I’ve written previously about the numerous Learning Tools Microsoft have Developed (And integrated) into Microsoft 365 for Education, most recently Reading Progress and Coach in my Teams – What’s New for Twenty-Two post. Even more recently my blog colleague Paul gave us the skinny on Learning Accelerators in New Learning Accelerator Tools from Microsoft.
Less than a year after introducing its Reading Coach and Reading Progress tools for education users, Microsoft have recently introduced an entire suite of similar tools called Learning Accelerators that focus on digital literacy and maths, each with a “Coach” tool for students and a “Progress” monitoring and assigning tool for teachers.
New Learning Accelerator Tools from Microsoft by Paul Munroe
However, whilst the Microsoft EDU Team prolificacy is commendable the Flip (Excuse the pun) side is that for time poor teachers mastering all these new tools can seem a daunting prospect. Hence the mention of Teacher-created Quick Guides for literacy in the latest edition of the Microsoft Educator Newsletter piqued my interest.
Commissioned by Microsoft and developed by Heather Aird, a teacher and MIE Expert from Fife in Scotland, “Quick Guides” are a series of short and snappy PDF Guides for a host of Microsoft Learning Tools. that cut to the chase and get teachers up and running quickly with the tool in question. From Live Captions to Lens, Immersive Reader to the aforementioned Flip (And more) there are fourteen printable PDF guides available now and each provides visual step-by-step quick start guides that will help both canny and novice users alike.
The digital learning equivalent of Cheat Sheets for Microsoft 365, Quick Guides are a welcome addition to the teaching toolkit, particularly for teachers looking to fully utilise these learning tools in their classrooms to enhance student engagement and leaning experiences, quickly and effectively. And let’s hope that these fourteen guides are just for starters and in time the series will grow and encompass the entirety of the 365 suite.