases, so the pen doesn’t get lost.

Affordable and easy to deploy, Microsoft Classroom Pen will be available exclusively to education institutions and sold in packs of 20 for a cost of $799.80 USD (approximately $39.99 per pen). It will ship in all 36 Surface Go markets around the world, with the first wave of availability beginning next month, so schools may begin placing orders for the upcoming school year. Tune in Friday to learn more about the Microsoft Classroom Pen!

Transform Classroom Time with Microsoft Teams and Flipgrid

Microsoft Teams and Flipgrid are proving to be a powerful way to help students find their voice and develop critical social emotional skills, while also giving teachers new platforms for peer-to-peer professional development. We’re encouraged by your feedback and the growth both platforms are seeing. 

In the last year, we’ve seen 251 percent growth of Teams usage in schools and universities, and more than 80,000 new teachers a month joining Flipgrid! And speaking of Flipgrid, keep an eye out for some fun new features to empower student voice this month. We’ve made it easy for CoPilots on Flipgrid to duplicate grids for faster sharing across classrooms, and we‘ve introduced my.Flipgrid.com so students can log in to Flipgrid to view, share, and download all their videos.

In today’s What’s New in EDU, product manager Justin Chando shows us a few of the new features coming to Teams this week, thanks to great feedback from our educator community. These features include:

1. Grade Sync to connect Teams to your SIS!  Say hello to Grade Sync, which automatically sends grades from Teams Assignments directly to your Student Information System, saving teachers lots of time. Grade Sync will be coming to systems like PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Capita SIMS and many others soon. If you would like to join the Grade Sync preview release, sign up here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlfdzqDNsE8?feature=oembed&w=640&h=360]

2. Mobile grading. You asked and we answered. Now, teachers can grade Teams Assignments from anywhere on an iOS or Android device using the Teams app! 

3. Turnitin integration.  Turnitin allows teachers to check student submissions for multiple forms of plagiarism and helps teach the value of academic integrity, proper attribution, and authentic writing. With our new integration, coming soon, Turnitin subscribers will have access directly within Teams Assignments! 

4. Free Computer Science Curriculum in Teams with MakeCode!  This month, we’ll kick off a beta which will allow teachers to access MakeCode, Microsoft’s free platform for creating engaging computer science activities directly within Teams Assignments. Teachers can help students get started building their own programs using drag-and-drop block coding or JavaScript. You can even provide feedback to students and grade.

5. Assignments is faster and easier to use. Coming soon, you’ll see a new and simplified assignments experience. With the latest updates, you’ll be able to grade faster than before and save time creating new assignments. 

Justin will also talk about new Teams features like the Moodle LMS integration, rubric sharing, assignment categories, Safari support, stickers and more later this week. Be sure to tune in to What’s New in EDU Live tomorrow for even more.  

New technology to personalize learning and drive better learning outcomes

Every classroom has a unique and diverse mix of students, which is why technology can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution. At Microsoft, we strive to build technology that supports inclusive and personalized learning experiences, so every student is empowered to succeed. We continue to invest in projects to support students with learning differences, or with physical impairments that may inhibit their ability to learn. Simultaneously, we support technology like mixed reality, which is proving to drive better retention and engagement of curriculum for all students.

In today’s What’s New in EDU, Mark and Dan show us some of the exciting new tech we’re offering to help you reach every type of learner.

From left, Daniel and Rico, were part of a group of students at New College Worcester in Worcester, UK, who participated in a beta test of the technology behind Code Jumper. Photo by Jonathan Banks.

Today, we announced that we’ll be transferring the research and technology behind Code Jumper – a physical programming language that is designed to be inclusive of children who are blind or who have low vision – to the American Printing House for the Blind, so more students around the world can benefit from it.

