Education Blog articles

Making Academic Standards More Accessible

MikeMast — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:01:25 GMT

Why standards matter

Academic standards are the shared language that connects curriculum, instruction, and assessment. When educators can easily access and apply them:

Lesson planning becomes more intentional. You design instruction around clear learning goals rather than guessing what to cover.
Assessment aligns with instruction. Quizzes, rubrics, and assignments reflect what students are actually expected to demonstrate.
AI-powered tools become more relevant. AI-generated content is grounded in real curriculum expectations, not generic suggestions.
Collaboration improves. Teachers across grade levels and departments can speak the same language about what students should know and do.

How Microsoft Education uses standards

Standards are woven into the experiences educators use every day.

In the Teach module and Microsoft 365 LTI, educators can align lesson plans to specific standards by location, subject, and grade band, use the "Align to Standards" tool to refine lesson instructions, and generate quizzes and rubrics grounded in standards.

In Assignments in Teams for Education and Microsoft 365 LTI, educators can tag assignments with curriculum expectations, build standards-aligned rubrics, and create a clear thread from instruction to assessment.

Across AI-powered workflows, standards can serve as grounding data that helps make generated lesson plans, quizzes, and rubrics more relevant to real curriculum expectations. This reflects Microsoft’s broader approach to AI in education: using AI to support educators with useful, contextual assistance while helping institutions maintain alignment with their instructional goals, policies, and professional judgment. Educators can select standards by location, subject, and language.

Expanding coverage through partnership with EdGate

Making standards useful in digital tools globally requires more than a large catalog. It requires structured, machine-readable data, ongoing maintenance, and a partner with deep expertise in education standards. EdGate has spent years building and maintaining one of the largest catalogs of digitized standards in education technology. Microsoft partnered with EdGate to help make that infrastructure more accessible inside the workflows educators and institutions already use.

Through this partnership, Microsoft has significantly expanded the set of standards EdGate offers, especially internationally. Together, we have grown coverage to include:

All 50 U.S. states, including Common Core, NGSS, and state-specific frameworks
70+ countries, with international standards covering core subjects, vocational education, and qualification frameworks
Hundreds of supplemental frameworks, from career and technical education to world languages and the arts

We continue to expand coverage with new international standards rolling out regularly.

EdGate offers access to over 5 million standard statements, aggregating and normalizing global standards for consistent delivery across platforms. Their capabilities include a comprehensive standards catalog, standards authoring tools used by ministries of education, API-based access for platform integration, and certified CASE 1.1 compliance.

Microsoft and EdGate are partnering to make a select set of standards freely available to education institutions, lowering barriers for educators and developers who want to explore standards-aligned workflows without a commercial commitment. To expand the impact even further, EdGate is piloting a project in 1EdTech's CASE Global Ecosystem initiative, to demonstrate how interoperable, machine-readable frameworks can improve the discoverability, alignment, and portability of learning and credentialing data across platforms, institutions and borders.

The CASE format: Why it matters

CASE stands for Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange, an open standard from 1EdTech that defines how learning outcomes and standards are represented in a machine-readable, interoperable format.

Why does CASE matter?

Machine-readability: Platforms, AI tools, and learning management systems can read, search, and apply standards programmatically.
Interoperability: Standards move between systems. An assignment tagged with a standard in Microsoft Teams can be understood by an LMS, a reporting tool, or a curriculum mapping platform without manual re-entry.
Cross-region equivalence: CASE enables comparing and mapping standards across countries and frameworks.

EdGate is a certified CASE 1.1 provider, meaning the standards they deliver to Microsoft (and to the broader ecosystem) follow this open, interoperable format. The expanded catalog we have built together benefits not just Microsoft's products, but the entire ecosystem of education technology that relies on structured standards data.

A shared commitment to open standards

Microsoft is proud to be a Contributing Member of 1EdTech, the organization that stewards CASE and other critical interoperability standards for education technology, including LTI, OneRoster, and Open Badges. By collaborating with fellow 1EdTech members like EdGate, we ensure that investments in standards infrastructure benefit educators everywhere, regardless of which platforms or tools they use.

When standards are open, structured, and interoperable, everyone wins: educators spend less time on manual alignment, developers can build smarter tools, and students benefit from instruction that is intentionally connected to what they are expected to learn.

What this means for educators

Within Microsoft Education, you do not need to think about CASE or data formats to benefit from this work. What you will see is:

More standards available in the Teach module and Assignments, covering more countries, subjects, and grade bands
AI-powered experiences that are better grounded in your actual curriculum
Less manual work translating curriculum documents into classroom materials

We are committed to continuing this investment: expanding coverage, improving the experience, and working with partners like EdGate and the 1EdTech community to make standards-aligned teaching easier for educators everywhere.

Helpful links

Have questions or feedback about standards in Microsoft Education? Drop a comment below or submit a request through our Standards Feedback form.

Set clear AI expectations for every assignment with Student AI Guidelines

Leif Brenne — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:30:34 GMT

The challenge: students don't know where they stand with AI

Every educator has a different approach to AI in their classroom. Some want students using it freely. Others want AI limited to brainstorming or editing. Some assignments shouldn't involve AI at all.

The problem? Students are left guessing. Educators have been piecing together workarounds — writing AI policies into assignment instructions, referencing school handbooks, or adding disclaimers to rubrics. None of these are built into the assignment itself, and students often miss them entirely.

Student AI Guidelines in Assignments

Student AI Guidelines give educators a structured way to set AI expectations directly inside an assignment in Microsoft Teams. When creating an assignment, educators now see a new option to set a guideline level with suggested text:

Full AI use allowed. Students can use Copilot for any part of the assignment.
AI for editing only. Students write their own work first, then use Copilot to polish, revise, or check grammar.
AI for brainstorming only. Students can use Copilot to generate ideas or explore topics, but the final work should be their own.
No AI. The assignment should be completed without AI assistance.

Student AI Guidelines are available for all grade levels, on desktop and mobile. All students in the assignment see the same guideline.

A note on what these guidelines are — and aren't. Student AI Guidelines are a communication tool, not a lockdown. They set clear expectations that students see in the assignment, but they don't technically block access to AI tools. They work the same way a teacher's verbal instruction does: "Here's what I expect for this assignment." The value is in making that expectation visible, consistent, and built into the assignment itself.

These are starting points, not fixed rules. Each level comes with suggested text that educators can edit freely to match their school's policies, terminology, or classroom norms. If your school uses different language around AI use — or has its own framework — update the text to reflect that. The feature adapts to your school, not the other way around.

Even if your school hasn't enabled Copilot, Student AI Guidelines give you a structured way to communicate AI expectations to students — whether that's encouraging responsible AI use or formalizing a no-AI policy.

What students see

When an educator sets a guideline, students see it in their assignment view — no hunting through instructions or attachments. The guideline card shows the educator's expectations and, for levels that allow AI use, a direct button to launch Copilot Chat.

The Copilot launch button appears for students aged 13 and older at schools where an IT admin has enabled Copilot. If your school hasn't set up Copilot yet, check out the Copilot setup guide for IT admins to get started. If Copilot isn't enabled, students still see the guideline — just without the launch button.

If no guideline is set, nothing changes — the student experience stays exactly as it is today.

