Tag: OneNote

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Apple Security

WWDC24 – Reflections From Apple’s Event

Introduction

Apple have concluded their annual WWDC event and there was, as always, a lot to take in. For those short of time, the video above summarising 18 things is worth a watch and I’m going to attempt to unpack a few of the other features in more detail below in terms of their relevance for education or commercial customers. I’ll have separate sections for Apple’s take on Artificial Intelligence (they’re labelling it Apple Intelligence) as well as a section on Privacy and Security (given Apple’s historically strong focus in these areas) but first a few hyperlinks into the post below for quicker navigation:

With that done, I want to share a few key take away thoughts that have stuck out to me.

Firstly, it’s evident to me that Apple are looking to move their Vision Pro headset beyond a consumer product and into something targeted at Enterprise and Education customers as it will now have enrolment and MDM management features on par with other Apple devices. This is a logical extension for me given we have seen Microsoft attempt to do this with HoloLens 2 and Meta with the Oculus/Quest AR headsets as well. Whilst these devices remain expensive, the developer community will no doubt welcome the opportunity to build industry specific applications for the Vision Pro, and IT managers will feel more comfortable onboarding these onto their networks if they can be managed and updated centrally from their MDM of choice. I would not be surprised at all to see a world class educational app debut for the Vision Pro in the coming months, showcasing the best of the hardware and software that Apple have created.

Secondly, it’s evident Apple is continuing their long support of education with some additional features coming to SchoolWork and Assessment Mode. SchoolWork looks like it will benefit from the AI enhancements (see below for more) that are landing across many EduTech offerings now, allowing teachers to quickly see trends in student homework, set personalised practice sets and even auto-grade assessments more quickly. Assessment Mode has been extended and developers will now be able to leverage “multi app” functionality which will mean use of approved secondary apps to students during assessment e.g. calculator support, whilst the rest of the device is locked down for the test:

Whilst a native calculator app on the iPad has been a long time coming, this new one (AI powered) can be controlled via your MDM of choice during assessment mode. This means that ahead of high stakes assessment the more powerful features such as scientific mode and the newly announced “Math Notes” can be disabled if the teacher or school wishes.

Lastly, it appears that Apple are transitioning away from the terminology of “Apple ID” and moving to “Apple Accounts” – although the documentation does not appear to have caught up yet (Managed Apple IDs for Apple devices – Apple Support (AU)). There was a renewed push for Managed Apple Accounts at WWDC24 (What’s new in device management – WWDC24 – Videos – Apple Developer) and some announcements on how to migrate personal Apple ID/Accounts into a managed environment (more on this below).

I expect the ability to easily migrate personal Apple ID/Accounts that use an education/work email address into a managed Apple ID/Account will be a big deal for IT Admins who wish to control those more effectively.

As other commentators have pointed out, Apple waited a while to announce their take on AI and, when they did, used the phrase Apple Intelligence instead of Artificial Intelligence, so I’ll drop a few thoughts below.

Apple Intelligence (AI)

The Writing Tools (Rewrite / Proofreading) will be welcomed by teachers and students who struggle with formal writing and this highlights the speed with which Generative AI is being added into more products to accelerate content creation and improve readability (see here on other thoughts I’ve shared). There are, of course, some cautions that come with this: how do educators know how much of what a student writes is their own content vs AI generated? Are students grasping key concepts of punctuation or are they totally reliant on a tool to check / correct for them?

This touches on the larger question of the extent to which technology reduces the need for individuals to ‘know’ things (are times tables critical to memorise if you have access to a calculator all the time?) but also highlights the need for schools and organisations to have their own AI Policy of when and how to use AI tools (our engagements with customers show that over 75% of users are already leveraging AI in day to day work, even though less than 40% had an AI policy they were aware of).

Create a company / school AI policy is critical before large scale adoption of these tools.

Jamf have provided some good questions for educators to prompt critical thinking ahead of wide scale deployment and use of these tools:

  • How do tools like Math Notes and the handwriting enhancements impact on the purpose behind the deployment to have that broad impact on learning and teaching?
  • How do these enhancements, specifically Apple intelligence, lend themselves to a more personalized approach to learning for students?
  • How might the new AI features be supported where they can have a positive impact or be switched off if they provide too much assistance when the focus should be on the student’s own ability?
Education Takeaways from WWDC 2024 (jamf.com)

Beyond the Rewrite and Proofreading, I think it was the Math Notes that captured the most attention in the area of Apple Intelligence:

Again, the ability to see this as a gamechanger built into the device for a personalised tutor to help solve complex math equations may be something schools, students and parents wish to embrace. Certainly, other platforms have had similar functionality for a while (Math Assistant in OneNote) but the difference here is this is being made available in a native app on all Apple devices meaning there is no further action required for a student access it.