Code Jumper is based on a Microsoft research effort called Project Torino, designed to give kids aged 7 to 11 an introduction to coding. Microsoft researchers developed Project Torino in close partnership with a group of students who are visually impaired. The project came about after the team learned the most popular path to introducing young children to coding, usually called block coding, was not accessible enough because it couldn’t be read easily, not even with assistive technology such as a screen reader or magnifier. Together with APH, we believe Code Jumper can not only provide more students with the basic understanding of coding, but also provide important skills like computational thinking and resilience, which will have a positive impact in any career path a child might choose.

APH plans to make Code Jumper available in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US this year, and will distribute it worldwide over the next five years.

We’re also announcing free mixed reality curricula to support every type of learner. Studies show that student engagement and retention increase as much as 35 percent when students learn with immersive and 3D technologies like VR headsets. The challenge lies in finding the right curriculum to get started with mixed reality – a barrier for many educators.

Today, we’re making it easier than ever to get started with immersive learning by partnering with VictoryVR to give schools 25 hours of standards-aligned virtual reality curricula across subjects for FREE when they purchase a Windows virtual reality headset. By making it easier for schools to get started, we hope more students can experience the benefits of immersive learning in the upcoming school year.

Finally, we’re introducing Immersive Reader for VR and free Dyslexia training materials for teachers!

As part of our continued commitment to ensure every child has a strong foundation in literacy, we continue to invest in new ways to increase reading speed and comprehension. This week at Bett, we’ll be showing how Immersive Reader can work in a VR headset, benefiting anyone who requires additional focus while reading, whether they’re five or 85. We’ll also be rolling out free training materials in the Microsoft Educator Community to support teachers who have students with dyslexia as part of our ongoing partnership with Made by Dyslexia.

We look forward to seeing many of you at the BETT 2019 Microsoft Education booth and online during our live sessions this week:

  • Wednesday, 1/23: New tools to help you transform classroom time and personalize learning for all students
  • Thursday, 1/24: New tech to support inclusive classrooms
  • Friday, 1/25: Affordable new Windows 10 devices

Click here for free STEM resourcesClick here for free STEM resourcesClick here for free STEM resourcesClick here for free STEM resources

*$189 offers for a limited time and while supplies last

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Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on Venture Beat: Understanding AI is part of being an informed citizen in the 21st century

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott believes understanding AI in the future will help people become better citizens.

“I think to be a well-informed citizen in the 21st century, you need to know a little bit about this stuff [AI] because you want to be able to participate in the debates. You don’t want to be someone to whom AI is sort of this thing that happens to you. You want to be an active agent in the whole ecosystem,” he said.

In an interview with VentureBeat in San Francisco this week, Scott shared his thoughts on the future of AI, including facial recognition software and manufacturing automation. He also detailed why he’s “cautiously optimistic” about the ways people will devise to use intelligent machines and why he thinks Cortana doesn’t need a smart speaker to succeed.

However vital staying informed about the evolution of AI may be to the average person in the century ahead, Scott concedes it’s not an easy thing to do.

“It’s challenging, because even if you’re a person with significant technical training, even if you’re an AI practitioner, it’s sort of challenging to keep up with everything that’s going on. The landscape is evolving really rapidly,” he said.

Technologists who make and use AI today also have a duty to help people better understand what’s possible and make their work accessible, so Scott is writing a book about how AI can be a force for good for the economy in rural America.

In recent years, AI has proliferated across health care and homes, as well as governments and businesses, and its continued expansion could redefine work roles for everyone. News and public education initiatives to help citizens understand AI are important, and technologists should make their work more accessible, but Scott believes it’s not enough for businesses using AI to be disruptive in their industry.

“We have to think about how there’s balance here,” he said. “You can’t just create a bunch of tech and have it be super disruptive and not have any involvement … you have to create value in this world, and it can’t just be shareholder value.”

A ‘cautiously optimistic’ view of facial recognition

One subject that has drawn much attention from average citizens and Microsoft is facial recognition software and the potential for government overreach.