Save time: set a default and reuse across classes

Two features help you avoid repeating setup work:

Set as default. Any guideline level — including "No AI" — can be set as the default for all new assignments you create. If your school's policy is that most assignments should restrict AI use, set that as your default and you're covered. You can always override it on individual assignments when you want to allow more (or less) AI use.

Import Settings. Once you've configured your Student AI Guidelines in one class, you can apply those same settings to other classes using Import Settings. This copies your guideline levels and custom text across classes so you don't have to re-create them each time. Learn more: Import Settings in Assignments and Grades.

Why this matters

This feature sits at the intersection of two things educators have been asking for: clarity around AI use, and an easy on-ramp to Copilot. Instead of competing with third-party AI tools through restriction, Student AI Guidelines give educators a way to channel AI use purposefully — on their terms, per assignment, with clear communication to students.

Resources

Set Student AI Guidelines on and assignment in Microsoft Teams

Manage Student AI Guidelines in Assignments

Study and Learn Agent: your study coach, built for learning

anpadt — Thu, 21 May 2026 03:20:37 GMT

It's 11 pm. A student is at the kitchen table with a chemistry problem they can't crack, an essay due tomorrow, and a quiz in the morning. They open their laptop, open an AI chatbot, and in thirty seconds, they have an answer, an essay, and a study guide.

The thinking didn't happen. The grade might still come.

That moment is why so many educators and IT leaders feel a knot in their stomach about AI in the classroom. The concerns are real, and we built with them firmly in view.

Now picture the same student, same kitchen table, same 11 pm. This time the Study and Learn Agent is beside them. Patient. Tireless. Knows the material because the student is studying with their own notes. Asks the right question at the right moment. Pushes them to try first, then helps them see what they missed. Quizzes them. Introduces flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks and matching activities. Helps them build and check their understanding.

The student does the thinking. The Study and Learn Agent coaches the thinking.

Most students have not had access to that kind of support. Potential is equally distributed, but opportunity is not.

Today, with the general availability of the Study and Learn Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, every student K12 and Higher Education with a Microsoft Education license can get personalized coaching when they need it, where they need it, at no extra cost.

Study and Learn Agent is in the left navigation and works across any subject the learner is studying. It explains concepts, supports writing without doing the writing for the students, gives step-by-step coaching on problems, generates flashcards, runs quizzes, and creates activities to build and check understanding. The agent is designed to lead with a question so the learner stays in the driver's seat. It is available in English (US) and coming to additional languages in the coming weeks.

⚙️For IT admins — read this first

Study and Learn Agent runs inside Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. For your K-12 students aged 13–17, Copilot Chat is OFF by default. You have to turn it on. Until you do, students in your tenant cannot access Study and Learn.

The good news: Study and Learn is available to all licenses A1 / A3 / A5, and the agent is available from the left navigation bar of M365 Copilot app and in the Chat dropdown at https://aka.ms/studyandlearn.

Action: Enable Copilot Chat for your 13–17 student group in the Microsoft 365 admin center using these resources:

Full step-by-step video tutorial: https://aka.ms/enablecopilotchatvideo
IT documentation:
- Education Tenant Identifier
- Student Age Groups

Find Study and Learn in the left navigation pane and in the Chat dropdown

🎉What is available at GA

Conversations that coach: Scaffolded conversations on any subject or topic K12 through HED for:

Understanding concepts
Working through step-by-step problems
Getting writing support

The agent recognizes the kind of help a learner needs and adapts the conversation accordingly. Soon, images will show inline in explanations to make abstract concepts concrete — especially for visual subjects like biology, geography, and chemistry.

Scaffolded coaching conversations that lead with questions

Practice activities that stick:

Flashcards to learn terms and definitions, vocabulary, and recall facts
Quizzes with multiple choice and open-ended questions with per-answer explanations
Fill-in-the-blank for understanding how things work, or the sequence of connected events or facts in a process
Matching activities that connect terms to definitions, causes to effects, concepts to examples — building the mental web that makes knowledge usable
All activities are created with the learner’s own materials, or with just a topic name. Quizzes can also be created using a web-linked resource
Students can chat with the agent during and after completing an activity to get immediate and remediation help with the agent still not giving away answers

Matching activity embedded in a Study and Learn conversationFill-in-the-blanks activity embedded in a Study and Learn conversation

Responsible AI and data privacy: Study and Learn is built into the Microsoft 365 Education environment that schools already manage, giving IT administrators familiar controls and enterprise-grade data and privacy protection rooted in Microsoft's responsible AI principles. Students get a structured, accountable AI experience, and schools get a credible, learning-first option they can deploy with confidence. An AI literacy resource teaches responsible AI use from the very first interaction.

Coming soon!

Inline images: GA ships with links to images, images embedded in the flow of the conversation are coming soon
Multiple languages: Study and Learn has been optimized for and Generally Available in English (US). Additional languages will become available in the coming weeks.
Explanation and engagement callouts: Visual call outs for questions, tips and moments of persistence

💡Built on learning science

The pedagogy is the product.

The Study and Learn Agent is grounded in four research-based principles about what makes learning stick. They aren't a layer on top of the experience — they shape what the agent does in every interaction.

Adaptive scaffolding: meeting students where they are by activating what they already know, then providing enough support to stretch them into what's next. In practice, this is why the agent opens a chemistry problem by asking what the learner already understands about molar mass — not by launching into a worked solution. It then tunes its support — worked examples, hints, or step-by-step guidance — to match. The result is a learner who stays productively engaged instead of overwhelmed or under-challenged.

Explanations and questions that develop critical thinking

Productive struggle: asking before telling, so students retrieve, attempt, and reason their way toward answers. This is why the agent invites a first attempt before offering help, and why it surfaces a misconception as a question rather than a correction. Mistakes become data, not failure — the moments where actual learning happens.

Active learning: practice that sticks, with retrieval-based activities including flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks, quizzes, and matching. The agent generates activities from the learner's own materials and lets them re-attempt the items they missed. Learners can pause during an activity and chat with the agent about a card they don't understand — building clarity in the moment, without the agent giving the answer away. Pulling knowledge out of memory, with feedback in the loop, is what builds durable understanding.

Flashcards embedded in a Study and Learn conversation

Quizzes with True/False, multiple choice and open-ended questions

Application and transfer: giving students the agency to go deeper, apply their learning, or reinforce it with an activity. This is why the agent invites learners to teach concepts back, apply ideas to new problems, and connect what they're studying to real-world contexts. It's the kind of work that builds flexible understanding beyond a single test.

We built this with learning science researchers, cognitive scientists, and educators in the room from the beginning.

👩🏽‍🏫For educators

The best way to understand what Study and Learn does differently is to spend a few minutes with it. Open it at aka.ms/studyandlearn and try it with your Microsoft Education account in the M365 Copilot app on a unit you're teaching next week. Take the professional development course at aka.ms/studyandlearnmodule to get a deep dive overview, and earn a badge!
Most educators tell us this is the moment the design clicks — noticing where the agent asks a question instead of giving an answer.

