Hello and welcome to want to improve reading comprehension
online, a session on how to use the powerful, built-in
immersive reader in the new Microsoft Edge.
Today's session is all about how the new Microsoft Edge supports
students and teachers and makes their learning inclusive and
accessible. My name is Aditya Mohindra and I work on the
Microsoft Edge for education team as a product manager.
I'm so excited to share Edge with you today and demonstrate
how we're approaching the browser for today's schools.
Over the next roughly 15 minutes, we'll start with a
brief overview of the new Microsoft Edge and why it's the
right browser for your schools
hybrid learning needs. And then we'll dive into a set of
features in immersive reader. Finally, we'll talk with Chris
Gerrard from Lenark Grammar School about how edge and
immersive reader are transforming his classroom.
So let's get started.
Some of you may already be familiar with the new Microsoft
Edge, and perhaps are already
using it. But for those of you who are not a little under a
year ago, we launched the new edge with this brand new icon.
This is the planned replacement for the old version of Edge,
which had the Blue E icon.
With the new Microsoft Edge we have partnered with the
educator community to really identify and address the needs
of students, teachers, and schools as they learn online.
The new Microsoft Edge is your new browser for hybrid learning.
With the new Edge, schools can standardize on single browser
with world class performance and
compatibility. It's built on the same core open source web engine
as Google Chrome, so sites and extensions that work on Chrome
also work just as well on Edge.
It goes even further though, by also being compatible with
older websites that were originally built for Internet
Explorer. So this way you get the best of both worlds.
But Microsoft Edge stands apart by taking that core open source
web engine and layering the Microsoft Security and
innovation on top of it.
Age helps to enable hybrid learning by being available
on Windows, Mac OS and mobile devices, with the ability to
create school accounts and easily stored passwords,
websites and extensions that are used every day during
instruction.
It also helps to protect students while they're learning
online, which is especially relevant today during hybrid
learning. Some of the most common attacks online are
phishing scams and malware that
infect devices. Luckily, Edge was recently rated with the highest
rated protection against phishing and malware on Windows
10 in an independent study organized by NSS Labs.
Microsoft Edge also empowers our students and teachers with
useful features that help transform classroom time and
lead to better student outcomes.
And that's what we're going to talk about today.
As we thought about how to best empower our students and
teachers, we grounded ourselves in the idea that in order to do
so, we needed to empower
everyone. With that as a baseline, and guiding
philosophy, Microsoft Edge has the most comprehensive set of
built-in learning and Accessibility tools on the web.
In fact, educators have already been talking about
this online, so next time you're on Twitter, make sure
to check out hashtag EdgeEdu to hear what they're saying.
Now let's get into our feature immersive reader in the browser.
With immersive reader in Microsoft Edge, you can
easily read content on web pages and stay focused in a
distraction free experience.
This feature is built into Microsoft Edge natively.
In this new Microsoft Edge, you can, in addition to
opening entire web pages, you can also select a set
of text on the web page and open that immersive reader.
You can read aloud and you know, listen to your text
like a podcast.
At the same time, you have tools that can help you
translate, learn grammar, focus, and a lot more.
Now, let's demonstrate immersive reader.
So let's start by going on a web
article. So when you go on one, you can see that there is an
icon that lets up in the top
right of the address bar. Clicking on it, all the
distractions and irrelevant content from the web page is
removed and you're only left with the content that you want
to read. At the same time, on entering this mode, you have a
bunch of tools that can help students read and learn better.
Let's explore them 1 by 1. First step is read aloud.
Now with hybrid learning, since most of the classes are digital,
the screen time of students and teachers has also gone up.
So with read aloud, you can actually sit back and relax
and have a podcast like experience to hear the entire
article in natural voices. Let's check it out.
The uncertain heavens, Christiaan Huygens ideas of
extraterrestrial life. You can also modify the voice options
and can select from a plethora of accents and translations.
Next feature is text
preferences. This lets you customize the article as per
your preference. So if you want to make the text size
smaller or larger.
If you want to increase the text
spacing. Or customize your background.
Then we have grammar tools.
This feature is in particularly useful for students who are
learning English as they are reading the course content.
Also, if you have students where English is a secondary language,
this can be super useful.
Some of the tools are splitting the words into syllables.
So as you can see, all the words are split into
different syllables.
You can also highlight different parts of speech on your article
and they get color coded.
See all the violet ones are nouns or the dark red ones are
verbs and so on.
The last set of tools is reading
preferences. Now again coming back to the students who have
English as their secondary language. And let's say they are
not able to understand this first paragraph. And let's say
that student is from a Spanish
descent. So the student can
actually select. Spanish and save translate the entire page.
They can then read this entire first paragraph in
their native language and translate back to English.
At the same time, immersive reader has tools such as
Picture dictionary that can actually help students
visualize the words while they're reading them.
So let's say you know I toggle this on and I select
a word called universe.
Now Picture Dictionary basically gives you a visual
representation of the word that you selected that can actually
help students visualize while they're reading the Web article.
The last set of tools is line focus and this is in
particularly useful for those students who have difficulty
focusing while reading. So let's say when you toggle this on and,
let's say, select three lines at a time, the entire web article
is focusing on 3 lines at a time, and you can like keep
scrolling and read and focus only on 3 lines at a time.
