Listening To The Educators Voice In Times Of Change

Over the next few weeks it will be my distinct pleasure to meet with Higher Education and K-12 Leadership from across the United States in Redmond Washington at our Microsoft Advisory Group Summit. This has been a six-month effort by a broad team of contributors from across the Microsoft organization. Previously this group of Educators and Microsoft thought leaders discussed wide ranging topics from educational outcomes, digital inclusion, STEM and very mundane subjects such as product roadmaps and technology trends. As a technology company, we are consistently trying to understand what the users of our solutions value, and enhance their mission as Educators. In times of change and transformation listening is important but understand how to facilitate that change across such a large organization such as Microsoft can be daunting.

Suffice to say I am proud to say these efforts are enabling change at a pace and cadence that was long needed. Often technology companies provide low or no cost solutions, services, and software to education and expect that to meet the bar. These days that isn't enough. We have listened and the results are starting to really be impactful across such platforms as Office 365, One Note, Learning Management Systems, and Mobility and many others. As we proceed along this journey with our Educational partners we are eager to hear from the community-what is important; how are you dealing with transforming your educational environment and how can we improve the lives of every educator and student.

We thank you for your feedback, we look forward to your participation and the value you provide us each day. Below are two examples of recent additions to the Microsoft Education Ecosystem that were a direct result of your feedback.

Intune for Education Device Management https://aka.ms/qsamch

One Note Classroom notebook and Learning Tools https://aka.ms/dgpwx9