In the end, whilst adding a native calculator to iPad was long overdue, I’m pleased to see that Apple added considerably more functionality to it when they did eventually launch it and the Math Note is an excellent AI powered extension. Building on this, it’s great to see Apple’s “Smart Script” feature use AI to improve the legibility of handwriting, they describe it as:

With the power of Apple Pencil, Smart Script makes handwritten notes fluid, flexible, and easier to read, all while maintaining the look and feel of a user’s personal handwriting. Smart Script allows users to write quickly without sacrificing legibility by smoothing and straightening handwritten text in real time.

iPadOS 18 introduces powerful intelligence features and apps for Apple Pencil – Apple (NZ)

My handwriting is not amazing, and my son has dysgraphia meaning his handwriting is often slow, messy and at times difficult for others to read easily. Leveraging Smart Script with an Apple Pencil means notes written with Apple Markup (digital ink) can be automatically enhanced for legibility, spacing and even converted into typed text if required. From an accessibility perspective, this is something many students and educators will be keen to experience so that the best ideas of students are not ‘lost’ behind illegible handwriting.

Lastly, one of the other cool features announced at WWDC24 that will likely resonate with educators and students is some of the custom image generation functionality that is going to be built right into the device – Apple call this “Image Playground”. In a recent AI workshop I ran, I created a bunch of images generated by AI using a third party tool to add some pop and sizzle to my presentation and tweak the images specifically for the themes I was wanting to convey. Now, students and teachers will be able to do this directly from their Apple device which will:

  • Allow them to use hardware/software they’re already familiar with / own so it will be a quicker task to generate the images
  • Reduce the need for additional usernames/passwords on third party tools, thereby reducing complexity but also removing risk of student information being compromised if the third party had a security breach

With AI generated images I can see creative writing tasks flourishing as students are prompted and inspired with very bespoke images created for that specific writing task. It will also allow students to illustrate their writing with custom images that will not have any copyright concerns on them.

There were a lot of additional announcements of features in the Apple Intelligence section of WWDC24 which I won’t cover here, however I would make one final caution in this space. It’s evident that all vendors are going to be scouring the cloud and on-device content for ‘context’ to make their AI offerings very smart and useful – this is called ‘grounding’ in an AI context. In many cases this is very helpful and welcomed by the end user. However, It is worth considering when this could go wrong e.g. a teacher using their work iPad for personal usage as well, a student on a shared iPad getting contextual AI info based on the work of another student who used that iPad etc.

This is the world we will all need to navigate as to be effective, AI will need to “know” as much as possible about individuals to deliver the most value.

This seems like a good time to move to Security and Privacy Considerations.

Security & Privacy Considerations

One of the biggest announcements in my mind was the partnership between OpenAI and Apple. For those unaware, OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT and also the underlying Large Language Models (LLM) that Microsoft rely on with their Copilot AI products. It is the ChatGPT functionality that powers both the Writing Tools and Image Playgrounds mentioned above and both OpenAI and Apple have been quick to talk up the privacy considerations here:

Privacy protections are built in when accessing ChatGPT within Siri and Writing Tools—requests are not stored by OpenAI, and users’ IP addresses are obscured. Users can also choose to connect their ChatGPT account, which means their data preferences will apply under ChatGPT’s policies.

OpenAI and Apple announce partnership | OpenAI

I’ve spoken with many businesses, schools and universities about the privacy features (or not) of various AI products and so it is good to see that Apple have proactively addressed this, stating that user requests will not be stored by OpenAI (and thus used to train the underlying LLM) and a further step being taken to obscure a user’s IP address making it harder (or perhaps impossible) for OpenAI to correlate queries for the same user.

These types of privacy considerations will be increasingly a ‘default consideration’ in education contexts I believe, as well as in other highly regulated industries. Again, a company / organization wide AI policy is critical here to guide users on when and how they can use AI in their work or studies. There has been some high profile criticism of this partnership, notably from Elon Musk (who may have some bias here given his own development of Grok AI on the Twitter/X platform):

For now, I think it would be prudent for education institutes and businesses to be keeping a close eye on developments in this space.