Now,
let's come to the last part of our presentation and hear from
Chris Gerrard, who has actually been using immersive reader in
his classroom with his students. Hey Chris, good afternoon how
you doing today? I'm good, how are you? Amazing. Thank you so
much for joining us and sharing your experience about immersive
reader and the built-in tools to start off. Can you share a bit
about yourself? My name is Chris Gerrard and additional support
needs teacher from Glasgow Scotland's. I've also been an
MIE expert since 2017 and I'm currently on a MIE fellow for
the UK. One of one of the MIE Fellows for the UK specifically for
the Scotland region.
Sounds great, so you know hybrid learning has upended instruction
over the past year and you know schools and teachers have had to
adapt and react as quickly as possible to it. So what sort of
challenges have you faced because of this change? And how
has Microsoft Edge helped you address some of them?
I think the the big thing that changed over so we were but were
all thrown into lock down very very quickly with not much time
to prepare and I think the big problem has been juggling
everything. You know, you know, juggling all the different
classes and you know you were missing that day-to-day
instruction with them and
in-person instruction and then also you're trying to manage your own
children's education as well. 'cause I'm teaching. So you're
going to teaching, but also teaching your own children at
the same time and managing their workload. So I really think it
was what I really looked for digital tools was to make myself
as efficient as it possibly could be to do things quickly,
to get to things quickly. 'cause time is key and Microsoft Edge
was such a good tool at doing that, you know, and so many
different things that I could use the Microsoft Edge for that
really made it so beneficial.
That's awesome. And you know, I know you have been
using immersive reader and the built-in tools that are
there to support your instruction, both when
you're with students and when you're preparing on
your own. So how have you been using these and what do
they allow you to do that you couldn't do before?
I think the big thing we immersive reader and Edge is the
just how easy it is for everyone to access. I have always
try and like tools that have Accessibility by default and the
way that immersive reader and the learning tools are embedded in
Microsoft Edge makes such a difference. So when I work with
students, one of the first things pretty much the first
thing I always teach my students is how to use immersive reader,
'cause it's such a beneficial tool. But also I found it really
useful for myself personally and
during lockdown where I'm having to read a lot of documents and
read through and do lots of training and different things that I would
just use immersive reader and just listen to it. You know that
made it so much more efficient for me to listen to it then read
it myself. Means I could go about and you know walk about
the house and just listen to it as well and made such a
difference. But what I really like about immersive reader
specifically an edge is that it doesn't matter what kind of text
that I'm using with the students and know that they can highlight
the text, right click and open
an immersive reader. So that's such a such a game changer for
me that I don't have to think. Oh, I don't know if they will
have access to, you know text to see the text to speech
software and there and there in the tasks are doing. I don't
have to worry about that. I just need to, you know, teach
them how to use immersive reader in Edge, and I know that it
doesn't matter what... what text they're accessing and they can
just use that and they will always have that support.
Wow, that's awesome Chris. And those are some great use
cases that you shared. So that leads us to the next question.
What impact have you seen this with your students when using
these tools? I think the big thing is just that
empowerment and independence as well, you know so many. Again,
we're all being thrown into lock down, but a lot of our students
probably don't have that adult at home because they're
working, so we don't have that support that they would they
would normally get in school, so it's really important to
show them these these tools and show them how they can make such
a difference. And you know, so it is really important that
students know that they're there because a lot of people when I'm
doing a lot of training about learning tools and immersive
reader don't realize
That it's there, you know that they don't have to install
anything extra. You know they don't have to pay a subscription
for anything. It is just as embedded, integrated, it's
Accessibility by default. So it's really, really important
that students know that, and teachers know that. And then
they can share that as well.
That's incredible. As a final question, you know what tips
or best practices can you share to help other educators
out there who would like to start using some of these tools in
their classrooms?
I think the biggest thing is try it yourself and see the benefits
yourself and start using using immersive reader and get
comfortable by using it, and then share it with everyone.
Share as soon as you understand it's there. You know. Obviously
the Microsoft Educator centers are great place to start and
there's an all about immersive reader, an section there that
covers lots of what's the key features and things like that as
well. But the big thing was obviously getting comfortable
yourself using it as an educator, but telling everyone
should it be your colleagues, your friends, your students.
Using it is just a completely life changing tool and just a
couple of days ago I was speaking to a student who hadn't
seen for you know, maybe four or five months and asked him how he
was doing and he told me that using the combination of
immersive reader and dictation then build dictation features
and things like OneNote, he's been able to write a whole book
during lockdown, which is amazing. He was able to use
immersive reader was using just one note online through Edge and
he was just using dictate built in. He was using immersive
reader. And he was able he's been able to write a whole book
is incredible book that just they would never be able to do
if we don't have those two. So it just shows you that they can
be so life changing and it really is to make to make
students as independent as we possibly can do. I set them up
with proper life skills, so showing them these tools can
make such a difference to the
lives. Wow, that's amazing tips and you know, very inspiring
stories. So thank you for sharing all that with us today
and have a great rest of ISTE.
Thanks very much. Take care, thank you, thank you.