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As a Microsoft partner, ScreenBeam is overjoyed to see Microsoft’s continued investment in the education space.  At the recent BETT Education Conference in London, Microsoft announced their latest push into the education ecosystem with a handful of new features within Office 365 Learning Tools and OneNote. They also announced new Windows 10 and Windows 10S laptops directly targeted towards education.

Designed to help manage their classroom, teachers using OneNote Class Notebooks can now lock pages and set them to read-only mode after giving students their feedback.  In conjunction with ScreenBeam Classroom Commander, students can project their work onto the screen, allowing teachers to provide instantaneous, real-time feedback back to the student’s device.

Along with updates to OneNote, Microsoft announced features that enhance teachers’ ability to better engage students using Office 365 Learning Tools.  In February 2018 they’ve added dictation capabilities to Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and of course OneNote.  This new dictation feature transforms the education ecosystem by allowing slow typists or students with restricted dexterity to turn speech input into text.

Not only have they updated their software, Microsoft worked with Lenovo to create the $189 100e Laptop, and 300e 2-in-1 laptop with pen support for $279.  These new laptops provide all the computing power needed to run their software at a price point deliberately set to be an attractive alternative to Chromebooks.

“Affordability is the top priority for many schools. Shrinking budgets can lead schools to choose devices with a stripped-down experience and a limited lifespan, unfortunately costing more over time and offering less to students.” Microsoft said in a blog post on January 22nd.

As Microsoft’s co-engineering partner on wireless display and classroom orchestration, Screenbeam is excited about these announcements and can’t wait to see this new technology coupled with Classroom Commander in practice in your school district.

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