For me, the fact that Apple devices will prompt the user every time it will go to OpenAI/ChatGPT for help with a user query is a good level of transparency. It indicates to the user that Apple’s own onboard AI requires assistance or additional information to provide a good answer to the user and, at that point, the user can decide if they want their query to go to the internet.

Sam McNeill, Cyclone Technology Strategist and Apple Business Lead

Another important announcement from Apple was the enhanced and dedicated Passwords app with syncing across all devices. New Zealand’s CERT NZ highly recommend the use of Password Managers as part of their “Top 10 Critical Controls”

Even with multi-factor in place, a strong unique password is still important. Giving your people the tools to make this easy increases the likelihood of them using strong passwords that are different for each system. It also makes it easier to manage shared passwords such as your business’ social media accounts.

The important point of this control is that your organisation should be providing your staff with a password manager tool that works for them. Without the right tools, your staff won’t be able to make strong passwords.

CERT NZ’s Critical Controls | CERT NZ

For organisations prioritising security, this will be a welcome addition and for users with access to an iPhone, iPad or Mac device this will allow them stronger unique passwords for the various apps and services they use. Given Apple’s focus and investment in this area, as the The Verge has pointed out, users may have a higher degree of confidence in using this:

With the backing of Apple, it may seem like a safer option for people spooked by security breaches suffered by others like LastPass.

Apple’s standalone Passwords app syncs across iOS, iPad, Mac, and Windows – The Verge

I have been using DropBox.com’s Password Manager which is excellent and integrates nicely across my Apple devices and Edge browser extension, but will now seriously look at Apple’s Passwords app and see how it compares.

Another announcement from WWDC24 that enhances the privacy and security inside the Apple ecosystem is improvements to Platform SSO on macOS with announcements of IdP integration with FileVault unlock, and stronger security options where developers can sync more services back to the password managed by the Identity Provider. Here’s one example provided:

In this example, the policy states an attempt should be made to authenticate against an IdP before unlocking FileVault. However, a more restrictive policy is applied against the Screensaver unlock where an authentication is required and not just attempted.

Reducing the need for continuous entry of passwords to different platforms is important and more educational and commercial organisations will be looking to embrace Platform SSO as part of their Zero Trust approach (more on this here) – I’m personally really happy to see Apple’s increasing focus on this level of enterprise integration as it will help mainstream the adoption of macOS alongside Windows 11. Further evidence of embracing enterprise device management requirements and support for heavily regulated industries was Apple’s callout for the new external Disk Management Configuration policy, which will now allow configurability of mount policy to be defined as:

  • Allowed
  • Disallowed
  • Read Only

Finally, a comment on the updates to Apple Activation Lock – if you’re unfamiliar a device can be placed into Activation Lock to prevent an unauthorised user from accessing it (usually this is done when a device is lost or stolen). At WWDC24 Apple announced that organisation owned devices in Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager can now turn off Activation Lock for these org-owned devices. I’d imagine this is a huge relief for schools where a teacher or student has placed a school owned device into Activation Lock based on their personal Apple ID/Account.

I have heard horror stories of schools trying to unlock a device they own when a teacher has left the employment of the school but have locked the device using their personal Apple ID/Account. Thankfully, with this update to ABM/ASM this will be a problem no longer.

Closing Thoughts

There is a lot to process here from WWDC24 and I am sure that over the coming weeks and months more insight and information will be released from Apple themselves and also from the developer community as they start to get hands on with these new features announced from Apple.

As always, education is a large winner here given they get access to industry leading technologies often at a fraction of the price of commercial orgs. However, if you work in a highly regulated industry you will no doubt welcome the continued focus on security and privacy alongside ever-expanding enterprise integration capabilities that Apple have announced at WWDC24.

Many people remain highly excited about the capabilities of Generative AI and Apple’s announcement of their take on GAI, named Apple Intelligence and powered (in part) by a new partnership with OpenAI’s ChatGPT means they are keeping abreast of their competitors in this space and like Microsoft have done with Copilot on Windows 11, it appears that Apple are keen to deeply integrate this into the hardware/OS experience for Apple users.

