I liked the Microsoft stage this year at BETT. The presenters were in the middle and the audience was all around them. It looked like they had a good program of talks but I only really got to see part of Stuart Ball and Dan Roberts presentation on ‘Classroom Innovation for Free’.
The tools they mentioned were:
- Flashcards allow teachers and students to build revision resources that can be shared online.
- Partners in Learning Network supports professional development for teachers and schools through shared resources ,events in the UK and a network of connected teachers.
- AutoCollage , as a member of the Partners in Learning Network you can download this great application, and create a single image collage from up to 54 separate images.
- Mouse Mischief – Connect up to 25 mice to a single PC with this free plug-in for PowerPoint. Allows you to create interactive quizzes and activities.
- Math Add-in for Microsoft Word and OneNote – Create and visualise equations and maths concepts, including 3D graph plotting
- Community Clips – Create and record your own instructional videos with this free screencast software.
The big talk of the Microsoft stand was their new Education pricing structure and also the release of their Microsoft Office 365 product which is the next evolution of Microsoft Live @Edu. I do really like Microsoft Office Live Web Apps and I saw a bit of Ray Flemmings demo that demonstrated Live web apps being shared and edited across a number of windows enabled devices including the RM Slate 100.
I’m interested to see what happens as more and more schools sign up to cloud based services such as Microsoft Office 365. I just hope that school infrastructure and bandwidth can support such services without everything grinding to a halt!
In other Microsoft news post BETT 2011 – OneNote (which I really like) is now available for the iPhone. I wonder if the rest of the office suite will follow?
No mention of the licensing cost of Office 365?
Posted by: John McLear | January 20, 2011 at 07:35 PM
Actually that is a very good point, where is the UK pricing? - I saw it at BETT on a piece of paper. But I can't find it on-line?
Posted by: Ollie Bray | January 21, 2011 at 08:37 AM