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — along with a coalition of human rights and other organizations — called for major tech companies, including Microsoft, to abstain from selling facial recognition technology to governments, because doing so would inevitably lead to misuse and discrimination against religious and ethnic minority groups.

Microsoft declined to respond directly to the letter but pointed to past actions that represent its point of view. Analysis last year found facial recognition systems from Microsoft, as well as Face++ in China, were not capable of recognizing people with dark skin, particularly women of color, at the same rates as white people. Just weeks after Microsoft made improvements to the Face API’s ability to identify people with dark skin tones last summer, president Brad Smith declared that the government needs to regulate facial recognition software. Then last month the company laid out six principles it will use to govern the use of facial recognition software by its customers, including law enforcement agencies and governments, such as fairness, transparency, and accountability.

Microsoft is currently on track to implement the plan on schedule, Scott said.

Though facial recognition software could be used for nefarious purposes by businesses and governments and can drum up fears of technologically powered police states, Scott likes to think of the upside when it comes to facial recognition software use cases.

“There’s this fine line between … that boundary; there are clearly some things that you just shouldn’t allow. Like, you shouldn’t have governments using it as a mechanism of oppression. No one should be using it to discriminate illegally against people, so I think it’s a good debate to have, but I’m usually on the cautiously optimistic side of things — I actually have faith in humanity,” he said. “I believe if you give people tools, the overwhelming majority of the uses to which they will be put are positive, and so you want to encourage that and protect against the negative in a thoughtful way.”

Potential positive use cases he cites include improving security in buildings, understanding who’s in a meeting, or verifying that a person handling dangerous machinery is certified to do so.

He also offered a theoretical example based on what he observed when his wife was in the hospital last year. Just two nurses were tasked with managing an entire a hospital recovery ward, where patients were prescribed a precise regiment of ambulatory activity.

A computer vision system assigned to this task could alert nursing staff if a patient was seen in common areas too often, signaling too much activity, or if they hadn’t been seen out of their room, indicating that they were not getting enough activity.

In addition to a belief that understanding AI makes for more informed citizens, Scott emphasized that AI experts need to do more to share the positive outcomes that can come from technology like facial recognition software.

The Terminator often comes to mind in worst-case scenarios with AI, but sharing a Star Trek vision of the future is important too, Scott said, because telling positives stories helps people grasp those possibilities.

“Folks who are deeply in the AI community need to do a better job trying to paint positive pictures for folks, [but] not in a Pollyanna way, and not ignoring the unintended consequences and all the bad things that could be amplified by AI,” he said.

Scott’s book on AI in rural America

Scott believes a book will help expound on his point of view “that AI can and should be a beneficial thing for rural America.” A Microsoft spokesperson declined to share the book title or scheduled release date details.

To write the book, Scott said he began by thinking about how to define AI for his grandfather, a former appliance repairman, farmer, and boiler room mechanic during World War II.

“I think if my granddad were alive he’d be curious about AI, and part of my process is figuring out how I would explain it to him, because he wasn’t a computer scientist. And I think it’s part of your set of responsibilities these days as a tech person to try to do more of that, to make the things that you’re working on more accessible,” he said.

The book will likely draw on Scott’s experiences growing up in rural Virginia.

When asked which form of AI he believes is likely to have a more positive impact than anticipated, Scott pointed to manufacturing automation in rural areas. It’s easy to imagine advanced robotics being a disruptive factor in manufacturing, but it can also level the playing field worldwide, making it possible to establish business anywhere.

“I have talked with dozens of both small and large companies over the past couple of years, and in every last one of these conversations the thing that I’m seeing is that automation is this sort of equalizing factor, like a piece of advanced automation that runs in Shenzhen costs about the same as it does in some little rural town [in the U.S.],” he said.

“That’s this thing I think people haven’t really fully wrapped their heads around, this whole agile manufacturing movement, where you’ve got lots of these small companies that are now able to make things [and] that are repatriating jobs to the U.S. from overseas, just because they’re deploying all of this automation and their unit cost of production is dropping.”