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Microsoft365

Some Thoughts On Microsoft’s Education Announcements Ahead of Bett London 2024

Earlier this morning Microsoft announced a number of updates ahead of Bett London 2024 happening next week – you can see them all here. The complete list makes for some interesting reading and one announcement in particular reflects something I was advocating for when I was still working in the Microsoft Education team a year ago.

Here is the complete list:

1. Reading Coach

2. Teams EDU updates, including AI

3. Loop

4. Microsoft Copilot in EDU

5. Reflect

6. OneNote EDU

Reading Coach No Longer Requires Microsoft Teams

The biggest change for me is the new ability to access the (frankly, incredible) Reading Coach outside of Microsoft Teams.

Today, we are announcing Reading Coach as a standalone app that also provides personalized, engaging, consistent, and independent reading fluency practice. It is available for free as a Windows application and a web app to use in the classroom or at home with a Microsoft account.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/education-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-edu-bett-2024-edition/ba-p/4032046#coach

In my mind, this is a great move and will likely expand Microsoft’s ability to engage non ‘Microsoft schools’ with this incredible functionality and assist students with their literacy progress. It appears you’ll still need an Entra ID (formerly, AzureAD) but this is a lower bar for a teacher (especially where SSO is configured) compared to needing to learn the interface of Microsoft Teams Assignments. I see the strategy as being quite sound here – expose educators and students to the great functionality of Reading Coach and then pull them through to the wider capabilities in Microsoft Teams for Education. If you’re unfamiliar with Reaching Coach, this may help:

Generative AI Appearing In…. Everything?

Unsurprisingly, Generative AI capability is being added to more and more products by Microsoft and I like the trajectory here with Reading Coach where a student or teacher can build original stories for practicing reading based on some scaffolded prompts of curated characters and settings:

Beyond Reading Coach, Generative AI is being introduced into Teams for Education in new areas, such as dynamically creating Assignment Rubrics and even assignment instructions.

My take on this is proceed with caution initially. An experienced teacher can likely judge whether a rubric accurately reflects the assessment criteria and outcomes they’re seeking from students, but a newer teacher may simply become overly reliant on a GAI created Rubric and inadvertently set inaccurate marking schedules.

These time saving features are even extending to the specific assignment instructions that are being created for an activity. On the surface, this could indeed prove invaluable for educators with the proviso they actually read and validate the generated content and ensure it is accurate and appropriate for their students and the learning outcomes they are teaching towards.

Remember: it’s a COPILOT and not an AUTOPILOT – educators still need to be engaged and reviewing Copilot generated content and not simply relying on the amazing powers of generative AI to be 100% accurate and reliable when it comes to creating assignments for students to work on.

The good news for schools is that educator access to these generative AI features can be controlled by the IT Administrator through the Teams Admin Centre, thus allowing compliance with the School’s AI policy

Microsoft Loop Coming to Education Tenants

One of the other big announcements is the availability of Loop in education tenants in early March 2024. I’ve actually had a number of Higher Education customers asking for this in the last few months and it’s pleasing to see Microsoft respond.

If you’re new to Loop, it’s (just another!) collaboration platform from Microsoft and in my experience it’s the fastest sync engine of anything Microsoft has created in terms of real time collaboration. I’ve worked in Loop components with colleagues all over the world and it’s always been impressively instantaneous. Again, it appears Copilot has been integrated with Loop for further assistance. The three elements of Loop are:

  • Loop Components: Portable pieces of content (like tables, checklists, or paragraphs) that sync across all the places they are shared.
  • Loop Pages: Flexible canvases in the Loop app where you can bring together people and all your components, links, tasks, and data.
  • Loop Workspaces:  Shared spaces that allow teachers and students to track everything important to a class project in one place.

Changes to Copilot Availability & Licensing For Education Customers

In Microsoft’s announcement, this was only #4 which surprises me as realistically, this was the biggest change and opportunity for education customers, with the addition of Copilot for Microsoft 365 being added to the price list for education customers. Perhaps the USD$30/u/m price point means most K-12 institutes will not be rushing to sign up, but the fact it’s available and the 300 seat minimum requirement has been removed will certainly mean some Universities and potentially Independent Schools will be curious to give this a try on select users initially.

