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February 17, 2008 02:47 PM

Microsoft and Zune

Kathy Richardson of Microsoft is going through a description of basic features of Zune. MS sees entertainment market as extremely features going forward. However, on Marketplace they have 1000's of educational podcasts.

Zune's and XBox's can share a point system for downloading material from Marketplace. Microsoft also has a subscription model.

Can have a Zune based social network and share material.

Zune can pull stuff off a Sharepoint server, including audio and video content. Students can download Powerpoint presentations to a Zune. Gives students access to material everywhere.

Students like to have mobile content and the ability to share with other students. Showed demo of a Powerpoint deck that was flashcards of planets.

Teacher is creating Spanish vocabulary lists with correct pronunciation, putting them on Sharepoint and letting students download to Zune for out of class study.

Kathy finished and Scott Thompson of Microsoft takes the floor. Talks about knitting together images of different resolutions and different angles using a new app (not yet in beta) called Photosynth. Students could go on a field trip to an ecosystem, take digital pictures, then bring them back and knit them together.

Photosynth is currently a free tool.

Microsoft SharedView is a free tool as well. SharedView allows sharing of applications in real time. Supports real time collaboration.

Microsoft Learning Essentials plugs into MS Office to make Office experience education focused. One piece for students and one for teachers. The teacher's version has a test generator, integrates with a SCORM compliant learning management systems.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace is in beta. Allows you to save documents onto the site with access from anywhere. Get a 1 Gb SkyDrive with a MS Office Live Workspace.

Microsoft has launched Tafiti which is a Silverlight based tool. Tafiti is a research tool. Go to tafiti.com

Microsoft Innovative Teachers Network allows you to connect with teachers around the world.

Talked about using OneNote to allow students to take a core concept and evolve their thinking from conception to analysis and evaluation.
Students and teachers share notes and collaboratively develop content.
Can use OneNote to organize and share class notes.

Three things you need to know about Microsoft Office 2007. 1. The Office Button - go here to save, all settings here. 2. Tools are presented as you need them. Can preview results of applying a tool inline before you actually accept them. 3. Help is much better organized and easier to read. Can customize help.

Want to get students to focus more on creating quality content rather than worrying about formatting. Office 2007 makes this easier.

SmartArt allows teachers to create concept diagrams very easily.

Did a long riff on OneNote.

Microsoft has an online interactive guide that compares Office 2003 to Office 2007.

There is a free Office Compatibility Pack that can convert Office 2007 docs to earlier versions of Office. Office 2007 file format is XML based and is more secure.

Powerpoint 2007 has some very slick ways of converting lists to diagrams. This is a SmartArt feature. Office 2003 will display SmartArt, but you won't be able to edit it in 2003.

Showed that creating Excel pivot tables is much easier in Office 2007.
Has a way to create dashboards based on rules you create for a particular variable in your table.

Just about everything he talked about can be found on www.microsoft.com.

General opinion of the group that this was a good session - at an appropriate level.

Posted by johnballing on February 17, 2008 at 02:47 PM in Emerging Technologies | Comments (0)

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