(upbeat music)
- Good day everyone, and welcome to ISTELive '22.
My name's Mark Sparvell,
and I'm so excited to be here in the Big Easy,
celebrating all the ways technology is bringing
education into the future.
I'm at the Microsoft booth
to talk about some of the latest updates
and features coming to your favorite tools.
But there's so many exciting new things,
we simply don't have enough time to cover them all.
So I thought it'd be fun to let this choose for us:
The wheel of Microsoft Tools.
Let's give it a spin
and find out what our first topic's going to be.
(wheel clicking)
Reading Progress.
I know the perfect person for us to talk to.
They're right here in the Microsoft booth.
Come on, let's see what they're up to.
(upbeat music)
Good day, Rachel, how are you going?
- Good, how are you?
- I'm doing well.
Now, I hear that you're one of the people
that can bring us all up to speed
with the latest and greatest in Reading Progress.
What can you tell us?
- Yeah, we've got a lot of great stuff to tell you about.
So first, we have Reading Coach.
I'm not sure if you've heard about Reading Coach,
but Reading Coach enables a student to work
on the words that they're struggling with.
So they'll be able to practice by utilizing things
like a photograph that tells them what the word means,
breaking the word down into syllables,
sounding it out and practicing those words
until they're better able to read them.
And they get all of the great insights
along with that practice.
Reading Coach is built into Immersive Reader as well.
In addition to that, new at ISTE,
we launched Reading with Prosody,
and all of the insights that you get
with the Reading with Prosody.
We also have 15 new auto-detect languages,
and the ability for the user to select a language
when they're uploading a reading passage.
So if you've got a student, non-native speaker,
wants to read a passage in their native language,
which might be Spanish, you have the ability now
as an educator to select that language.
And last, but certainly not least, we have Phonics Lessons.
- Wow. Rachel.
Those updates, they're just absolutely incredible.
Teachers are going to love those new features.
Now, I'm wondering whether you would do the honors
in spinning the wheel for us.
- Absolutely.
- Be my guest.
(wheel clicking)
And we are going to find out all about Education Insights,
and I know just the right person to tell us all about it.
(upbeat music)
Good day, Michelle.
How are you?
- Good. How are you?
- I'm doing well.
Now I've heard that you are the perfect person
to bring us all up to speed
with the latest in Education Insights.
What do we need to know?
- Yeah. So Education Insights is a great tool
for educators to be able to see what's going on
within M365, both within their students' assignments,
and other parts of Teams as well,
also within Class Notebook.
So really exciting updates such as the spotlights at the top
of the report that really give you actionable insights
right at the top there,
of the most important things that's happening.
There are also quick jumps into new reports
like the Teams Assignments Report,
and that lets you see trends and grades,
what students are maybe behind on the reports,
might wanna quickly send them a message.
Lots of new exciting stuff within Insights.
- Yeah. Love it.
Okay. That's awesome.
And we know that at this moment in time,
moreso than any other moment in time,
student engagement is critical,
and with information we can take action.
Now I think we've got enough time
to spin the wheel once more.
Would you do the honors?
- Yeah. Absolutely.
(wheel clicking)
- Okay. And our winner is Teams Assignments.
Let's find out.
(upbeat music)
Michelle, you again?
- Yep.
- Now I hear that you're the person
to also find out all of the latest and greatest
around Teams Assignments.
True?
- Yes.
So what can you tell me?
- Yeah, so really exciting updates in Assignments as well.
We have support for larger classrooms,
up to a thousand students now.
We also have integration of third party applications
right within the grading pane,
so you can grade your assignments
without even having to leave Teams,
even if the assignments aren't in Teams,
so for example, Flipgrid.
You can also do video assignments,
not just as part of your assignment,
kind of giving instructions as an educator,
or maybe responding as a student,
but you can also attach it to your feedback now as well.
So really bring that kind of personality and connection,
as well as really speed to your feedback-giving process.
- That's amazing.
I can't wait to see what educators do
with these new features.
- Yeah.
- And that's about all we've got time for
for this episode.
But, there's plenty more to try, and to see,
and find out about at the Microsoft booth right here,
ISTELive '22.
(upbeat music)