I’ve previously blogged about some considerations around Copilot in Education and if you’re keen to rush out and buy a few licenses to try in your environment, just remember the warnings around carrying out some data access reviews. This is, of course, good data hygiene that should be carried out anyway but in reality many organisations have this in the ‘too hard’ basket, relying on a poor form of ‘security through obscurity’. With Copilot, nothing will be obscure anymore as I blogged about earlier:

It’s worth noting that Microsoft 365 Copilot combs across your entire universe of data at work, including emails, meetings, chats, documents and more, plus the web. Therefore, it’s worth considering how prepared your organisation is from a data sharing and restriction perspective before simply turning this on and giving it a try.

I predict there will be more than a handful of educational institutes that get burned on the privacy front when Copilot is turned on prematurely and sensitive data is inadvertently surfaced up to unauthorized users.

OneNote – Still No Single Version To Rule Them All

One of the ongoing frustrations for OneNote fans is the continued confusion around which version of the App to use. There is the (now legacy) “OneNote for Windows 10” which is actually my preferred version and a few years back was touted as the future of OneNote and then there is the “OneNote Desktop Version” which is a rebranded and rebooted version of the older OneNote 2016 Win32 app. There are, of course, other versions – the OneNote Web App and versions for MacOS/iPadOS etc but the two Windows versions are the main ones used.

In a clear effort to move users off the OneNote for Windows 10 app, Microsoft is finally improving access to the OneNote Class Notebook toolbar, meaning there is an in-app setting to turn this on in the OneNote Desktop version rather than needing to download a separate plugin.

Confused yet?

I expect most readers who are not avid OneNote fans likely are, and this is the real shame in my view. I’m going to offer a gentle criticism of Microsoft here and point out the obvious: the inability to simplify their product offerings is reducing the adoption of M365 in education customers.

Competitors such as Apple and Google have long ago figured out that “less is more” and compromised on functionality in favour of simplicity. OneNote is my favourite app in M365 by a long way and I use it multiple times every single day across all my devices, but this ongoing situation of two different Windows apps does nothing but confuse end users and annoy IT Administrators that need to deploy/support both versions.

A tough call is required to sunset the OneNote for Windows 10 version quickly, and then proceed with a single version for all users – a OneNote to rule them all.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I see these updates as generally positive and clearly signalling Microsoft’s strategy to deeply embed generative AI functionality into more of their products. This is both exciting and challenging for educators as they learn the capabilities of Copilot, where they can totally rely on it for quickly generating content, and where they need to proceed with more caution and checking.

I am keen to see whether Google/Apple schools will embrace Reading Coach now that it has been provided outside of Microsoft Teams for Education. I certainly expect there will be some that are more willing to experiment with this now and I truly believe it’s a tremendous literacy aid so the more students that can use it can only be a good thing in my view.

Will there be any other big announcements at Bett London 2024 from Microsoft? I would not rule it out, but historically they’ve not made major product announcements there so I would not be holding my breath.

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Microsoft365

What Does Good Look Like When Using EduTech In The Classroom?

Earlier this month, my colleague Travis Smith in Australia published an article on LinkedIn asking precisely this question. I highly recommend you take the five minutes to read it, but not as much as I recommend you take the 24minutes to watch the video below from Tamara Sullivan, the Deputy Principal at Brisbane South State Secondary College.

Tamara’s presentation covers some excellent areas of interest to modern pedagogy in technology powered learning environment and I strongly suggest you have you pen and paper ready when listening to take notes (or even better, OneNote and stylus!). Some aspects that really stood out to me included:

  • The continual references to data and research informing their pedagogical approach
  • The refusal to get ‘modern furniture’ but then simply use it in a traditional classroom configuration
  • Modelling, throughout her presentation, the technologies the teachers and students are expected to use: consistent use of digital paper (OneNote) and digital ink (stylus) to mark up her presentation in a very tactile way. These, along with zooming and scrolling reflects the natural interactions we have with traditional media but supercharges it in new ways for students
  • Significant investment in end user devices whilst saving money by not using ‘smart’ boards and keeping the intelligence on the endpoint device but with wireless broadcasting.

In his article, Travis identified four key themes from Tamara’s presentation:

  1. Matching pedagogy to space
  2. Consistency in terms of technology choices
  3. Going paperless
  4. Leadership and Strategy

He expands on these in his article and if the above are areas you’re needing to make decisions in for your school, then I highly recommend you read his article and at the risk of me getting offside with Travis, if you’re short of time and can only do one of the two, I really recommend you watch Tamara’s video in full.