A few things educators in our preview have found useful:

Pointing learners to it for a specific moment in an assignment can be more effective than a blanket "you can use this." Something as simple as "if you get stuck on problem 4, ask Study and Learn to walk you through it after you've taken a first attempt" tends to shape how learners engage.
The activities lend themselves to specific moments. Flashcards before a vocabulary check. Matching for a unit on cell biology. A quiz the day before a test, with the agent's per-answer explanations as a self-review loop.
The agent itself is a useful AI literacy artifact. Some educators use its behavior as a discussion starter — "notice that it didn't give you the answer? Why do you think that is?" — to open up conversations about how to use AI well.
A short framing for learners helps a lot. Naming up front that the agent will ask questions before helping, push them to try first, and quiz them on what they missed — and why that's the design — shifts how learners engage. One small tip worth passing on: the more specifically a learner can name what's tripping them up, the better the agent can help. "I can't picture what's happening here" gives the agent more to work with than "I don't get it."
Feedback shapes what we ship next. There's an OCV form linked from inside the agent, and educator input has driven much of the roadmap so far.

🫱🏼‍🫲🏾The bet

For decades, the students who got one-on-one coaching outperformed the students who didn't. That gap was a function of access — who had a tutor, who had a teacher with bandwidth, who had a parent at the kitchen table. AI is the first technology in the history of education with a real shot at closing it.

That's the bet we are making. AI as a coach. Built on learning science. Built into the tools schools already trust. Available to every student, not just the ones whose families can afford it.

Study and Learn is the first move. Open Microsoft 365 Copilot. Look in the left navigation. The coach is there as long as Copilot Chat is enabled. Get going at https://aka.ms/studyandlearn

Resources:

Anoo Padte is Principal Product Manager for AI in Education at Microsoft.

Introducing Learning Activities: AI-powered practice for educators and students

SamanthaFisher — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:59:55 GMT

Practice is where learning actually happens. It’s one thing to read through a unit or sit through a lesson; it’s another to retrieve that knowledge on demand. But building good practice materials takes time that educators rarely have, and most students don’t know where to start when it comes to studying on their own.

Learning Activities is designed to close that gap for both.

With Learning Activities, educators can paste in lesson content and generate a shareable practice activity in under three minutes. Students can do the same with their own notes to study independently, or dive straight into an activity a teacher shared with them. The AI does the heavy lifting: creating flashcards, fill-in-the-blank exercises, matching games, and quizzes from whatever content you bring.

Today we’re walking through everything that’s available, who it’s for, and how to get started.

What are Learning Activities?

Learning Activities is a web-based tool powered by Microsoft AI. You bring the content, and it generates four types of interactive practice activities:

Flashcards: Term and definition, question and answer, or multiple-choice cards. Great for vocabulary, concepts, and content review.
Fill in the Blanks: AI removes key words from your content and learners drag them back into the correct blanks. Adjustable difficulty: Easy, Medium, or Challenging.
Matching: A timed game where players match terms with definitions, with a leaderboard for friendly competition.
Quizzes: Students generate their own multiple-choice quizzes from study materials or even just a topic description. A powerful self-study tool.

Each activity type targets a different learning moment, from first-pass recognition with flashcards to timed recall under pressure with Matching. Because the AI handles the generation, the whole thing takes seconds.

Four activity types, one seamless experience

Flashcards

Educators can create a set of flashcards from lesson notes or an uploaded document and share them with the class in minutes. Students can also create their own sets to study independently. Choose from term and definition, Q&A, or multiple-choice card formats, or mix and match them in a single set.

During practice, students flip through cards and sort them into “I know this” and “Still learning” piles. After finishing, they see a summary of where they stand and can retry only the cards they missed.

Fill in the Blanks

AI analyzes your content, removes key words, and builds exercises where learners drag the correct words back into the blanks. Educators can choose to let the AI lightly rephrase content for better exercises or keep the original text exactly as written. Three difficulty levels give you control over the challenge.

Learners get immediate feedback after each exercise: correct answers appear in green, missed ones in red. Then they move on to the next passage.

Matching

The Matching game generates term-and-definition pairs from your content and turns them into a timed race. Each round randomly selects six terms from the full set, so replaying the same activity stays fresh. A leaderboard shows the top five fastest times, and players can use a custom nickname or stay anonymous.

Quizzes (students only)

Quizzes are created by students, for students. They paste in their study notes, describe a topic they want to be tested on, or upload a file, and the AI generates a multiple-choice quiz. Students pick 10, 15, or 20 questions and can turn on Practice mode for question-by-question feedback with instant retries, rather than waiting until the end to see results.

No teacher setup required. Students can go from “I have a test tomorrow” to practicing in about a minute.

End-to-end demo of Learning Activities

Who can use Learning Activities?

Learning Activities is built for three audiences:

Educators can create and share Flashcards, Fill in the Blanks, and Matching activities with their students. After students practice, educators see lightweight insights on completions, average scores, and which specific items gave students the most trouble.

Students (all ages) can practice activities shared with them by an educator using a join code or direct link.

Students (age 13+) who have access to Copilot chat can create their own Flashcards, Fill in the blanks, Matching activities and Quizzes for independent study.

Creating activities requires access to Copilot Chat. Practicing activities shared by others does not.

Enterprise users can use Learning Activities to build practice materials for onboarding, training, or personal development. Same tools, same AI, applied to professional content.

Where to find Learning Activities

Start on the web

The best place to get started is the Learning Activities web app, accessible in the education and productivity sections of the Microsoft apps list and at:

learningactivities.edu.cloud.microsoft

From the home screen, you can create a new activity, browse everything you’ve created or saved, and join an activity using a code a teacher shared with you.

In the Teach module

If you already use the Teach module in Microsoft 365, Learning Activities is built right in. Select Learning Activities in Teach and generate an activity directly from your content without switching apps.

Coming soon: Study and Learn agent

We’re actively integrating Learning Activities into the Study and Learn agent, so students will be able to generate practice activities inline as part of their AI-assisted study sessions, right where they’re already working.

Also available in Classwork in Teams for Education

Learning Activities is also available through Classwork in Teams for Education, so teachers who work primarily in Teams can create and share activities without leaving the apps they’re already in.

Any activity you create, whether from the web app, the Teach module, Teams, or the Study and Learn agent, shows up in your Learning Activities home screen. Everything stays in one place.

Getting started: educators

Go to learningactivities.edu.cloud.microsoft.
Select + New Activity and choose a type: Flashcards, Fill in the Blanks, or Matching.
Paste in your content or upload a file (Word, PDF, PowerPoint, or text, up to 100,000 characters).
Select your language and any format options, then select Generate.
Review the output, make any edits, and select Save Activity.
From the activity overview page, select Share to get a join code or share link for your students.

That’s it. First activity typically takes under three minutes.

Getting started: students

Go to learningactivities.edu.cloud.microsoft.
If your teacher shared an activity: select Join in the upper right, enter the join code, or open the direct link they sent you.
To create your own study set: select + New Activity, choose Flashcards, Fill in the blanks, Matching or Quiz, paste in your notes, and generate.

Getting started: enterprise users

Enterprise users can access Learning Activities at learningactivities.edu.cloud.microsoft with their Microsoft 365 account. Create activities from internal documents, onboarding materials, or training content the same way an educator would. Activities live in your My Activities tab and can be shared with teammates using a join code or link.

