Following a turbulent two years of interruption in schools due to the pandemic, teachers are looking at an expanded set of student needs that can require more tools than ever to deliver unique and personalized learning experiences.
Microsoft has been busy in delivering new educational supports and 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.
Microsoft also unveiled updates and expanded access to its Reading Coach, adding fluency and comprehension skills, so teachers can now assign comprehension questions, and students can practice reading fluency. All of these tools and updates are being added to education licenses for free.
Learning Accelerators include both Coach tools and Progress tools.
The Coach tools provide students with real-time coaching and opportunities for self-directed learning. The Progress tools are designed to help teachers personalize assignments as well as monitor pupil progress and learning
Reading Coach will now be more accessible to more learners as it will now be included in the Immersive Reader feature across Word Online, OneNote, Microsoft Teams Assignments, Minecraft Education, Flip, and others. These new integrations will give more students the tools they need to practice reading fluency and get real-time feedback from the reading coach feature helping them fully engage as readers.
Also coming later in the year are Math Coach and Math Progress, which will be available in Teams for Education for ages 9 to 15 initially. This new Math Coach tool will help break down each part of a math problem with text explanations for each step and operation while the Math Progress tool will help teachers generate more personalized practice questions as they identify concepts students find challenging.