BETT 2020 was one of the largest educational technology conferences in the world! This year more than 34,000 people attended this amazing conference. Educators from over 146 countries in the global education community were represented at BETT.
Being one of the first conferences of the year, BETT is hosted in London, United Kingdom. It is an inviting conference for educators from all over the world because it is:
⦁ FREE for attendees
⦁ Offers a great location
⦁ Connects with a global audience
⦁ Offers a huge vendor floor for exploration
⦁ Offers sessions in booths and in platinum suites
⦁ Features beginning of year product releases
BETT Presentations
We (Jeni Long and Sallee Clark, aka. Jenallee) had the opportunity to share Microsoft Teams and OneNote with attendees in our learning area in the Microsoft Booth.
At the top of the hour, every hour, we shared some of our favorite Teams and OneNote features including:
Teams
⦁ Me/We space
⦁ Channels
⦁ Posts
⦁ + Tab
⦁ Assignments
⦁ Grades Tab
⦁ Insights
⦁ Rubrics
OneNote
⦁ Formats: App, 2016 version, iOs, Android, online, Teams
⦁ Immersive Reader
⦁ Draw tab
⦁ Math Tools
⦁ Forms quiz
⦁ Replay
Some of our favorite features that we presented over Microsoft Teams include the new Grades tab and Rubric Grading. From the Grades tab you can see all of your assignments, easily enter grades, or view student work with one click. Not only that, if you attached a rubric, you can simply click and grade as you view and comment on the returned work. Want to leave feedback? Leave a comment in the same window. This is great for students and teachers; students know what the expectations are for their work during the entire assignment and teachers can grade student work with efficiency all within Microsoft Teams.
Justin Chando (@justinchando), Principal Product Manager @MicrosoftEDU, building @MicrosoftTeams and @Microsoft365, shares on Twitter how “the full gradebook experience and individual student progress is included in every class team. Thank you for all the teacher feedback that made this possible.” You can read more about tracking students progress in Teams in the full article here.
Immersive Reader in Microsoft OneNote is a life changing piece of technology! We were honored to share how this tech offers users the ability to have any typed text, pdf, or image read to them. The voice is human and not robotic, and you can customize the reading pane: background color, font, line focus, picture dictionary, and even translations! That’s right! Immersive Reader will translate your entire document or individual words into your choice of 60 different languages! It will even read the document to you in many of these languages. We know you don’t believe us, or you can’t even imagine what we are trying to explain in this article. We think it is best explained by the product manager himself, Mike Tholfsen in this 90 second video!
Learning Tools are available in more than just OneNote. You can see in the image below some of the other Microsoft applications that offer Immersive Reader.
One of the things that we love about Microsoft is that they are seeking to empower everyone on the planet to do more, and to do that they have shared Immersive Reader technology with various edtech companies. Check out these third-party applications that offer Immersive Reader to its users!
Want to see the features that we shared with the BETT attendees in action? Check out these quick tutorial videos! Scan the QR code to view them on your mobile device or view this playlist.
What’s New in MicrosoftEDU
One of the best parts of attending BETT is that MicrosoftEDU releases their newest features for the year! There were so many amazing features released this year. Jenallee was honored to share the latest updates coming to PowerPoint. Check out Live Presentations in the BETT episode 1 of Microsoft’s What’s New in MicrosoftEDU!
Updates came to Microsoft Teams, OneNote, Microsoft Whiteboard, Edge, PowerPoint, and more! Check out these What’s New in EDU videos to get all of the details!
MIEExpert Community
We have been so fortunate to have a personal learning network (PLN) within the Microsoft Community. When educators earn 1,000 Microsoft online training points, they can become a Microsoft Innovative Educator.
As an MIE, educators have access to:
⦁ A huge collection of Microsoft online training courses
⦁ Lesson plans and collaboration projects
⦁ Connection to thousands of educators around the world who want to connect digitally with Skype
⦁ Online community via Twitter
As an MIE you also have the opportunity to become an MIEExpert. These are educators who are active in the community and want to share these amazing edtech tools with the world. To become an MIEExpert, MIE educators submit an application showing evidence of how they are connected and active in the community and show how they are sharing Microsoft tools with others.
As an MIEExpert, teachers have access to the amazing resources above and more:
⦁ Microsoft Travel program: where educators attend a conference and present a Microsoft tool. Microsoft will pay for the travel expenses of the conference (you have to apply, and they select only what the budget can handle and no more than 2 a year per person)
⦁ You are in the know! You get to learn inside information about new releases.
⦁ Focus Groups where individuals ask and answer questions and share how they are using the products in their classrooms.
⦁ You become part of a community of educators who care, help, and support each other online and in person. The #MIEExpert community is the best PLN we have ever been connected with offering us friends, opportunities, collaborations, support, and so much more.
Check out The Jenallee Show BETT2020 Episode to hear from these amazing #MIEExperts!
Thank you, BETT!
We had such a wonderful experience at BETT and we are thinking this may have to be a yearly conference we attend. It offered us new connections with educators from around the world and within our existing PLN, we were able to see the latest releases, and we had the opportunity to share some of our favorite Microsoft tools with this global community.
Looking for more resources and information about BETT? Scan the QR code to view the Jenallee BETT Wakelet on your mobile device. It is full of information about our presentations, MIE information, and BETT announcements.
Scan the QR code below to view the What’s New in EDU YouTube playlist.