For IT admins: managing Learning Activities for your organization

Learning Activities is enabled by default for eligible Microsoft 365 tenants. As an admin, you can turn it on or off for your entire organization from the Microsoft 365 admin center. Directions are here: Manage Microsoft 365 for Education AI Features - M365 Education | Microsoft Learn.

View insights after your students practice

Once students complete activities you’ve shared, head back to the activity overview page to see how it went.

Insights available today:

Students started and completed
Average score
The specific cards, blanks, or questions students found most challenging

We’re continuing to build on this over time based on what educators tell us they need.

Helpful links

Learning Activities: Learning Activities - Microsoft Support
Flashcards: Create Flashcards with AI - Microsoft Support
Fill in the blanks: Create Fill in the blanks with AI - Microsoft Support
Matching: Create Matching game with AI - Microsoft Support
Quizzes: Create Quizzes using AI for Students - Microsoft Support
Manage Microsoft 365 for Education AI Features - M365 Education | Microsoft Learn
Learning Activities web app

Have questions or feedback? Share them in the comments below — our team reads every one.

Hands-on webinar: Study and Learn agent in M365 Copilot

MikeTholfsen — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:46:12 GMT

Join us on Wednesday, May 13th @ 8am Pacific Time for an in-depth professional development webinar on the new Study & Learn agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is about to become available for all students 13+ and educators. This will be a 60-minute hands-on webinar where the Product Management team will walk through the Study & Learn agent, which is purpose-built for learning. The experience goes beyond just answering questions and instead guiding students through concepts with step-by-step support, interactive activities like quizzes and flashcards, and conversations grounded in learning science. The Study & Learn agent will be globally available by the time of this webinar on May 13th, 2026.

We will also be providing links for professional development credit at this session. And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others.

What we will cover
✅ Introduce the new Study & Learn agent
✅Understand concept/question, FC and Quiz, Matching and FIB
✅IT admin motions for enabling Copilot Chat
✅Learning Activities for students hands-on
✅CPNBs and Study Guide slides and demo

📅 Date: Tuesday, May 13th
⏰ Time: 8:00 AM Pacific
🔗 Register: https://msit.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/msit.954c5c3b-cbc0-458d-9739-49e3e8b4baf7@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47

Accelerating the Flow of Learning

MikeTholfsen — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:07:39 GMT

By Vince Frankson, Authentica Solutions | Guest Post via the Microsoft Education Blog

Education technology leaders are not short on vision; they are short on time. They know exactly what their Microsoft 365 environment is capable of. What they deserve are better tools, smarter automation, and a partner that shows up ready to serve.

At Authentica Solutions, we pride ourselves on our culture of servant leadership, not just as a slogan, but as our guiding principle. Our mission is to support and serve district technology teams, ensuring that technology enhances their valuable work rather than making it more complex.

Everything we build is organized around one purpose: accelerating the flow of learning. Not technology for its own sake... tools and services focused at getting teachers back to teaching, students back to learning, and district leaders back to the decisions that matter most.

With the school year winding down and Back to School planning already on the horizon, there is no better moment to look at where your Microsoft 365 environment stands, and how the right tools and the right team can compress your timeline, free your people, and make this the smoothest Back to School launch yet.

District Technology Teams Deserve Better Tools

K-12 technology leaders oversee complex systems, sometimes across multiple campuses, and support a wide range of users. While Microsoft 365 offers advanced features, many remain underused due to the time and expertise required for full implementation.

Microsoft’s School Data Sync (SDS) is a great example. It is a genuinely powerful free service that automates the flow of student roster and identity data from your Student Information System (SIS) into Microsoft Entra ID, provisioning Teams classrooms, Intune device groups, SharePoint sites, and OneNote Class Notebooks automatically, at scale. The platform is exceptional. Fully configuring it, keeping it healthy across an academic year, and extending its value into the rest of the data ecosystem is specialized work that deserves specialized support.

Authentica addresses this gap by providing support so school IT teams can focus on high-impact tasks, helping educators and students achieve more.

Authentica seed™: Built to Accelerate the Flow of Learning

Authentica seed™ is Authentica’s Education Intelligence Cloud Service, designed to streamline learning by enabling clean, automated, bidirectional data pipelines. This allows teachers to access rosters quickly, students to begin learning immediately, and administrators to monitor instruction in real time, accelerating progress for everyone.

Getting Your Data into Microsoft 365

seed™ sits between your SIS and SDS, handling data preparation, mapping, and delivery so your team can focus on higher-value work. Districts that previously invested significant time in validation cycles and configuration troubleshooting are reaching full value in a fraction of the time.

Automated SIS-to-SDS delivery with built-in validation, so errors are caught before they ever reach your tenant.
Support for OneRoster API and CSV formats across all major SIS platforms, meeting your district where it already is.
Automatic provisioning of users, classes, and groups across Microsoft Entra ID, Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, and Intune for Education.
Manage Student Age Groups to limit or support access to Microsoft Copilot for students 13+.

Every hour returned from focusing on the data pipeline is an hour returned to learning. That is Cloud with Purpose.

Getting Your Data Back Where It Belongs

Learning does not stop at the edge of Microsoft 365, and neither should your data. seed™ closes the loop by moving grade data, assessment data, and engagement signals back to the platforms that need them, automatically.

Back to your SIS: Keeping your system of record current and authoritative without double grade entry.
To your Analytics platform: Giving administrators and instructional coaches visibility into what is working, event making Microsoft 365 activity visible, without waiting for manual exports.
Building your dream data estate: What if you could combine your academic and instructional data, your operations and staff data, and your financial data into a single place? What if you could have it prepped and ready so you can ask questions with Copilot and / or AI Agents.
- Which schools have the most students off track right now? Top 5, and why.
- Where are we spending the most with the weakest results? Top 3.

One connected data ecosystem. Compounding the return on every platform investment your district has made and accelerating the flow of learning throughout.

UsageIQ™ Microsoft 365 Edition: Giving Leaders the Visibility They Deserve

District technology leaders make consequential decisions about licensing, training, and support every year. They deserve data that makes those decisions clear. Authentica UsageIQ™ Microsoft 365 Edition was built to provide exactly that: a straightforward, actionable picture of how your Microsoft 365 environment is being used across the organization.

Not a consultant engagement. Not a manual pull from the admin portal. A purpose-built, single view of your tenant that tells you what you need to know, when you need to know it.

App-by-app usage across your tenant: Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, OneNote, and more, in one place.
School-by-school and role-based breakdowns: See where adoption is strong and where targeted support would unlock real value.
License utilization insights: Ensure every seat is earning its value and renewal conversations are grounded in actual usage data.
Back to School readiness views: Identify accounts and configurations that need attention before day one, not after.

When technology leaders can see clearly, they lead confidently. That visibility is not a luxury. It is what great tools are supposed to deliver.

Managed Services for Microsoft 365: A Team That Has Been Here Before

At Authentica, we deliver Managed Services with a servant leadership mindset. We're not just a helpdesk, our team has years of experience at Microsoft, having built education solutions like SDS, Teams for Education, and Graph APIs. We support your district as an expert extension to handle critical Microsoft 365 tasks efficiently, allowing your technology staff to focus on their key responsibilities.