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With Code Jumper, experts look to jumpstart computer science interest for kids who are blind

None of this would come as a surprise to the students at New College Worcester. As they assembled their programs, some recalled computer science classrooms in which they had been told to do touch typing – which is a method of typing by muscle memory instead of looking at the keyboard – while the other kids in their classes used block coding to write basic computer programs. Others shared the frustrations of trying to learn more complex coding skills like Python or JavaScript without the grounding in more simplified coding systems many other students were getting to use.

With Code Jumper, they said, they were immediately able to experiment and build programs.

“I just felt very independent, and I liked that,” said Daniel, who at 11 years old already knows he wants to pursue a career in computer science. “It kind of made me inspired to do more coding.”

On this day, Daniel was collaborating with another student, Rico. The 12-year-old’s favorite subjects are IT and science, and he said that in his previous school he only got to do touch typing. With Code Jumper, he was able to write an actual program for the first time.

“To just do coding, it was a fun experience,” he said.

As the kids worked on their programs, Jonathan Fogg, head of computing and IT at New College Worcester, walked around the classroom, helping them with things like debugging. Fogg also watched with evident delight as they ran their programs for him. He said Project Torino was unlike anything he’d been able to provide the kids before now.

“There really isn’t an equivalent to this physical way of programming,” Fogg said.

The early access to basic coding skills is important, Fogg said, because many kids who are blind or low vision are drawn to careers in computer science. He thinks that’s partly because many of the skills kids with low vision develop to navigate the world make them good at the kind of computational thinking that’s helpful for a computer science career. And, he said, traditionally it has been a career that is more accessible to people who are blind or low vision, because of tools such as screen readers.

But at a young age, he said, he’s found that many kids are afraid to start playing around with a computer, especially if they know it’s an expensive, fragile machine.

“If they’re not confident, they won’t have a go at the computer because they’re afraid they’ll break it,” he said. “But once they’ve gotten over that barrier, then they’ve been successful. Project Torino reinforces that – they can’t break it and they can do all these really, really cool things.”

Daniel and Rico sitting at a classrom table, helping each other feel the buttons and knobs on brighlty colored plastic pods
From left, Daniel and Rico were part of a group of students at New College Worcester in Worcester, UK, who participated in a beta test of the technology behind Code Jumper. Photo by Jonathan Banks.

Magnets, blocks and lots of trial and error

It’s a couple of days later, and Theo is sitting in a small resource room at the school he attends, Kings College School, also in the UK. Theo, who is blind, has been part of the Code Jumper project for years – in fact, he was one of the first group of students who collaborated with Morrison and others to develop the system.

“I helped them choose what kind of buttons to use,” he said as his hands moved swiftly along the bright plastic pieces, assembling a program as he chatted easily about the computer science skills he’s developed over the years.

The bright plastic pods, oversized dials and thick cords the students are using today is a far cry from the original ideas Morrison and her collaborator, senior researcher Nicolas Villar, had when they first started thinking of a physical programming language.

Their original idea was to create a physical programming language that mimicked block coding, complete with actual blocks and magnets. It didn’t work at all. The kids either lined the blocks up in a row and didn’t do anything else, or they grew frustrated by the magnets falling off the table and getting lost.

Microsoft senior researcher Nicolas Villar in a blue jacket stands against a glass wall, looking into the camera
Microsoft senior researcher Nicolas Villar. Photo courtesy of Microsoft.

So, Morrison, Villar and the other team members began meeting regularly with a small group of kids and getting their ideas. Based on the kids’ feedback and ideas, they switched to bigger plastic shapes that fit easily into kids’ hands, and they created surfaces the kids could rub or squeeze in order to recognize and interact with them.

With the new designs, the kids immediately began exploring ways to put them together and write short programs that made sounds.