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Microsoft365

OneNote Class NoteBook Tips for COVID19

onenote-class-notebooksNew Zealanders awoke this morning to learn that a staggered lockdown of the country was occurring due to new COVID19 infections meaning Auckland schools would be closing for the rest of the week at least.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to record a quick (7min) video showing how teachers can harness just a few features of the incredible power offered in OneNote Class NoteBooks

In the video below, I briefly:

  1. Intro the structure of a Class Notebook if you’re new to them
    1. Collaboration Space (teachers/students both have read/write permissions)
    2. Content Library (teacher has read/write permissions, students have read only)
    3. Teacher Only Section (teacher has read/write permissions, students are blocked completely)
    4. Student Notebooks (teacher has read/write permissions, students have read/write permissions only to their own notebook – classmate’s notebooks are hidden)
  2. Demonstrate the speed of synchronisation in the Collaboration Space
  3. Class Notebook Tools
    1. Distribute Page
    2. Review Page
    3. Lock Page

Why This Matters

Many teachers want to ensure that students can only work on content during a defined period of time, or even only in class. The ability to lock a page in OneNote gives teachers precisely that control and confidence that after the “due date” has passed, students can no longer modify or edit content on the defined page in OneNote.

Of course, this can also be managed using Microsoft Teams Assignments which is closer in experience to a traditional Learning Management System (LMS) but for formative assessment, the ability to use the locking feature in OneNote is quick and easy for most teachers and intuitive for students to see their work is now “locked”.

Keep safe and be kind to each other during this time and let’s continue to thank our incredible teachers and school leaders as they demonstrate themselves the attributes of a “life long learner” in picking up and effectively utilizing new tools for remote/hybrid teaching.

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Microsoft365 Minecraft:EE

Engaging Student Learners with eSports in Minecraft: Education Edition

I am a big fan of learning through game based scenarios and have blogged about both digital and physical tools to support this in the past. For example, the “Play Impossible” balls are one of the best integrations of technology and kinesthetic learning modalities I’ve come across recently – read the full blog post here. By contrast, taking Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and recreating entire fictional worlds inside of Minecraft is a great way to engage literacy skills into play – see the post here. The second post is particularly useful because in the second half of the blog I reference a lot of the research from James Paul Gee, who many see as the ‘god father’ of game based learning research.

In that context, the announcement today that the Minecraft: Education Edition team are releasing an eSports group of worlds and teaching resources is a very welcome addition that extends the existing game based learning features in Minecraft.

As always, I encourage you to read the original blog announcement here.

I’ve talked to many educators, both K-12 and Higher Education, that are already leveraging the huge engagement levels that eSports provides to drive learning outcomes in new modalities.  The future of eSports is huge – don’t believe me?

In 2019 a 16yr old won the Fortnite World Cup, pocketing a cool USD$3,000,000 in prize money. This is comparable with the US Open tennis champs and Tiger Woods’ winnings at Augusta – see the story here.

Suffice to say, students are down for eSports. As educators, there is a real opportunity to use eSports as the hook to drive interest and engagement in platforms that also drive robust learning outcomes.

eSports in Minecraft: Education Edition

eSports 1'

A number of resources have been released by the M:EE team to support educators getting started with eSports, and unquestionably the starting point is the rich OneNote NoteBook here:

 

eSports 4
The Notebook sections on the left show the topics of resources available for educators

Along with the OneNote above, there are seven specific worlds and lessons that students can get started with:

  • Pirate Cove: Enter an immersive pirate-themed world to take part in build competitions on the high seas. 
  • Space Race: Students visit another world as they compete in build battles set against the backdrop of space. 
  • Gold Rush: Students travel back in time to a 19th-century Gold Rush town to compete in team-based builds in the Old West. 
  • Busy Bees: Shrink your students down to the size of a bee, then set them loose in an enormous back yard for the battle of the buzz. 
  • Binary Builders: Enter a gigantic computer where students compete in build battles amid a jungle of circuitry. 
  • Splat Racers: A surreal fantasy racecourse is the setting for competitive builds. Set your students’ creativity free as they dream up fantastic imagery! 
  • 3D Print: Students take their places inside giant 3D printers, then compete in build battles. 