What Managed Services for Microsoft 365 Covers

End-of-Year close support for SDS expiration management, tenant cleanup, graduating account archiving, and identity hygiene, handled on time and on spec so your team can close the year cleanly.
Back to School launch for new year SDS configuration, classroom provisioning, device group refresh, and Conditional Access review, so teachers walk into a working environment on day one.
Ongoing SDS health monitoring and proactive troubleshooting, so issues are resolved before they become incidents
Microsoft Entra ID and identity management support across the full user lifecycle.
Teams for Education configuration, governance, and adoption enablement.
Intune for Education device policy and deployment support.
Copilot readiness assessment and enablement, so your district is positioned for AI-powered learning when you are ready to move.

This is what it looks like when your Microsoft 365 environment has a team behind it that is fully committed to your success, not just at launch, but every day.

End of School Checklist: Five Things Worth Doing Before Summer Break

These are the actions that make Back to School smoother, faster, and less reactive. Your team knows this; this is a reminder of what is worth prioritizing before the calendar turns.

Audit Microsoft Entra ID for inactive and graduating accounts. Clean identities now mean a cleaner, more secure tenant heading into the new year, and fewer licensing surprises at renewal.
Review your SDS sync health. Check error and warning logs now. Small data issues that are easy to address in the spring become August emergencies. Get ahead of them while there is room to breathe.
Check your Microsoft 365 license utilization. If you are on A3 or A5, are those features actively working for your district? UsageIQ™ Microsoft 365 Edition can show you the full picture and give you a clear story heading into renewal season.
Archive Teams classes from the current year. Establish your retention and archival approach before the new year roster drop. A clean tenant makes everyone faster, IT, teachers, and students.
Plan your Back-to-School timeline now. Microsoft School Data Sync (SDS) provisioning for a large district takes time. Build in buffer, engage your support resources before August, and set your team up to launch the year confidently instead of reactively.

We Are Here to Serve

Authentica Solutions is offering a complimentary Microsoft 365 Readiness Assessment for districts that want a clear picture of where they stand before the new year begins. This is a straightforward conversation with our team, people who have been inside these systems for years, helping you identify what is working, what is ready to unlock, and where the right tools can return the most value.

No pressure. Just expertise, in service of your district and the learning that happens inside it.

Let’s talk to schedule your complimentary Microsoft 365 Readiness Assessment.

About Authentica Solutions

Authentica Solutions is an EdTech company grounded in servant leadership and built around one purpose: accelerating the flow of learning. Our team, including former Microsoft engineers who built core Microsoft 365 education products, serves K-12 districts through seed™, UsageIQ™, reachAI™, and Managed Services for Microsoft 365. Cloud with Purpose. Visit www.authenticasolutions.com

Hands-on Session: From idea to interactive lesson with Microsoft Learning Zone

MikeTholfsen — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:53:02 GMT

Join us on Tuesday, May 12th at 8:00 AM Pacific for a hands-on professional development session introducing Learning Zone - a new app that helps you create interactive, classroom-ready lessons in minutes. In this 45-minute webinar, the Product Management team will guide you through core capabilities and the latest updates. You can follow along using your own Microsoft 365 Education account. Also, you will be able to get Professional Development credit with this session and we will offer a Credly badge at the end.

What we will cover:

✅ Getting started with Learning Zone: Access Learning Zone and get set up

✅ Experience as a student: Join a session and see how it works from the student perspective

✅ Building your first interactive lesson: Create your first interactive lesson (in minutes!)

✅ Assigning to your class: Send lessons via link, short code, Teams Assignments, or your LMS

✅ Exploring the ready-to-learn library: Bring immediate value to your students through a variety of lessons by trusted of partners.

Important note: Lesson generation is currently available only on Copilot+ PCs with any Microsoft 365 Education license (supported in English and Spanish). No Copilot+ PC? No problem. You’ll still get to try out the student experience, learn how to use the lesson library, assign interactive lessons, review insights, and integrate Learning Zone into your existing workflows.

📅 Date: Tuesday, May 12th
⏰ Time: 8:00 AM Pacific

Register: https://aka.ms/LZwebinarMay26

We look forward to having you attend the event!

Minecraft Education Lesson Plans in Teach: AI-powered lesson planning meets the world of Minecraft

MaxFritz — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:57:37 GMT

As educators, you've told us that some of your most time-consuming work is adapting lessons for engagement, aligning them to standards, and finding ways to bring immersive experiences into your curriculum. At the same time, Minecraft Education is already one of the most effective learning tools for engaging learners in classrooms around the world, with students lighting up the moment they hear the word "Minecraft."

Today, we're bringing those two things together. Minecraft Education lesson plans are now generally available in Teach.

Describe your topic, pick a grade level and subject, and Teach generates a complete, standards-aligned lesson plan built around Minecraft Education activities, including the specific blocks, materials, and preparation steps you need to run it confidently, even if you've never opened Minecraft Education before. (Minecraft Education is included in most Microsoft 365 software subscriptions for schools, so you also likely have full access.)

What you get

Every generated Minecraft Education lesson plan includes:

Standards-aligned Minecraft Education activities - Build activities and challenges that reflect your selected standards across subjects like ELA, math, science, social studies, computer science, and more
Minecraft-specific materials guidance - Recommendations for the exact blocks, items, and in-game tools your students will need, so you don't have to figure it out yourself
Preparation instructions - Step-by-step setup guidance for educators new to Minecraft Education, so you can walk into the classroom ready to go
Differentiation and collaboration - Tiered challenge options, collaborative build tasks, and formative checks embedded within gameplay
A student link - A shareable link to send directly to students so they can join the activity

See it in action

Once your lesson is generated, you can edit any section directly or use Enhance with AI to refine it further: add collaborative build tasks, adjust the length and tone, include accessibility supports, or regenerate with new instructions. When it's ready, save to OneDrive and open it in Word to share with colleagues, or launch the Minecraft Education app directly to set up the lesson experience.

For a full walkthrough of every step, see the support article.

Why this matters

We know many of you already love using Minecraft Education in your classrooms, while others are curious how Minecraft can enhance your teaching to deepen student learning and engagement. Minecraft Education lesson plans in Teach make it easier to create experiences by generating a complete, customized lesson from your topic and standards, with the Minecraft-specific materials, activities, and preparation guidance built in.

Whether you're looking for a fresh lesson idea in a subject you haven't tried with Minecraft Education before, or you want to quickly adapt a concept for a different grade level, this tool gives you a starting point you can make your own. You bring the teaching expertise and your knowledge of your students.

Get started

Try it now: Minecraft Education lesson plan
Available to Faculty/Staff with a Microsoft 365 for Education license and Copilot Chat enabled
Does not require a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license
Minecraft Education may already be included with your Microsoft 365 license or can be purchased separately. Check your licensing options.

Helpful Links

Teach module training on Microsoft Learn, now including training on Minecraft Education lesson generation
Training courses for Minecraft educators

Have questions or ideas? Drop them in the comments below - We'd love to hear how you plan to use Minecraft Education lesson plans in your classroom!

Share your feedback with us by joining our EDU Insider Program (aka.ms/joinEIP).