Through the work with the young collaborators, Villar said he started to see the technology from the kids’ perspectives. For example, the kids with some vision benefited from bright, contrasting colors. They also found that kids like to work together, guiding each other’s hands, so they built the pods to be about the size of two kids’ hands.

“They were really helping us invent,” Villar said.

Once they had figured out what Morrison called “the kid way of engaging with things,” they set to work making sure that the system also would teach kids the basics of coding, such as how to create a sequence and what steps you need to take in order to debug.

The researchers also created detailed guidance that teachers without a computer science background could use to help kids develop coding skills, since they couldn’t expect all schools to have an IT specialist available to work with students who are blind or low vison.

For Villar, the impact of Code Jumper has extended far beyond just this project.

“It’s opened my eyes to different perspectives, different ways of focusing or seeing the world,” he said.

For Theo, the involvement with Project Torino has been life changing as well. He’s now doing more complex coding, including recently writing a hangman game in Python – something he says he couldn’t have done without the basics he learned using Code Jumper. Equally important to him, he’s made new friends with other kids in school who are also interested in coding.

“It’s been really good socially for us,” said Elin, his mother.

A smiling Theo sits at a table in a small library, both hands touching the plastic knobs
Theo demonstrates a program he created with the technology behind Code Jumper as his mother looks on. Photo by Jonathan Banks.

Big plans

In late 2017, Villar flew to Kentucky to show the leadership at American Printing House for the Blind a demonstration of the project. Craig Meador, APH’s president and a longtime educator, said he was immediately drawn to how intuitive and interesting the system would be to kids.

“If you put this in a classroom, not only is the blind student going to be using this but every student in the classroom is going to want a crack at this,” he said. “From a teacher’s perspective, that’s all you ever really want – something that’s inclusive.”

Skutchan, APH’s technology director, said the fact that it’s immediately accessible for kids with no prior computing experience is important. In the past, he said, kids who are blind or with low vision who wanted to get into coding had to first learn other computing skills, such as how to type and use a screen reader. That made it harder to get started at a young age – and potentially closed the door to a field that could have provided a career for them.

“I think coding is an equalizing field to be in,” he said.

Meador and Skutchan have grand plans for Code Jumper, including developing a curriculum and figuring out distribution and other levels of support. APH plans to release Code Jumper first in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and then to distribute it throughout the world.

They say it’s the type of system they may have dreamed of – but would never have had the resources to create themselves.

“We’ve never really had anything that’s been able to give students so many different ways they can experiment and learn about coding,” he said, “and it translates so well into actual skills.”

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Allison Linn is a senior writer and editor at Microsoft. Follow her on Twitter.

Top Image: Student Victoria, left, and Jonatha Fogg, right, head of computing and IT at New College Worcester, discuss the program Victoria created during a beta test of the technology behind Code Jumper. Photo by Jonathan Banks.

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How Microsoft built the city of the future, right at home

How Microsoft Quietly Built the City of the Future

A small, covert team of engineers at Microsoft cast aside suggestions that the company spend US$60 million to turn its 500-acre headquarters into a smart campus to achieve energy savings and other efficiency gains. Instead, applying an œInternet of Things meets Big Data” approach, the team invented a data-driven software solution that is slashing the cost of operating the campus™ 125 buildings. The software, which is saving Microsoft millions of dollars, has been so successful that the company and its partners are now helping building managers across the world deploy the same solution. And with commercial buildings consuming an estimated 40 percent of the world™s total energy, the potential is huge.

By Jennifer Warnick

1: The Visionary

“Give me a little data and I™ll tell you a little. Give me a lot of data and I™ll save the world.”

– Darrell Smith , Director of Facilities and Energy

Microsoft

œThis is my office,” says the sticker on Darrell Smith™s laptop, and it is.

With his œoffice” tucked under his arm, Microsoft™s director of facilities and energy is constantly shuttling between meetings all over the company™s 500-acre, wooded campus in Redmond, Washington.

