On Tuesday I was in Auckland for the Microsoft Elevate event at Shed 10 which had been transformed into “Everyday Lane” – showing what the Modern Workplace really looks like:
I co-presented with my colleague Anna with a focus on Education and the idea of the “Modern Classroom” with a focus on dispelling three myths:
- Windows is hard to manage
- Microsoft is not innovative or engaging
- Windows is not suitable for teaching and learning.
Here’s a copy of the slide deck from the session:
We focused on three aspects to address the ‘myths’ above:
- Intune for Education as a cloud based Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution
- Immersive Reader as a tool to support the literacy of students and ensuring equity of access to learning content for all. See here for additional research on this tool and here for a 1hr webinar on the tool.
- A truly engaging creative process with coding in Minecraft:Education Edition personalising it in Paint3D and then using Mixed Reality to project the creation into the classroom.
For an independent review of the session, here’s an article from Ben Moore who was at one of my sessions and made the following observations:
The standout offerings were Intune for Education, Immersive Reading, and Minecraft for Education.
Making use of intelligent cloud, Intune for Education is a mobile device management platform that lets teachers create student groups with granular control over what apps are available on their devices and even whether or not the camera is switched on.
Immersive Reading lets students set their own pace for reading, focusing on clarity of the text and building up their skills through a scaffolding approach, presenting a single line at a time, then three lines, then five.
The software can also find and highlight various parts-of-speech to help with those tricky grammar specifics – a truly innovative and equitable approach…..
The myths were on their way to being dispelled by the end of this session.
It was a long day, presenting the above 15 minute session nine separate times over the course of the event, however it was a great opportunity to show how the messaging happening in a modern classroom was the same as what is landing in the modern workplace in the other breakout pods that were on show that day. In fact, one partner pointed this out to me on the day that it would have been great to have Principals and school leaders at the event, as they would have picked up on that consistency of messaging.
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