Until next time,

Max Fritz · Microsoft Education

Classic LTI App Retirements, Preview of OneDrive LTI Migration Tool for Canvas

tjvering — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:30:00 GMT

Classic Microsoft LTI® Apps Retiring in 2026: What You Need to Know and How to Prepare

Microsoft is continuing its investment in a unified, modern Microsoft 365 LTI experience. As part of this evolution, several classic Microsoft LTI apps will be retired in September 2026.

This post outlines:

Which classic LTI apps are retiring and when
What happens to existing course links and content created in classic LTIs retiring
What actions you should take now to prepare, and start transitioning to Microsoft 365 LTI
New migration tooling available to support transition

Classic Microsoft LTI® Apps Retiring September 17, 2026

As we shared last September in our Microsoft 365 LTI GA release Blog, the following classic Microsoft LTI apps will be retired on September 17, 2026:

Microsoft OneDrive LTI (1.3)
OneNote Class Notebook LTI (1.1)
Microsoft Reflect LTI (1.3)
Microsoft Teams Assignments LTI (1.3)

After September 17, 2026, any links or placements of these classic apps in courses will stop working. However, the files, notebooks, assignments, and check-ins created by these classic apps will continue to be available to copy and reuse.

Replacements for these classic experiences are now available through the unified Microsoft 365 LTI built on the LTI® 1.3 Advantage standard. This delivers modern security, simplified identity mapping with Microsoft Entra, LMS enrollment and grade syncing, and a single deployment model for LMS administrators. We’ll continue to update our migration guides as additional tools and guidance become available.

NEW: Preview the OneDrive LTI Migration Tool for Canvas

Canvas LMS Customers: We are excited to announce that the Microsoft OneDrive LTI Migration Tool for Canvas is now available in Preview!
This tool helps institutions using Canvas LMS migrate OneDrive content links from the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI app to the new Microsoft 365 LTI app — preserving existing file links in courses so educators and students experience a seamless transition.

For new preview deployments: detailed deployment instructions are available in the Canvas migration guide, which has been updated with configuration steps and guidance for using the migration tool.

If you participated in the private preview: If you have already deployed the OneDrive LTI Migration Tool in Canvas during the private preview, no action is required. Your existing deployment will continue to work as part of the Public Preview, and in GA. If you deployed the private preview in a testing environment, we suggest that you follow the new Canvas migration guide in your production environment.

Below is guidance to assist with transition from the other classic LTI apps and on additional LMS platforms. We will continue to communicate updates to this guidance as it evolves.

If you use the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI 1.3 with an LMS other than Canvas

Deploy Microsoft 365 LTI with the OneDrive app enabled and guide educators to use the new Microsoft 365 LTI (Microsoft Education menus) to create file links or embeds in course content.
Disable/hide/remove placements of the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI app in your LMS but do not uninstall or disable the app.
Files linked or embedded with the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI will stop working when the app is retired, so those links and embeds must be replaced using the new Microsoft 365 LTI (Microsoft Education) app ahead of the retirement date.

OneNote Class Notebook LTI 1.1 (All LMS platforms)

The new OneNote Class Notebook LTI 1.3 integration is now available in the Microsoft 365 LTI app, with automatic roster sync and streamlined setup.

Deploy Microsoft 365 LTI with the OneNote Class Notebook app enabled, and guide educators to use the new app.
Disable/hide/remove placements of the classic OneNote integration, but do not uninstall the app to avoid migration issues during transition.
While there is no direct migration path from OneNote Class Notebook LTI 1.1 notebooks to Microsoft 365 LTI Class Notebooks, educators can copy sections/pages from one notebook to another using the right-click menu on Sections and Pages (and selecting “Move/Copy”) in OneNote on Windows, OneNote Web, and OneNote for Mac. Instructions are also available for content transfer using OneNote on Mac, iOS, or Android.

Microsoft Teams Assignments LTI 1.3 (All LMS platforms)

Deploy Microsoft 365 LTI with the Assignments app enabled, and guide educators to create assignments using the new app.
Disable/hide/remove placements of the legacy Teams Assignments LTI app as soon as you install the new Microsoft 365 LTI and enable the Assignments app, and guide you users to copy their existing assignments using the new app.
Teams Assignments created by the classic LTI 1.3 app can be reused as in the new Microsoft 365 LTI Assignments experience (which does not require a Team)
Assignments created in the LMS or via the Assignments app in Microsoft Teams can be copied and reused using the Create from Existing functionality in the Microsoft 365 LTI (Microsoft Education) Assignment instructor flow.

Microsoft Reflect LTI 1.3 (All LMS platforms)

Deploy Microsoft 365 LTI with the Reflect app enabled, and guide educators to create new Reflects in the new Microsoft 365 LTI experience.
There is no migration path for reflects created in the classic Reflect LTI 1.3 app to the Reflect experience in the new Microsoft 365 LTI Reflect app.
We recommend transitioning to the new Reflect experience in Microsoft 365 LTI as soon as possible, and remove the classic app ahead of the September 17, 2026 retirement.

Stay Connected

We love hearing from you! There are a few ways to stay engaged with Microsoft and your peers on the LMS integrations.

Follow this blog! Click Register at the top right to create an account and profile for the Microsoft Tech Community and Follow the Education Blog so you don’t miss any of our updates.

Join the free Education Insiders Program to preview updates, get support from other community members, meet the team, and influence the roadmap.
Join us for Microsoft 365 LTI office hours to connect with your peers and share feedback directly with Microsoft experts.

When: 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month @ 11AM EST
Where: https://aka.ms/LTIOfficeHours

Getting help and giving feedback

LMS and Microsoft 365 admins can contact Microsoft Education Support to help resolve configuration and deployment issues, for themselves or on behalf of users.
Educators and Learners can contact support or give feedback directly from the app through the help and feedback menu.

TJ Vering
Principal Product Manager
Microsoft Education
https://linkedin.com/in/tvering

Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) is a trademark of the 1EdTech Consortium, Inc. (https://1edtech.org/)

New information literacy features in Search Progress now generally available

EmmaGray — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:07:19 GMT

Hello all!

Last September, we shared a preview of new information literacy features coming to Search Progress — designed to help students pause, think critically, and show their reasoning as they research online. Today, we’re excited to share that these features are generally available for all educators using Search Progress through Assignments in Teams for Education and the Microsoft 365 LTI®.

A special thank you to the educators who participated in the preview and shared feedback along the way; your insights helped shape these features into what they are today.

See it in action

Want a walkthrough before reading the details? Watch our Elevate Signature Series session, “Show Me Your Thinking,” where Dr. Geri Gillespy and I discuss future ready skills along with Search Progress setup, the full educator-to-student workflow, and how these skills connect to global assessment frameworks like PISA 2029.

Why process matters more than ever

Information literacy skills like verifying sources, understanding context, and thinking critically are foundational for responsible and effective navigation of online information. These skills become even more critical as AI becomes an integral part of learning and daily life, where students don’t just need access to information, they need to know how to evaluate it.

To ensure these features were developed in alignment with the latest in online reasoning research, we consulted with experts from the Digital Inquiry Group — a team with decades of experience as curriculum designers, classroom educators, researchers, and teacher educators — recognized with awards from UNESCO, the American Educational Research Association, and the School Library Association, to name a few.