Going Deeper With eSports in Minecraft

If you want to go even deeper, then I suggest you check out:

Final Thoughts

It’s easy for adults to be wary about game based learning and what the actual outcomes are for students. To overcome this, there is a wealth of research available to show the impact that learning via gaming can have for students and adults alike. I know of adult training courses (such as nursing) that use game based learning platforms to drive best practice training engagement and of course specialist sectors like policing and armed forces have been using game based learning for years to provide experiences to their employees.

Leveraging research and a clear strategy with measurable outcomes are critical when preparing to implement an eSports curriculum in your school and I also recommend engagement with your student population. Allow their voice and interests to drive some of the messaging and desired outcomes – they will be your best advocates!

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Microsoft365 Minecraft:EE Windows 11

Case Study: St Andrew’s College & Microsoft 365

StAC.PNG

This case study was first published on Microsoft Customer Stories – you can read it in full here. 

This is a case study of personal interest to me, as I used to work at St Andrew’s and so it was interesting to see how the use of technologies has changed and progressed since I left. The good news is that it has continued to evolve and improve to deliver staff and students access to world class platforms to drive better learning outcomes.

Start of Case Study Snippet:

At St Andrew’s College in New Zealand, students are supported and inspired to become confident, well-rounded young adults prepared for life in a rapidly changing world. The co-educational school has a diverse academic program and a comprehensive co-curricular program, involving a range of sporting and cultural opportunities. Technology is broadly applied to education by linking experts with collaborative learning, developing digital media, and information literacy. St Andrew’s College provides teachers, students, and administrative personnel with the right technology to empower them.

Since the College started its digital transformation in 2014, the entire school community has benefited from the wide adoption of Microsoft 365, through apps like Microsoft OneNote, Teams, Power BI, and Surface devices. So, when the college’s licensing agreement was up for renewal, Dave Hart, Director of ICT, and his team decided to take their digital journey further. “We’ve signed up for Microsoft 365 Education A5. We saw it as an opportunity to implement digital transformation across our security, enhance our already extensive use of Power BI, and get Minecraft Education Edition, too.”

Read the rest of the case study here

My Thoughts:

I  was particularly interested to see how the focus on security and protection of College content was prioritized by the school, as explained by Director of ICT Dave Hart:

We’re talking about advanced, real-time protection of mailboxes, files, online storage, and applications. That’s holistic protection in Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, and so on, which are essentially the core platforms and integral to the running of St Andrew’s College,” explains Hart. “We considered it reasonable to add extra layers of security given how much we embrace cloud services and the Office 365 environment. We’ve added security management for threat detection, enhanced control, and visibility into Office 365 usage. We’ve also added Azure Active Directory Identity Protection 2 (AADP2). We’ve recently implemented a weekly review of our security using Office 365 Secure Score. So that’s a really good way of seeing where we are from a security standpoint and what we can do to increase that score moving forward

The College has also invested in Microsoft Surface devices for all teachers and strongly encouraged students to bring devices that support digital inking. When I was still working at St Andrew’s, I blogged a number of times around the use of Digital Ink and also how teachers used the earlier versions of the Microsoft Surface Pro:

It’s gratifying to see these themes have continued, evidenced by these quotes from the blog:

Santhia Hamburg, Science Teacher at St Andrew’s, shares her experiences in the classroom. “I teach chemistry, and it involves using a lot of subscripts and superscripts. Digital inking all of that is much easier than typing. I render my lessons on OneNote. Drawing scientific diagrams, annotations, shapes, and even arrows that show where electrons move makes it visual for students. I use the pen with PowerPoint to just click through slides from any part of the classroom. It seems so simple, but it makes teaching that much easier and more fluid.”

Similarly, Wilj Dekkers, who I worked with extensively whilst at the College, noted:

“There’s also the idea of OneNote and a Surface pen versus a white board,” adds Wilj Dekkers, Head of Innovation and Information Services at St Andrew’s. “If you’re dealing with a series of numerical problems in your Mathematics class, you’re able to do that directly in OneNote while working with a small group or an individual student, or even moving around the classroom. Students can revisit those notes afterwards if there’s some homework, prep work, or study to do. They can even use the ink replay function, which has been so great. They see each stroke put in OneNote and see how a particular problem was solved one step at a time,” he explains.

There is a lot more in the detailed case study, including how Microsoft Teams and Minecraft: Education Edition are being utilized to drive student engagement and improved learning outcomes, so I do encourage you to read the full case study in full here.