- G'day everybody, welcome back
to What's New in EDU, where we're coming to you
from day 2 of Bett UK 2019.
I've got another riddle for you today.
What's weightless, but takes two people to hold?
Share your guess in the comments,
and at the end of the episode
I'm gonna share the answer.
We had a blast yesterday meeting educators
from around the globe, and getting to talk about
all the new Microsoft education tools,
designed to help transform classroom time
and personalize learning for all.
But today, it's all about creating and supporting
inclusive, happy classrooms.
What do ya have for us, Barbara?
- Thank you, Mark!
And hi everybody, my name is Barbara,
and I'm so excited to be here today.
I just had the chance to talk for the first time
about the latest research we have done
together with Economist Intelligence Unit
about emotion and cognition in the age of AI.
So some of the things that we shared was to see
what some leading schools are doing around the world
to really help educators help the students
build the social-emotional skills that are critical
for well-being.
And we found some really, really fascinating things
about what some of the schools are doing,
and how we can take that to a systemic level,
and what kind of technologies can really play
a critical role in helping students
develop the social-emotional skills that are critical
for their overall well-being.
So don't miss this research, please take a look at it,
we're here to follow-up, and now, back over to Sarah.
- Thanks, Barbara.
I'm standing here in the Minecraft classroom at Bett 2019,
and we've been teaching educators from around the world
how to code with Minecraft Education Edition.
We also just released two new,
standards-aligned coding curriculums
for students ages 8 to 11, and 11 to 16.
This is 20 to 30 hours of C-S-T-A aligned content
you can start using today, downloadable on our website.
And so teachers can use codebuilder,
our new in-game coding app,
to start teaching computer science,
no matter what level you are in the process.
So go to our website, check it out,
and we're excited to be here!
So, here's Mike.
- Thanks, Sarah!
So we're here at Bett,
and we're at the Windows Mixed Reality booth.
And I'm gonna be talking about VR and inclusion.
Now, those are two topics
that you might normally not associate,
but what we've done is we've taken our immersive reader,
which was designed for literacy,
and really focusing on the content,
and we put it into virtual reality.
And so what that means is, maybe students with autism
who want a little extra focused reading time,
maybe it's dyslexic students,
or maybe it's students who just have some visual impairments
and wanna see things in a really big and immersive way.
When it's in the immersive reader,
the student can really focus on the content,
you have the audio right there in your ears,
so it's a really immersive experience.
So now we're gonna go talk about VR curriculum,
over to you, Dan!
- Thanks, Mike.
We've been really excited about the potential
of mixed reality in the classroom,
and we've seen some amazing success stories
over the past year.
We've also spent a lot of time talking to educators
about what they needed
to really effectively integrate the technology
into their classroom.
One of the things we've heard was,
make it easier for us to use your content,
and help us teach what we need to teach.
So as a result of that, we're excited to announce
over 25 hours of free, standards-aligned curriculum
when you get a Mixed Reality headset from Microsoft.
We've got some examples going on here behind us
at the show with biology, but we've also got
chemistry, astronomy, things like that,
to make it even easier to bring the benefits
of Windows Mixed Reality to your classroom.
Over to you, Annie.
- Thanks, Dan.
I'm Anthony, not Annie.
Annie had to run.
But I wanted to share my excitement on the continued work
to make technology more inclusive
and help every learner achieve more.
The work we're doing with Code Jumper
to help low-vision and blind students get access
to the coding tools to build their dreams is amazing,
and we're partnering with
the American Printing House for the Blind
to bring that to students from around the world.
Next up, let's hear from Jacqueline.
- Hi everyone, thanks Anthony!
My name is Jacqueline Russell,
I'm the program manager for Microsoft MakeCode
and we're here at Bett, at the LEGO stand
where they're showcasing MakeCode for LEGO MINDSTORMS.
We've got a couple really cool announcements
from the MakeCode team this week,
first of all is of course our Teams integration.
So we're announcing a beta this week
where teachers will actually be able
to attach MakeCode program files
right within assignments in Teams.
And students can complete those assignments
right within Teams, using the MakeCode editor.
So you don't have to go outside of teams
to do any of your programming homework.
The second announcement we have
is a great new partnership we have
with Cartoon Network and Adafruit.
We've published a series of projects
using all of the great Cartoon Network shows and characters,
using the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express.
So students can create fun things like a Beemo music box,
or an (mumbles) magic book
using MakeCode and Circuit Playground Express.
And the third and final announcement we have this week
is a new programming environment called MakeCode Arcade,
which is a 2-D, retro gaming development environment
where students can create really fun games,
like, think of Pac-Man or Space Invaders,
just using a few blocks of code.
And we are working with hardware partners too!
So you'll be able to create your games using MakeCode
and download them on to these little DIY game-type boys.
Thanks so much for your time, and over to you, Karen!
- Hey, thanks, Jacqueline!
This is Karen from the education workshop,
we're here on the floor at Bett
and we are super excited today
to be celebrating Data Streamer, the new add-in from Excel
that allows you to stream data in and out of Excel.
We have three different projects
here on the show floor today,
they range from Brains to Ocean's Our Blue Planet, to balls!
Let's start off first with the Brain gong
and our experiment that looks at how brains can be modeled
and understand what happens during a concussion.