But Smith always returns to one unique place.

The Redmond Operations Center (often called œthe ROC”) is located in a drab, nondescript office park. Inside is something unique “ a new state-of-the-art œbrain” that is transforming Microsoft™s 125-building, 41,664-employee headquarters into one of the smartest corporate campuses in the world.

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Smith and his team have been working for more than three years to unify an incongruent network of sensors from different eras (think several decades of different sensor technology and dozens of manufacturers). The software that he and his team built strings together thousands of building sensors that track things like heaters, air conditioners, fans, and lights “ harvesting billions of data points per week. That data has given the team deep insights, enabled better diagnostics, and has allowed for far more intelligent decision making. A test run of the program in 13 Microsoft buildings has provided staggering results “ not only has Microsoft saved energy and millions in maintenance and utility costs, but the company now is hyper-aware of the way its buildings perform.

It™s no small thing “ whether a damper is stuck in Building 75 or a valve is leaky in Studio H “ that engineers can now detect (and often fix with a few clicks) even the tiniest issues from their high-tech dashboard at their desks in the ROC rather than having to jump into a truck to go find and fix the problem in person.

If the facility management world were Saturday morning cartoons, Smith and his team have effectively flipped the channel from œThe Flintstones” to œThe Jetsons.” Instead of using stone-age rocks and hammers to keep out the cold, Smith™s team invented a solution that relies on data to find and fix problems instantly and remotely.

SLIDESHOW: Building the Microsoft Campus

œGive me a little data and I™ll tell you a little,” he says. œGive me a lot of data and I™ll save the world.”

Smith joined Microsoft in December of 2008. His previous work managing data centers for Cisco had given him big ideas about how buildings could be smarter and more efficient, but until he came to Microsoft he lacked the technical resources to bring them to life. What he found at Microsoft was support for these ideas on all sides “ from his boss to a handful of savvy facilities engineers. They all knew buildings could be smarter, and together they were going to find a way to make it so.

Smith has a finger-tapping restlessness that prevents him from sitting through an entire movie. His intensity comes paired with the enthusiastic, genial demeanor of a favorite bartender or a softball buddy (and indeed, he does play first base for a company softball team, the Microsoft Misfits).

Ever punctual and an early riser, Smith lives near Microsoft headquarters and has taken to spending a few quiet hours at his desk on Sundays.

œI call it my den because I live a mile away. I come here, I make coffee, I have the building to myself,” Smith says.

His family and the people who know him best understand. Smart buildings are his passion, and everything in his life has been moving toward finding ways for companies the world over to get smarter about managing their buildings (which will help them save money and reduce their energy use).

œSmart buildings will become smart cities,” Smith says. œAnd smart cities will change everything.”

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Meet the Minecraft Education team at Bett 2019 Jan. 23-26 in London

The Minecraft: Education Edition team will be travelling to the UK next week for Bett 2019! Bett is the first industry expo of the year in the education technology landscape, bringing together 800 leading companies, 100 startups and more than 30,000 attendees from the global education community.

We will be running hands-on workshops and demos at the new Minecraft Classroom (stand F280), an immersive space next to the Microsoft stand where attendees can learn how to teach and code with Minecraft: Education Edition, speak with members of our team for customer support and take fun photos with Minecraft mobs. Sign up for workshops here. Read this Education blog to learn what’s offered at the Microsoft stand (E300).

We hope you will follow along on social media @playcraftlearn #MinecraftEdu #Bett2019.

Here is a breakdown below of the Minecraft team’s Bett schedule, and what we will be covering during our workshops and demos:

Workshop – Code with Minecraft
Location: Minecraft Classroom, Stand F280

Wednesday, January 23, at 11AM and 3PM GMT
Thursday, January 24, at 1PM GMT
Friday, January 25, at 11AM and 3PM GMT

Minecraft: Education Edition offers educators all you need to get started teaching computer science. In this interactive workshop, learn the basics of using Code Builder, the new in-game coding feature, and explore new lessons and standards-aligned curriculum that you can put to use in your school. Devices will be provided. Register here.

