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Microsoft Forms: An Easier Way to Recieve Feedback
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is one of the most popular programs to use for so many different reasons. Microsoft offers an abundance of different applications to use for school or regular daily tasks. I’ve been using Microsoft 365 for as long as I’ve been in school and using computers. They offer so many great programs for everyone, but students and teachers are what we’re here to discuss today! I’m here to tell you why Microsoft Forms is a great resource.
Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms is an appreciable resource for receiving feedback, giving tests or quizzes, and new ideas from those answering the form. Microsoft Forms is super simple to use, allowing anyone to answer open-ended or multiple-choice questions.
- Collect data
- Learn
- Use polls
- Add videos to the questions
- Quick feedback
- Grade tests/quizzes quickly
Above, I listed some features that come with using Microsoft Forms. It is super easy to navigate and with some quick learning, you can also use all of these features. Not only does Microsoft Forms collect data, but it can be easily synced to other Microsoft programs. For example, after collecting data from a form, you can sync those results into Microsoft Excel. It is appealing to see online programs be able to work together to make the user’s life a little bit easier.
Classroom Usage
For a teacher to see all of these features, it seems like it would be very considerable when trying to find a program to use for class. As stated previously, Microsoft Forms offers many different features that can help teachers all over the world benefit from. From making grading easier to being able to see quick and immediate results, it is a no-brainer to use! As a student who has used it before, and still uses it, I can confirm that is it a very easy resource to use.
Conclusion
Microsoft Forms is a convenient and accessible program for people all over the world. It can be used for so many different reasons, but in this case, it can be a great resource for teachers and students to learn.
Thanks for reading!
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Elevate Your Presentation Game with Microsoft Presenter Coach
Public speaking, whether in a classroom, boardroom, or conference, is a skill that can be a game-changer in your personal and professional life. It’s not just about what you say but also how you say it. To help you become a more confident and effective presenter, Microsoft has introduced an impressive feature called Presenter Coach. In this blog, we’ll explore what Presenter Coach is, how it works, and the benefits it brings to your presentation skills.
What is Presenter Coach?
Presenter Coach is a unique AI-driven feature within Microsoft’s PowerPoint. It’s designed to help individuals enhance their presentation delivery by providing real-time feedback and suggestions. With Presenter Coach, you can practice your presentation skills, refine your delivery, and gain insights into how you can improve your public speaking abilities.
How Does Presenter Coach Work?
Using Presenter Coach is simple and intuitive. Start by creating your presentation in PowerPoint as you normally would. When you’re ready to practice, simply click on the “Rehearse with Coach” button. As you practice your presentation, Presenter Coach listens to your speech and offers real-time feedback on various aspects of your delivery. It assesses your pacing, pitch, and use of filler words such as “um” and “uh.”
After your practice session, Presenter Coach provides a detailed report that summarizes your performance. It highlights areas where you excelled and areas that need improvement. Presenter Coach not only identifies issues but also offers suggestions on how to enhance your delivery. It provides recommendations on reducing filler words, using more inclusive language, and improving your pace for a more engaging presentation. It also checks for inclusivity by flagging any potentially offensive language, ensuring that your presentation is respectful and accessible to a wide range of audiences.
Benefits of Using Presenter Coach
Using Presenter Coach provides several advantages. First, it enhances your confidence by allowing you to practice and receive real-time feedback. Second, it helps you improve your delivery, making you a more effective communicator. It’s also a time-efficient way to refine your presentation skills. Additionally, it encourages inclusivity and respect in your presentations, which is essential in our diverse world. Finally, Presenter Coach fosters a culture of continuous learning, making it a valuable tool for both beginners and experienced presenters.
(Grammar Checked by GPT4 & Grammarly)
Using Minecraft to Communicate
Minecraft is a game released in 2011 that involves you controlling a character and exploring a blocky world using different tools and items to create things with blocks.
It is one of the most popular games of all time and challenges people to be creative and build things with what they are given.
After reading chapter 2 of “Sail the 7 Cs with Microsoft Education,” I realized how this game allows people to improve their communication skills.
The game supports creativity and teamwork, as multiple players can play together and navigate throughout the game while communicating with each other. In the book, Monika Limmer who is an educator from New Zealand, talks about how she used Minecraft to help out her nonverbal students by using this game.
She explains how the reserved students started sharing ideas, techniques, and projects with each other in the game. They helped each other with tips and boosted their self-esteem.
One reason for this would be the in-game chat feature that Minecraft has. This feature allows people to communicate with each other, so non-verbal students who would otherwise not talk had a chance to speak with other people in the chat and communicate with them.
In this picture, you can see people communicating with each other and working on building and completing goals.
Minecraft is a great way for students to collaborate with each other on projects and communicate with other people to help each other build and complete projects. This game fosters creativity and collaboration and will be a very effective way for students to work together on projects and improve their communication skills.
Crushing Your Presentation!
PowerPoints can be really boring. It does not matter which side you are on. If you are a viewer, the presenter can make it, or break it. The one presenting may literally be reading the slides word for word, and in a monotone way. There is usually no emphasis involved.
