Microsoft's main announcements from the BETT conference

Most recently passed Student Day. In his footsteps, we want to share a number of new Microsoft solutions that will help transform the learning process and personalize the education of schoolchildren and students. They were announced at the largest educational exhibition BETT, held these days in London, about 900 companies and more than 30,000 visitors from the world educational community are taking part in it.

Key news:

• Microsoft introduced Code Jumper, a physical programming language for blind and visually impaired children. Read more about it here .
• The translator function in more than 60 languages ​​has been added to the immersion reading mode of Microsoft Learning Tools. The translator supports the ability to read aloud and syllables, recognition of parts of speech and vocabulary in pictures.
• A new study, Emotions and Cognition in the Age of AI [1] (Emotion and Cognition in the Age of AI), showed that 70% of schools classify social and emotional skills as fundamental, therefore they introduce special programs for their development. The study also confirmed that positive emotions affect academic performance. Three main technologies that improve social and emotional skills: educational applications and software, as they expand educational experience (indicated by 58% of respondents), tools for collaboration (49%), tools for analyzing students' emotional state data (46%).

Other announcements:

• The Whiteboard app - an electronic school board is now available worldwide, not only for devices on Windows 10, but also for iOS. It is great for working in the classroom, as it has a wide selection of tools. In particular, it recognizes handwriting, allows you to create stickers, quickly illustrate what you write with pictures from the Internet, work in tables, and also translate ordinary drawing on paper into electronic form and much more.
• 13 new learning-related Microsoft Teams features were announced. In particular, teachers will be able to detect plagiarism in teaching materials thanks to the integrated Turnitin tools. The structure of Teams also included MakeCode visual programming system, in which more than 20 million program blocks are created monthly.
• Tools have been added to the Microsoft Learning Tools to improve the process of teaching and learning math .
• It is now very easy for teachers to add quizzes, polls and polls to Microsoft Stream video footage , as well as video footage themselves in presentations thanks to a new feature available in PowerPoint.
• The immersive reading feature has been added to Windows Mixed Reality devices. This feature will help students with a number of diseases or visual limitations to achieve maximum concentration and improve the quality of learning.
• A free educational program for teachers , created in partnership with the Made by Dyslexia organization, has become available at the Microsoft Educator Community . The training includes short informative video modules, as well as special materials that will help teachers identify cases of dyslexia and properly organize the learning process for such students.
• A free mixed reality curriculum has become available for schools that use the Windows Mixed Reality headset. The program was created by Microsoft in collaboration with VictoryVR .

[1] It was held among teachers and school leaders of 15 countries, including the countries of North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia (Russia was not included in the list of countries)