Workshop – How to Teach with Minecraft
Location: Minecraft Classroom, Stand F280

Wednesday, January 23, at 1PM GMT
Thursday, January 24, at 11AM and 3PM GMT
Friday, January 25, at 1PM GMT
Saturday, January 26, and 11AM GMT

Attendees will be immersed in a hands-on experience to learn how to use Minecraft: Education Edition, from login to game-play. In addition to learning how to play the game, we’ll show you how to navigate our lesson library to find classroom activities that fit into your curriculum. Devices will be provided. Register here.

Stage Demo – Building STEM skills with Minecraft: Education Edition
Location: Learn Live Theater, Stand E300
Times: 1PM daily

In this 30-minute demo on the Learn Live Theater stage in the Microsoft stand, see how you can engage your students in STEM subjects using special features in Minecraft: Education Edition, from Code Builder to the Chemistry Resource Pack.

Customer Support

Stop by the Minecraft Classroom (stand F280) to have your questions answered. Learn how to deploy licenses, empower educators to get started with Minecraft in their classrooms and discover professional development resources available online. We’re here to help!

Not at #Bett2019? You can always visit the Help Center for technical support.

Introducing New Computer Science Curriculum!

We just launched a CSTA-aligned computer science curriculum to accompany Code Builder. This flexible, 30-hour curriculum includes downloadable lessons, worlds and teaching resources to help students ages 11-16 learn fundamental coding concepts.

Code Builder is the in-game feature that allows you to code in familiar learn-to-code environments including Microsoft MakeCode and Tynker. Once you are in the Minecraft: Education Edition world, simply press letter ‘C’ on the keyboard to launch Code Builder or press the Agent if using touch controls on a tablet. (The Agent is a character who can be programmed to run different coding commands, from mining to building and farming in Minecraft.)

Check out the Computer Science lessons for easy activities and standards-aligned lessons across STEM subjects. Minecraft: Education Edition also offers two MEC training courses to help educators learn how to teach CS with Minecraft.

New Digital Badging Program

We have also re-launched our digital badging to engage more educators in the global Minecraft community. Earn badges to access exclusive learning content, provide early feedback on new features and support other educators using Minecraft: Education Edition. Visit our Community page learn more.

We can’t wait to meet educators from around the world and share the transformational power of Minecraft in education. Come learn with us and explore the future of education technology. See you in London!

The post Meet the Minecraft Education Team at Bett 2019! appeared first on Minecraft: Education Edition.

This post was originally published on this site.

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Security researchers: Bug bounty program for Azure DevOps added

It is my pleasure to announce another exciting expansion of the Microsoft Bounty Programs. Today, we are adding a security bug bounty program for Azure DevOps in partnership with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) to our suite of Bounty programs.

Our Bounty program rewards independent security researchers who find flaws and report them to us responsibly. We’ll publicly recognize the researchers who report these security issues, and for high-severity bugs we’ll present payments of up to $20,000 USD.

These rewards help motivate researchers to find security vulnerabilities in our services and let us correct them before they’re exploited by attackers. You can find the details of our Bug Bounty program with MSRC.

Security has always been a passion of mine, and I see this program as a natural complement to our existing security framework. We’ll continue to employ careful code reviews and examine the security of our infrastructure. We’ll still run our security scanning and monitoring tools. And we’ll keep assembling a red team on a regular basis to attack our own systems to identify weaknesses.

If you’re interested in the way our team approaches security and how we continue to evolve our thinking and practices, then I’d encourage you to watch the video of my talk “Mindset shift to a DevSecOps culture.”

This program will help us provide the highest level of security for our customers, protect customer data, and ensure the availability of Azure DevOps. I’m looking forward to seeing what we learn from working more closely with the security community.