As the presenter, it is not easy also. From my own experience, I would always want to give a good presentation, but I just do not know how to. So then I would just abandon the idea and look over it once before class, and then read from the slides without looking at the class. I am sure many other students can relate to that experience. This would obviously lead to me not caring about the presentation itself, but more so the content.
That is a big factor to your whole project, but the actual presentation is just as important. After reading the second chapter in “Sail the 7 Cs with Microsoft Education: Stories from around the World to Transform and Inspire Your Classroom” by Becky Keane and Kathi Kersznowski, I learned of a great tool to help anybody with presenting a PowerPoint to your class.
The tool is called Speaker Coach, formerly called Presenter Coach. Speaker Coach is an AI based tool specifically made to help you practice your presentations. This is directly built into PowerPoint, which is amazing. Most schools recommend you use Microsoft tools like PowerPoint, Word, Excel, etc., and give you access to it. Having this built into PowerPoint makes it much more accessible to all students. The fact that it is built in also makes it easier to use. It will be smooth because there is no need to run another program and have another window open to use. It is seamless.
Once you hit that button, it will have you present. There will be another button to start recording your voice and an option to “Show real-time feedback.” I believe you should always have that option checked because it is such a great feature. As you are speaking and presenting, the coach will give you tips. These tips may be about:
- Pacing
- Filler words
- Correctly reading the slide text
- Inclusive language
I believe this is essential to practicing. I know my mind tends to go on autopilot when presenting to the class and I do not really consider what exactly I am saying and how quickly. Having someone, or in this case something, give you advice in real time will make you think about how you’re presenting a lot more. This will in turn make you get better each time you practice.
The coolest feature, in my opinion, to Speaker Coach is the report that it provides you with at the end of your recording.
The report provides you with information about:
- Duration of presentation
- Originality
- Pace
- Sensitive phrases
- Fillers
This is a great tool for visualizing how your practice went, and seeing what you have to work on. The most useful statistics from this to me is the duration and the average pace over time.
I never heard of this feature up until I read the chapter. I am genuinely surprised because this is a great tool for both students and teachers. It will help you get a great grade and help entertain your audience. This is something I plan on using in the future.
National Geographic Explorer Classroom Tool
I chose this tool because National Geographic has always been an interesting network for me to watch growing up. I instantly resonated with this tool because nature and the exploration of wildlife were something I enjoyed learning as a child. With this tool, I hope to teach the next generation of kids, such as the students who I will be teaching, about the fascinating discovery of nature around us and to have a fun and engaging experience while sitting in a classroom but still feeling as if they are diving into a new reality. The Explorer Classroom tool is a live YouTube show that unites young people from all around the world with Explorers to hear behind-the-scenes stories and interact in real time. All events are free and accessible to the public, and they include an event guide to help people get a fully interactive experience. There are several animals that are unique to specific regions and countries around the world that most people will never learn or see. This classroom is an effective and eye-opening experience that creates an environment in which students can learn about various details and open their eyes to the world around them, potentially inspiring them to do better for our world and environment in order to make it a better place for humans and an even safer and healthier place for wildlife. Every week, I would show my class a video of a certain film they are interested in watching, play it for them, and have them write a brief paper about what they learned and found exciting after watching the video.
National Geographic Explorer Classroom Tool: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/student-experiences/explorer-classroom/
The National Geographic site where I found this photo
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrFAYVXIiRl9t8EO2lXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3BpdnM-?p=national+geogrpahic+expolrer+classroom&fr2=piv-web&type=E211US105G0&fr=mcafee#id=13&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fe3%2F58%2F3e%2Fe3583e958dbc505b9c2a3e58dc60fe73.jpg&action=click
References
The National Geographic Society. (n.d.). Explorer Classroom. National Geographic Society. Retrieved October 9, 2023, from https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/student-experiences/explorer-classroom/
Childhood Education International Review
I chose Global Schools First – Childhood Education International because it is a resource for global education in grades k-8. I never really heard about this tool and decided that it would be good to learn about a new tool. This tool focuses on diversifying schools and implementing it into clubs, the learning curriculum, the school culture, etc.
One of their main focuses is sustainable learning. Sustainable learning “refers to educational practices that contribute to a continually evolving, healthy learning ecosystem in which knowledge is co-created and shared in a community.” This is especially important to me because my goal for my global goals project is quality education. Sustainable learning is one of the steps towards improving quality education because it works towards bettering education for everyone.
This tool also has a section in their website dedicated to courses. The main purpose of these courses is to help educators better their way of teaching and look at their students through a new light. Some of their free courses include “Webinars & Workshops Archive,” “Understanding the Impact of Trauma on Early Childhood,” “Integrating Social and Emotional Learning,” etc. There are a variety of courses that focus on very different topics, maximizing the number of skills that teachers can acquire. In addition, this is a global tool so there are courses in many different languages, improving quality education worldwide.
Discovering the Power of Education: A Deep Dive into Discovery Education
A brighten path to gain knowledge about the world.