I'm here with my good friend Life,
and what we're doing here is looking at a sensorized brain.
This brain has got some sensors on it,
we are able to actually read, in real time,
the data that's coming out of it,
and we can understand what happens on impact
on the lobes when it gets gonged.
Are you ready, Life?
- I'm ready.
- Alright, here we go!
Here's our gong, you can see here
that it actually impacted the different lobes
based on the impact, and we're able to save that away.
Now, we are all very excited
that we are challenging students to then mitigate that
by designing a helmet.
Today, this is my helmet, we'll redo that.
Are you ready, Life?
- I'm ready.
- And you can see, sure enough,
it has dampened down the impact.
Now one of the things that we think is super important
is to increase awareness about concussions,
so we've partnered with the ThinkTaylor folks
and are encouraging students to take the ThinkTaylor pledge:
to be educated about concussions,
to be honest if they have one,
and sympathetic to those around them
who might have a concussion.
So this is one example of how we're using Data Streamer,
now, let's go over and see how they're doing it
in the Ocean's My Blue Planet section.
Ready, James?
I'm gonna toss the ball to you!
- Thanks, Karen!
Hello everyone, I'm Mr. Burke,
I'm one of the master teachers here
in the hacking STEM team.
Here at Bett, we have the BBC Ocean's booth,
and we have three Data Streamer enabled activities
for students to participate in.
The first one is how deep is the ocean,
where students choose an ultrasonic sensor
to map the ocean floor.
The second is how ocean currents are formed.
So students will build a salinity sensor
so they can determine the salinity of the water
and see how that affects ocean currents.
And our third activity is how do sharks swim,
where students will build some devices
to discover that activity.
My colleague Jason will help you with that.
Jason, here you go!
- Hey, thanks, James.
So over here, we have some of the lesson materials
that allow students to investigate
how objects move in three-dimensional space.
So to start off with, students take on the role
of engineers that are developing a shark drone
that will be able
to move through a virtual marine environment in Excel
and collect some data.
So first off, we have students build a physical model
that helps them understand three-axis rotation,
and how this robot might move through the ocean.
So on the z-axis, we have yaw, on the x-axis, we have roll,
and then on the y-axis
we have this up-and-down motion called pitch.
So after students have used this physical model
to understand some of the math
behind three-dimensional movements,
they then go into an investigation
where they are designing a joystick
that will help them use as the primary control system
for their robot.
So they start off with just using everyday materials,
like cardboard, copper tape,
here we have a wooden spool that's used for thread,
and then they wire it up, attach it to a microcontroller,
either an Arduino Uno or a Microbit,
and once they've done that, they can then use Data Streamer
to visualize live data in Excel.
So, let's see if our joystick is testing properly.
Let's try yaw.
Okay, looks pretty good, let's try pitch.
Yep, we see that up-and-down motion,
and we got this fun joystick here as well,
and then let's try roll.
Okay, it looks like all systems are go,
and now students are ready
to enter the virtual marine environment
and go collect some data.
So once they start exploring, they can then maneuver
their shark through this virtual ocean
and collect data on the different species
that are inherent in their virtual environment.
So that's another great way that we can use Data Streamer
to help students get excited about data
and engage in this great sequence
where they look at physical models,
they do some engineering design work,
and then they do some data science.
So next up, we have Brian from Play Impossible
that's going to talk about
how he can use their sensorized ball
to visualize data in Excel using Data Streamer.
- Hey wait, don't throw it yet, Jason!
We've been calculating along the way,
each time the ball has been caught, the catch force,
and doing a Newton's second law experiment
of the traditional egg toss.
So Brian--
- That's right, we only have five Newtons left,
so we don't wanna go over it,
we can make a lot less of a mess playing with a ball
than with an actual egg!
Let's go, let's see it!
- Okay, ready Brian?
- I'm ready!
- We did it, we stayed under!
- Alright!
- So this is Data Streamer, in this case it's been connected
with the Play Impossible ball,
we're super excited to have this partnership
and to be able to do real-time streaming data
across the board.
We've now seen it in the brain,
we've seen it in the Ocean's unit,
and now we see it with our good friends here
at Play Impossible.
- That's right, play any sport,
running, throwing, jumping, tossing, we can measure it,
and we can take that activity
and we can turn it into science lessons
that can be used just like this digital egg toss here.
- Fantastic.
Hey, so that's us here, Education Workshop at Bett,
back to you, Mark!
- That was awesome, Karen, thanks so much.
Before we go, we have one last announcement
from our friends at Made by Dyslexia.
Check it out.
- I'm Kate Griggs,
I'm the founder and CEO of Made by Dyslexia.
Made by Dyslexia is a global charity,
and we're led by successful dyslexics.
We've partnered with Microsoft
to create some incredible educational materials,
some awareness training, on the Microsoft Educate platform
that's available right now.
We want every single teacher and every single parent
to watch the training and to really understand
the value of dyslexia.
- Thanks for tuning into another chock-full episode
of What's New in EDU, live from Bett.
We hope these updates will inspire and empower you
to build on your inclusive and accessible
learning environments.
But don't worry, I haven't forgotten about our riddle.
What is weightless, but takes two people to hold?
Friendship!
So join us back here again tomorrow for day three,
same time, same place, on Facebook Live at 5 pm London time.
See ya!
- See you next time.