Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Our world is becoming more digital every day. The pandemic has forced so many essential activities online: going to school, earning an income and staying in touch with friends and family all require a reliable broadband internet connection. But millions of Americans don’t have access to broadband –  either because it’s not available or they can’t afford it – and are cut off from what has become essential to everyday life during the pandemic. This problem is particularly acute in Black, African American, Latinx and Hispanic communities in cities where broadband infrastructure largely exists, but the connection and devices to utilize it are unaffordable, leaving access to essentials of life out of reach for millions. This is a problem we can and must fix.

As the presenter, you can choose the languages you want to use for both your 'spoken language' and 'subtitle language'. PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 supports several languages although more options are available for 'subtitle language'. 

Late last year Microsoft introduced real-time captioning and translation of PowerPoint presentations. At that time it wasn't available in all versions of PowerPoint. That changed this week when Mike Tholfsen, product manager for Microsoft EDU, Tweeted that real-time captioning and translation is now available in all versions of PowerPoint for Windows, Mac, and Web. 

Yesterday Mike Tholfsen Tweeted about Microsoft's Teacher Training Packs. Teacher Training Packs are collections of resources that are designed to help IT administrators, technology specialists, and curriculum directors lead professional development workshops centered around various Microsoft tools (most of which are completely free for educators).

Welcome to the Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum. The goal of Digital Literacy is to teach and assess the basic concepts and skills needed to use a computer. Computer technology can help you in your everyday life to develop new social and economic opportunities for yourself, your family, and your community.

Whether you are entirely new to computing or have some experience, this curriculum will help you understand computers better.

Editor is Microsoft's writing assistant to help you refine and enhance your writing. Editor detects your spelling and grammar mistakes and checks your writing style and provides suggestions for improvement. 

I've written about Google Classroom's originality reports in the past. I've also posted tutorials on looking for matching documents via Google Drive. This week, thanks to Mike Tholfsen, I learned that my Microsoft-using friends have a similar feature available to them via the online version of Microsoft Word. 

Microsoft's free Learning Tools keep getting better. This week Microsoft announced ten updates that are either available now or will be available soon to Word and OneNote users. And if you're not currently using Word or OneNote some of these updates just might make you give Word and OneNote a try. 

As soon as Microsoft announced its $26.2 billion deal to purchase professional networking site LinkedIn, members of the higher education community started wondering: What does it mean for us?

Speculations center around Microsoft’s stated intentions for the popular online learning platform, Lynda.com, which LinkedIn acquired in 2015.

“In the future, LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com) will tightly integrate into Office, enabling users to have a more seamless experience and access to on-demand courses,” the company wrote in an investor presentation.