After unveiling features coming to OneNote Class Notebooks earlier this week, Microsoft has detailed education-focused features coming to Teams, Minecraft, and PowerPoint. The tech giant is upping its bet on education with a slew of new features designed to help teachers and students.
Perhaps the most eye-catching are changes to Minecraft’s Education Edition. In a somewhat unexpected move, the company has implemented its immersive reader in the game. This displays NPC text on a blank, customizable background with a friendly font, highlighting words as they’re read. The feature will also apply to in-game signs, chalkboards, and more.
In more immersive reader news, Microsoft is pointing to services that have also adopted its immersive reader, from Skooler to Squigl, Nearpod, Oxford Press, PowerSchool, and more. It wants to make reading accessible no matter where students are.
Teams and PowerPoint
For Teams, Microsoft is promising a simplified view that should make it eaiser for students to navigate and manage different workloads. Students will see an easy way to track assignments, big icons for each class, a share to Teams button for teachers, as well as
In PowerPoint news, Microsoft is releasing a feature called Presenter Coach. The tool is designed to give users instant feedback on their oral presenting skills including warnings for filler words, tips about culturally inclusive words, or flagging cliches. Presenter Coach is only active in rehearsal mode to ensure students aren’t distracted while actually giving the presentation. At the end of a rehearsal, students get a report with detailed stats.
Finally, Microsoft is announcing a new voice for the Narrator, which will soon have voices in 50 different languages without extra packs. This should simplify the process and help those learning a new dialect.
Microsoft is announcing all this ahead of ISTE 2019, where it will go into more detail and run a number of sessions. You can find out more detail on the education blog.
