Microsoft Announces Summer Updates for Office 365 Education

Today, Microsoft announced several updates for Office 365 Education that it says will enable educators and students to share content, increase collaboration, save time and extend classroom curriculum in the coming school year.

These updates follow a set of updates from April that provided preview versions of Microsoft Classroom, Microsoft Forms, School Data Sync to educators. And each are teacher inspired and student focused, Microsoft says.

So this month’s updates for Office 365 Education include:

Educator collaboration with PLC groups. Professional learning communities (PLCs) allow educators to meet regularly to share expertise and work collaboratively to improve teaching skills and the academic performance of students, Microsoft says. The new PLC Groups Preview works like traditional Office 365 Groups and provides access to shared conversation spaces, file space, OneNote notebooks and calendars, and it integrates with Office Planner.

Better content sharing with Docs.com for education. As you may know, Microsoft’s Docs.com web site is like Office Online, but … You know, it’s exactly like Office Online, and I’m not sure why they need both. Anyway, there’s a new version of Docs.com for educators, and it provides a web-based home for shared OneNote notebooks, Word documents, Excel workbooks, PowerPoint slide decks, interactive Sways, PDFs and other web content. But with additional Organization Visibility controls for determining who sees class content.

Easier formative assessments with Microsoft Forms. Two new features are coming to Microsoft Forms: auto-grading and real-time, personalized feedback.

New OneNote Class Notebook partners. Over 35 partners have announced support for OneNote and Office 365 Education, with over 20 already implemented and many more coming soon, Microsoft says.https://blogs.office.com/2016/06/20/educators-increase-collaboration-and-professional-development-with-new-office-365-education-updates/ All educators have access to these new updates throughOffice 365 Education, which is totally free for teachers and students.