During the ISTE conference this week Microsoft showcased many features of their varied education products. If you, like me, were not able to attend the conference, you can get a full run-down of all of the updates in What’s New in EDU.  Here are the updates that stood-out to me.

Add Forms to Assignments in Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Forms provides a good platform for creating quizzes and surveys. You can now add your Forms to assignments that you distribute to students through Microsoft Teams.

If you haven’t tried Microsoft Forms, watch my video to learn how to get started. It has some features that I think you’ll like.

Use Rubrics in Microsoft Teams
This was actually announced a couple of weeks ago, but it is worth sharing again. You can attach rubrics to assignments for students to see before and after completing an assignment. Equally important, you’ll be able to grade an assignment using that rubric without having to open multiple tabs or windows.

Dictation Available to More Users
From Immersive Reader to Dictation, Microsoft tries to make their products as accessible as possible to everyone. To that end, Dictation is now available in the Win 32 versions of PowerPoint and Word. This is in addition to all of the other places that Dictation is available including the Windows 10 version of OneNote.

Math Quizzes in Forms
Microsoft Forms has an excellent math feature. You can use this feature to create math quizzes in Microsoft Forms. After creating your quiz you can add that form to an assignment in Microsoft Teams.

MakeCode for LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3
If you’re lucky enough to have the budget for LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, you’ll want to check out Microsoft MakeCode for LEGO MINSTORMS EV3. MakeCode is a drag-and-drop, block-based, programming interface that students can use on any computer to program their robots.

Prior to ISTE Microsoft announced some other product updates including expansion of Immersive Reader functions and page-locking in OneNote class notebooks.