What’s now available

The enhanced Search Progress features introduce structured activities and checkpoints — cognitive forcing functions that encourage students to pause, consider, and articulate their reasoning as they navigate the complex world of online information. Here’s what you can now enable for your assignments:

Evaluating source reputability: Instead of relying solely on what a source says about itself, students investigate the individuals or organizations behind the information by looking into what other sources say about them, like how employers use references in a job interview.
Cross-checking and lateral reading: “Using the internet to check the internet”, students compare information and perspectives across multiple sources to reveal patterns, differences, and possible inaccuracies.
Impact awareness: Students consider what could be at risk if the information is inaccurate or fabricated with the new "factual importance" checkpoint. For instance, health advice carries different consequences than an AI-generated image of a cat dancing at the disco.
Identifying source purpose: Information is created for a reason. Students consider who created a source, and whether it’s trying to inform, persuade, sell, or entertain.
Metacognitive reflection: Students reflect on the research process itself including why certain sources stood out, which strategies worked best, and how to apply those learnings in the future.

Not just for research projects

These features aren’t only for formal research assignments. They’re designed for class activities that involve online research, whether students are exploring a new topic, gathering sources for a presentation, or verifying information for a discussion. The goal is to build habits that transfer throughout the digital information ecosystem, from navigating social media to evaluating AI-generated content. For example:

A science educator assigns a pre-lab research task on chemical reactions. By enabling Source Reputation and Factual Importance, students learn to prioritize safety data sheets and academic sources over unverified blogs and to think about why accuracy matters when the stakes are high.
A social studies educator uses Cross-check for an assignment focusing on current events. Students discover that a viral statistic has been reported differently across sources, and they practice tracing claims back to their origin — building lateral reading habits they’ll carry into their media consumption outside of school.

What educators are saying

Teacher librarians, in particular, have told us that the “process over product” approach gives them something they’ve been missing — visibility into the process of student inquiry, not just what they turn in. These features give them a window into the journey, not just the destination. With new scaffolds that support cross-checking and the investigation of source reputation, Search Progress now covers more of the skills they’ve been trying to teach.

We’ve heard from educators that the explanation prompts reveal a side of student thinking that traditional assignments don't often capture. During an early pilot, students pushed back on a text field that didn’t scroll to expand, not because they wanted less writing, but because they had more to say about why they chose their sources and wanted more space to explain their thinking. Students who described themselves as not being strong essay writers found a different way to show their thinking, and when they knew that their reasoning mattered as much as the final product, it changed how they engaged with the assignment.

Preparing students with future-ready skills for the age of AI

As educators worldwide work to build students’ information literacy skills, global frameworks are evolving to match. The OECD recently published a first draft of the PISA 2029 Media and Artificial Intelligence Literacy (MAIL) assessment framework — a new assessment that will measure 15-year-olds’ ability to critically evaluate digital and AI-generated content across all participating countries.

We were interested to see how closely the skills that Search Progress helps build align with the competences this framework describes. The MAIL assessment places significant emphasis on evaluating source credibility, assessing purpose and bias, and cross-checking information across multiple sources — all skills that Search Progress is designed to support through structured activities and checkpoints in the flow of research.

Educators have also shared that these features help address a tension many are navigating right now: how to maintain academic integrity when AI-generated work is increasingly difficult to distinguish from student work. Rather than relying on detection tools at the end of the pipeline, Search Progress makes the research process itself the artifact, which gives educators evidence of student thinking throughout. Of course, information literacy is broader than any single tool. The MAIL framework also includes competences around content creation and collaborative digital participation that go beyond what Search Progress currently addresses. But for the core skill of analysing and evaluating online information — which the framework highlights as one of its most heavily weighted competences — Search Progress can help you give your students meaningful practice right now.

By integrating these research habits into everyday assignments, you’re helping students build skills that will serve them well beyond any single assessment — from navigating social media to evaluating AI-generated content in their daily lives.

Getting started

Open Assignments in Teams for Education (or your LMS via the Microsoft 365 LTI).
Create a new assignment and select Search Progress as a Learning Accelerator.
Choose which information literacy features to enable for this assignment; you can mix and match based on the lesson.
Customize the checkpoint card prompts to fit your subject area and grade level.
Assign it to your class and watch the research process unfold.

Requirements

Available to all Microsoft 365 Education customers
Classes set up in Teams for Education or the Microsoft 365 LTI

Helpful links

📘 Take the MS Learn course — Intro course for educators
📘 Microsoft 365 LTI app overview — Bring Search Progress into your LMS
💬 Join the Education Insiders Program — Share feedback directly with our product team

We’re committed to helping you foster information and AI literacy, and your feedback continues to shape how these tools evolve. Join the Search Progress channel in the Education Insiders Program to connect with other educators, attend community calls, and share your experience directly with the product team. If you’re not yet an EIP member, sign up here: aka.ms/JoinEIP.

Have questions or ideas? Drop them in the comments below. I’d love to hear how you’re using these features in your classroom!

Until next time,

Emma Gray
Product Manager II
Microsoft Education

Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) is a trademark of the 1EdTech Consortium, Inc. (1edtech.org)

More standards are coming to the Teach Module and Teams for Education!

SamanthaFisher — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 21:34:58 GMT

Hi everyone!

As educators, you have told us that aligning lessons, assessments, and classroom materials to the standards you actually use is one of the most important parts of making AI-powered teaching tools useful in practice. When standards are available and easy to apply, it becomes much faster to create materials that fit your local curriculum and instructional goals.

That is why we are continuing to expand the standards experience across Microsoft Education. We are excited to share a new wave of international standards coming to the standards experience in Teach and in Teams for Education. These standards will support experiences in the Teach module across Lesson Plans, Quizzes, and Rubrics, and they are also coming to Assignments in Teams for Education. If you don't see your country listed, you can request more standards at this link.

In this post, we will share what is coming this week, what is planned over the next two months, what we are targeting for summer, and how we plan to keep you updated going forward.

Why this matters

Standards alignment helps you spend less time translating curriculum requirements into classroom materials and more time supporting student learning. Whether you are building a lesson plan, generating a quiz, creating a rubric, or preparing future assignments workflows in Teams for Education, access to the right standards makes those experiences more relevant and easier to use.

Our goal is to keep expanding coverage so more educators can work with the standards they already know and trust, in more countries, subjects, and grade bands.

New standards added in 2025

In 2025, we expanded standards coverage with a new set of international additions, including:

Austria
Canada - Ontario
- Early Language Learners
- Health & PE
- Technology Education
- Art
Canada - Quebec Francophone
Canada - Ontario World Languages
- French as a Second Language
- Native Languages
- American Sign Language as a Second Language
- Classical Studies and International Languages
Egypt
England
- Arts Education
- Health & PE
- World Languages
- Technology Education
- Career Technical Education
Finland
Kuwait
UK GCE AS and A Level Qualifications across a broad range of subject areas

These additions helped expand standards coverage beyond core national frameworks and into more subject-specific and qualification-based experiences.

Recently added

We have already started rolling out new international standards this spring. Recent additions include:

Czech Republic
UK additions, including recent support for Scotland, Wales, and UK GCE AS and A Level qualifications
New Brunswick - Technology Standards
Kuwait - Language Arts, Math, Social Studies
Estonia - Language Arts, Math, Science
Estonia - Social Studies
Latvia
New Brunswick - Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies

These recent additions laid the groundwork for the next wave of standards now arriving across Teach and Teams for Education.

