Access to quality professional development is critical to build educator capacity to ensure students are graduating with the skills needed for workplace success. Governments around the world continue to struggle to find scalable, quality professional development that is mapped to an international framework...

Students report that the operating system makes it easy to view information without opening applications. In this week’s Windows 8 Wednesday post the Microsoft in Education blog talks with Heiki Tähis, Head of IT and CIO of the Tallinn Polytechnic School in Estonia, about the school’s...

Today marks the first in a series of Windows 8 Wednesday posts, weekly updates focused on how Windows 8 is making a difference in education – for both educators and students. I hope you will check back often and follow me on this journey. Just a few days ago, I had the privilege of helping to...

Here at Microsoft, we strive to offer great training and experiences for teachers across the world through our Partners in Learning program, like our Partners in Learning Network and the power it brings for teachers across the globe to collaborate. One of the most exciting programs we have is launching...

When we first launched Office 365 for education back in June, we did so with an eye to helping transform education. Teachers were asking for a holistic collaboration platform that would allow them – and their students – to easily and safely access the knowledge and tools required for 21st...

It was a great week at the Global Education Partner Summit surrounded by several hundred of our top education partners. This event is a great opportunity to announce the Windows MultiPoint Server 2012 (WMS) is now available generally. I see WMS as a powerful tool in Microsoft’s suite of solutions...

The New Era of Digital Learning was fully on display in London early this week, when educators became developers for 24 hours in the first-ever Windows 8 App-a-thon at the British Education Technology & Training (BETT) Show. On Monday, January 28th and Tuesday, January 29th, 21 Partners in Learning...

Well it is that time of year again – back to school. On the SIGCSE mailing list are a couple of reminders about online exercise tools for a variety of programming langauges.. A few old timers and at least one big new name. I thought it would be worthwhile to list a few of what I know about. The big new...

Back in the day when I went to a college with A computer room with A computer it was cool enough that there was a computer there and that it was available to students. Today that’s not the case – having a computer (or bunch of them) does not automatically make for a cool place.  For many students...

I hear a lot of questions about SharePoint. Things like what can I do with it? How hard is it to use? That question usually is code for “do I need to hire a high priced professional to use it?” And occasionally can I fit it into the curriculum? Well there is a great webcast coming up that answers all...

The big news for me yesterday was at Finalists Announced for Round 1 of the Microsoft Partners in Learning 2012 US Forum . I attended this event as a judge last year and learned an incredible amount from these amazing teachers. This first round announced 44 teachers representing 32 projects from across...

And fun as well. Recently a co-worker sent me a link to some videos that were done by the Houston Independent School District about the pilot program they are running in several elementary schools. These schools are using video games involving the Kinect Sensor to help teach. And not just physical education...

The highlight of this past week for me was taking part in the CSTA CS & IT conference program committee meeting. The agenda should be available soon once some final details get nailed down and I’ll blog about that when it happens. Suffice it to say it looks to me like this well be an outstanding...

I was reading through a couple of blog posts by Garth Flint earlier today. I’ve been using some of my vacation time to catch up on blog reading and had put off reading some of Garth’s posts until I had time to do it right. Garth is one of those people who uses his blog for self examination and the working...

Last week an email passed though my inbox that said something like “ my district is buying the latest shiny new computing gadget. What software should I get to teach computer science on it?” OK now I am a software guy and biased towards software but this question seems all wrong to me. I’ve...

Last week I posted a list of some of the great computer science related blogs I read on a regular basis ( Computer Science Education Blog Roll ) Week after week these people share ideas and thoughts and tools that really make a difference in the world. This week, as usually, I list some of the best posts...

Last week I accepted an invitation from Professor Mark Frydenberg of Bentley University to attend the open house for their new CIS Learning and Technology Sandbox. I’d been invited before but once I posted about perfect computer labs last week it seemed like this was an invitation I should really...

I had the following question via Twitter the other day “ Hey Alfred. We got permission to overhaul our computer lab, Have you seen any innovative strategies or configurations?” Now this is a question that comes up pretty regularly among computer science teachers. Or teachers who teach computer applications...

Normally the conferences I attend are about educational technology or computer science education. Events like ISTE, MASSCue, TCEA, SIGCSE or CSTA’s CS & IT. But the last two days I have been at the New Jersey School Board Association annual workshop. We’re hear talking about Kinect in Education ...

Coding a game from scratch is hard. Make no mistake about there is a lot to it. OF course many people, especially students, think they are all ready to create the next great game. They can easily be frustrated when they find out that they don’t know near enough about programming (among other things)...

Leadership Day is a project started by Scott McLeod and is now in its fourth year. The idea is for people to “ blog about whatever you like related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, resources, ideas, etc .” This is something I have...

There were nine winners in the Partners in Learning 2011 U.S. Innovative Education Forum , four second place winners and five first place winners (one of these was the teacher’s choice winner). For the second year in a row one of the top US winners was a computer science teacher. This year is was Louis...

Have you explored outer space using the WorldWide Telescope ? Do you have a favorite tour of space that you share with friends. Now you can share your tours of the universe with 8 million+ people. From now until September 1, 2011, participants in the ...read more

Wow! What a week it has been. I came home from ISTE in time for the Fourth of July holiday. I’m still mulling over all I heard and learned at ISTE. If things ever quiet down I’ll try to write some of them up. As it was I spent a lot of the long weekend ...read more

Today has been a busy day at ISTE 2011 for me. I did some time at the booth and then went to a couple of sessions. Pat Yongpradit talked about what he is doing with XNA in his school. He’s seeing some great involvement from and retention of young women ...read more