Education has always been a cornerstone of human progress, and in the 21st century, it is evolving at an unprecedented pace. One of the pioneers in the field of education technology is Discovery Education, a global leader that has transformed how students learn and teachers teach. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at Discovery Education and its significant impact on modern education.
The Birth of Discovery Education
Discovery Education, part of Discovery, Inc., was founded with a simple yet revolutionary mission: to ignite students’ natural curiosity and inspire them to explore the world around them. It all began in the early 2000s when Discovery Communications leveraged its vast media resources, including the Discovery Channel, to create digital content for the classroom. This initiative marked the birth of Discovery Education.
A Wealth of Digital Resources
At the heart of Discovery Education’s success lies its extensive library of digital resources. These resources cover a wide range of subjects, including science, math, social studies, and more. Whether through videos, interactive simulations, virtual field trips, or engaging assessments, Discovery Education provides educators with a treasure trove of tools to captivate students’ minds and make learning come alive.
In addition to resources for students, Discovery Education offers robust professional development opportunities for educators. Teachers can access a wealth of training materials, webinars, and workshops that help them harness the full potential of the platform. By empowering educators, Discovery Education indirectly benefits millions of students worldwide.
(Grammar checked by GPT4 & Grammarly)
National Geographic K-12
Global Educator Toolbox
A picture of what is usually featured in this tool- the nature worldwide and how to protect them. This is useful when teachers try to teach students about the different environments.
WHY?
I chose this because, in my education, I always referred to this tool. I always believed it was beautiful how National Geographic’s photographers and those working for them do so much to educate the world. I thought it would be a brilliant idea to continue with my college degree and hopefully my teaching progress.
FINDINGS
I found that National Geographic helps to promote science, discovery, and geography in a classroom. It would be beneficial as a teacher if I could incorporate hands-on activities after or before watching an episode or reading a magazine. There are many things for kids that N.G promotes, such as all kid’s magazines, specific puzzles and computer games for children to play, and stories.
HOW TO USE
Before a lesson about history, animals, science, or discovery, I would find an episode or a part of a story, a game, or a magazine from National Geographic that fits into my lesson. Hence, it offers children multiple different sources. This could give students numerous references to refer to. All of the many other things that this tool covers would be perfect in any classroom!
THANK YOU!
Gianna Taylor
Global Collaboration for Young Learners
Importance of Collaboration
Collaboration is a huge factor in young student’s social and academic growth. Learning from a young age how to collaborate gives students a chance to learn from others, and share their own ideas with others. Students gain a lot of confidence in their social skills from working with groups in school. I chose this tool to research because I believe it is a huge part in student growth!
Global Collaboration
Empatico offers a program for students to collaborate with other students from all around the world. Young students who are introduced to this program can learn so much about other countries and how they learn and what they’re going through. It can teach students about empathy through these digital exchanges. More than 23,000 educators in 131 countries have used this platform for over 2,000,000 students all over the world. It is a great program to get introduced to different schooling and different cultures.
It is a very easy way to communicate with students and educators from different countries which I find so interesting. It is not common to be able to do these things in school so it’s very exciting to learn more about this program. I would love to utilize this program in my own class, and teach students the importance of being able to empathize and to learn about other countries and cultures. I would allow my students to do it once or twice a week so they can keep in touch with their penpal, and hopefully build a friendship with them. I would listen to my students opinions on the program, whether or not they liked it. If it is something they really enjoy, I would pass the word on to more teachers so they can give their students a fun learning experience as well.
Empathy
This program was made to teach students how to show that they care for others, and learn about self-awareness. Being able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, or understand someone else’s feelings can be a huge factor in socially and emotionally growing up. Behavior also plays a huge role in this program because what students do for others makes a huge impact. This program can help those students learn these skills.
What Does Empatico Offer?
Empatico offers many different tools. Here is a list of what they offer:
- Empathy centered activities
- Being able to explore the world and make connections
- Messaging and scheduling
- Live exchanges
All of these tools can help students not only gain emotional and social skills, but they also will learn about many different countries and cultures, as well as learning how to message others and schedule live meetings.
Thanks for reading!
Mapping the Nation Tool
One of the best ways you can get kids more engaged in learning is by providing them with tools with which they can learn and have fun simultaneously.
Combining technology with learning can make for very interesting ideas on how to gain knowledge while also learning how to use technology.
A great tool I found for K–8 students is this interactive map by Asia Society that pulls together demographic, economic, and education indicators into data points that students can use to learn about the world.
This tool can increase the students knowledge about other parts of the world they might not be aware of.
They can figure out these stats through an interactive map:
The maps are color-coded, so it is easier for people to notice the differences and statistics.
This tool can be great for kids to learn and explore the world.
Students can learn about interesting statistics like the total population of areas, the number of languages spoken in each area, and the ancestry of the people living there. This tool can inform students about stats they never knew and provide a visual for them.
It is very important for kids to learn about the world they are living in, and these interesting statistics make them more informed about their country and the demographics that make it up.
If I were a teacher, I would let kids explore this tool and ask each other questions about the statistics and demographics. This would improve their ability to read and relay information to others.