Did you know that there is a portal full of FREE Microsoft resources for you to utilize? How about that you could receive FREE, at your leisure professional development on all things Microsoft? Well, you can! The Microsoft Educator Community is chalk FULL of FREE resources, courses and quick tips to help take your knowledge of all things Microsoft to the next level!
All you have to do is go to education.microsoft.com and create an account. From there, the sky is the limit! You will earn badges and points for each course that you complete. Once you've created your account, you will land your home page. Be sure to update and edit your profile, add your picture, and all of the other important information! To the left of the screen you will see a tab that says "Courses and Resources."
That, my friends is where the magic lives! Take as many or as few courses as you like. Watch the Quick Tip Videos. Immerse yourself in all things Microsoft! There's a lot to learn here! Below are the top 3 courses that I would recommend to get you started:
Introduction to OneNote walks you through how to use OneNote. I love this tool as a means to house all of my notes and ideas for projects that I'm working on. Once you get really familiar with OneNote, you can take what you know and incorporate it into Class Notebook and Staff Notebook. More on these will be included in a future post. Think of OneNote as a virtual book. You have the overall book, then you have chapters in the book, followed by pages in those chapters. Each of them is represented by a tab (you can change the color of the tabs) and in those tabs you can add text, images, videos, audio, etc. The GREAT thing about this tool is that you are able to collaborate online with other people that you share your Notebook with. This means that you and your teachers or your students could all be in the Notebook at the same time, working together on the same project! How cool is that?
Introduction to to Sway is another great course to take! Sway might just be my all time favorite Microsoft tool! It's super easy to use. Sway allows you to create a presentation that flows either vertically or horizontally based upon your preference. You can include headings, text, videos, images, etc all into a sliding presentation. With Sway, you never have to leave the tool to do your web searches as everything is "in-app." You can search for your images through Bing, right in Sway! In addition, you can search and add Tweets to your Sway right from the menu bar. The possibilities are endless! Here is the link to a sway that I created and submitted for the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert program this year. You'll notice that I added a Mix (below) into my Sway for an added pop. As with OneNote, you are able to share your Sway with others and even add them as collaborators so you can work on presentations with others at the same time.
Introduction to Office Mix. Mix is an awesome tool that allow you to add your voice and even your live video right into your Power Point presentations! It "mixes" your presentations up! I added a Mix to my Sway example above. Check it out! Mix is a free add-in for Power Point and it allows you to be able to make your presentations interactive by adding quizzes and questions throughout the presentation. You are able to export these "mixed" Power Points as an mp4 video so it can be viewed as a video rather than a click through Power Point.
Be sure to check out some of the amazing resources and tools in the Educator Community. Again, they're all free! In the coming weeks, I'm going to further discuss some of the programs and certifications that are available through Microsoft, BUT...you have to earn some badges and point first!
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