Reviewing the success of the Microsoft Cloud

Microsoft Cloud not only creates marketable skills for students it is also a great tool for faculty to enhance teaching & learning

Posted by Joe Lawson-West | May 10, 2017 | Technology

• #microsoft
• #teaching
• #learning
• #cloud

The Microsoft Cloud has revolutionised education technology. One of the most important outcomes from using The Cloud is employability. Across different sectors, there are thousands of different jobs, varying from Data Scientist to Cloud Solution Architect.  However, this is simply one of the benefits of using the Cloud. To say that Cloud has changed the technological industry, would be an understatement. Students can now also take full advantage of our Microsoft Cloud Services. As part of teaching and learning, students can get familiar with the building block of cloud apps and begin to create their own applications or services as part of their curriculum. Microsoft’s productivity suite (Office 365) is free to academic sites; including educators and students. Office 365 is not only our productivity suite for education, it has been adopted by a number of large enterprise customers including us! By the time they graduate, they are more valuable in workplace having used the most up-to-date tech in their studies and developed marketable skill sets.

 Microsoft Cloud not only creates marketable skills for students it is also a great tool for faculty to enhance teaching and learning. Now, when in the classroom, it is possible for both teachers and students to view the same document at same time. Teachers can provide different assets, such as videos or webpages before class for students to view in preparation for the lessons. Discussions and group exercises can then be capture in this live environment for students to reference back long after the facilitated learning is over. Gone are the days of students damaging or losing their homework, Blended Learning now allows teachers to have a digital record of who has viewed the classwork and attempted the homework, and more importantly who hasn't.

  Finally, the cloud has given rise to “cloud native application” with interactive brochures, e-notebook classroom packs and Video calling. The best part- you don’t have to be a coder to create this great content.  Sway becomes an interactive document that potential employers can read to learn more as well as being something that tutors can have a lot of fun with when creating. OneNote for the Classroom creates classroom packs for teachers to share assignments whilst students create essays. These can be instantly edited, marked and graded all with electronic documents i.e. no paper. This results in saving thousands of pounds in printing, not to mention a very positive effect on the carbon footprint. Finally, Skype (for business) is creating better relationships between students and lecturers, teachers and parents, even teachers with other teachers! Drop in clinics, parents evenings and community sharing with likeminded educators all becomes much more accessible through remote video calling and the flexibility it provides.