UK schools offered free help for online classes
Microsoft are offering free help to schools in the UK so that they can run classes over the internet while children are kept at home during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Microsoft’s FastTrack team works with organisations to speed up the implementation of new technology and will be providing free support to education customers so that they can move to remote learning as soon as possible.
Around 10 million students from more than 27,000 UK schools have been learning from home during the lockdown. Microsoft has pledged to work with schools to run lessons remotely using Office 365, Microsoft Teams and other programs like Minecraft, Skype in the Classroom and Flipgrid to enable students and teachers to stay connected, work together and share files for marking.
Office 365 for Education has been provided for free by Microsoft for a while, but the tech giant are now offering additional free support to help schools set up a new Office 365 system and to help existing customers make better use of the tools they already have, but might not be using. To protect data and identities, programs are protected by intelligent security features enhanced by machine learning.
Chris Rothwell, Director of Education at Microsoft UK, said: “Technology is helping teachers keep in touch with students and to maintain a connection to the school and each other. This offer to support any school get fully set up for remote learning is so that every school and pupil can benefit, and that learning can continue while schools are closed.”
Medical students attend virtual 'graduation' ceremony
Newcastle University has used Microsoft software to enable junior doctors to graduate early and online so they can start work immediately and help tackle the current Covid-19 pandemic.
The students graduated a month earlier than planned from a five-year course after the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, said more help was needed for hospitals and GP surgeries in the UK.
Because of restrictions around social gatherings amid the lockdown, a traditional graduation ceremony could not be held. Instead, 239 students 'attended' a virtual graduation ceremony on Flipgrid - a Microsoft-owned video platform for teachers and students. The students also used the tool to record and upload their Hippocratic Oaths, which were then shared on a custom Flipgrid created by the university.
Vice-Chancellor and President Professor at the university, Chris Day, told Microsoft: "We understand how hard our students have worked over the last five years to graduate, and how disappointing it is for them not to have a ceremony, so we wanted to mark the occasion the best way we can virtually."