Coming this week

This week, we are adding the following standards to the standards experience in Teach and Teams for Education:

Finland
Lithuania
Norway
Romania

These additions continue our recent rollout of international standards and expand access for educators who want to align AI-assisted lesson creation and assessment workflows to local curriculum expectations.

Coming in the next two months

Over the next two months, we expect to continue expanding standards coverage with the following additions:

Slovakia
Sweden
Egypt
Canada - Quebec Francophone Standards
India NCERT - Hindi Language Arts
India NCERT - Sanskrit Language Arts
Bahrain
Lebanon
Oman
Qatar
Greece

We also have additional standards in progress that are on the roadmap, with timing still being finalized:

Austria
Kuwait - Science
India NCERT - Urdu Language Arts
Australia ACARA National
- Technology Education
- Health & PE
- Art
- Languages
Canada - New Brunswick additional subject expansion
- Health & PE
- Art
- Languages
Norway vocational standards

As these become available, they will light up the same standards-backed experiences across Teach and Teams for Education.

Planned for summer

Looking ahead, we are planning an even broader set of standards expansions over the summer. This work is designed to add more international coverage across core subjects and additional curriculum frameworks.

The following are planned for summer:

Belgium - Flemish Catholic Network Standards (VVKSO)
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Canada, British Columbia
- ADST (Entrepreneurship & Marketing)
- Career Education (Career-Life Education, Career-Life Connections)
- Core Competencies
Canada: Ontario
- Business Studies
- Canadian & World Studies
- Co-op Ed
- Guidance & Career Ed
- Ontario Catholic expectations (ICE)
CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages)
- Language Arts
Portugal
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Germany: NRW State Kernlehrplan
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Hong Kong
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Turkey
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Vietnam
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Costa Rica
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Peru
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Guatemala
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Morocco
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Croatia
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Kenya
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Bolivia
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Chile
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Pakistan
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Panama
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies

This planned summer wave reflects our continued focus on expanding standards coverage in ways that are useful for real classroom workflows across regions.

Where you will see these standards

As standards coverage expands, educators will see the impact across several experiences:

Teach module - Lesson Plans
Teach module - Quizzes
Teach module and Teams for Education – Rubrics
Teams for Education – Assignments Instructions (Coming soon)

This means more opportunities to use standards as part of lesson creation, assessment design, and classroom workflows without having to start from scratch.

What this means for educators

As more standards become available, you will be able to:

Align lesson materials to more local and regional curriculum requirements
Build quizzes and rubrics that better reflect what students are expected to know and do
Use standards-backed workflows in Teach across more countries and subject areas
Prepare for future standards-aligned experiences in Assignments in Teams for Education

For educators working across multiple countries, languages, or curriculum systems, this expanded coverage can help reduce manual work and make AI-generated outputs more relevant to your teaching context.

We plan to keep sharing updates

We also plan to share regular blog updates roughly every quarter so you can see what standards are newly available, what is rolling out next, and where we are continuing to expand coverage.

Our goal is to make these updates easier to track so educators, school leaders, and partners can stay current on what is available in the standards experience across Microsoft Education.

Helpful links

Getting started with Teach
Modify content - Align to Standards
Microsoft Teams for Education
International standards currently available through EdGate
Request additional standards
Share feedback with us by joining our EDU Insider Program

Have questions or want to let us know which standards you would like to see next? Drop a comment below or submit a request through our Standards Feedback form. We would love to hear what curriculum frameworks matter most in your classrooms.

Until next time,

Samantha Fisher · Microsoft Education

What's New in Microsoft EDU - March 2026

MikeTholfsen — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:23:44 GMT

Join us on Wednesday, March 25th, 2026 for our latest "What's New in Microsoft EDU" webinar! We will be covering all of the latest product updates from Microsoft Education. These 30-minute webinars are put on by the Microsoft Education Product Management group and happen once per month, this month both 8:00am Pacific Time and 4:00pm Pacific time to cover as many global time zones as possible around the world. And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel in the new “What’s New in Microsoft EDU” playlist, so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others!

Here is our March 2026 webinar agenda:
1) M365 Copilot and AI updates for Educators and Students
- Modify Existing Content
- Minecraft EDU Lesson Plans
- New Learning Activities: Fill in the Blanks, Matching and Self-Quizzing
- Study & Learn agent for studnets
2) Learning Zone General Availability and the Copilot+ PC
3) Microsoft 365 LTI and Teach Module for Learning Management Systems
4) AMA - Ask Microsoft EDU Anything (Q&A)

We look forward to having you attend the event!

How to sign up
📅 OPTION 1: March 25th, Wednesday @ 8:00am Pacific Time Register here
📅 OPTION 2: March 25th, Wednesday @ 4:00pm Pacific Time Register here

This is what the webinar portal will look like when you register:

We look forward to seeing you there!

Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education

Learning Zone spotlight: How women won the vote

NevoGat — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:03:16 GMT

A monthly spotlight from the Learning Zone collection, featuring ready-to-use lessons that bring timely historical context and structured classroom discussion into your teaching.

Women’s History Month: How voting rights were won

The right to vote was not inevitable. It was organized, argued for, resisted, and won through decades of persistence. In both the UK and USA, activists formed movements, debated tactics, delivered speeches, wrote declarations, and in many cases faced arrest and imprisonment.

Women’s History Month invites us to look back at the women who pushed boundaries and helped change the course of history. It is a fitting moment to explore one of the most significant political shifts of the modern era in the classroom.

How women won the vote in Microsoft Learning Zone provides a structured, interactive way to explore this history in class. Students examine the contrasting approaches to the fight, analyze key figures, and compare British and American campaigns over time.

Assign this lesson in Learning Zone and bring context and awareness into your classroom this March.

This lesson is part of a curated library of ready-to-use interactive lessons in Microsoft Learning Zone, a free Windows app that allows educators to easily create and deliver interactive classroom experiences.

Modify Content in Teach: AI-powered tools to adapt your lessons in minutes

Leif Brenne — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 20:40:40 GMT

Already have great lesson materials? Now you can instantly align them to standards, differentiate for every learner, adjust reading levels, and add real-world examples — all without starting from scratch.

Hi everyone! As educators, you have told us that some of your most time-consuming work is not creating lessons — it is adapting them. Adjusting a reading passage for different grade levels, aligning an existing activity to new curriculum standards, or adding scaffolds for diverse learners can eat up hours of prep time each week.

That is why we are excited to announce that Modify Content is now generally available in Copilot in Teach — a set of AI-powered tools that help you take content you already have and quickly tailor it for your classroom.

What is Modify Content?

Modify Content lets you transform existing lesson materials — instructions, reading passages, lesson plans — using AI, so every student gets what they need without you having to rewrite everything manually. Just paste your content (or upload a Word or PDF file), choose how you want to modify it, and review the result.

It is designed to keep you in the driver's seat. Every modification is generated as a suggestion that you review and approve before it becomes part of your lesson.

Four powerful ways to modify your content

Align to Standards

Have a lesson you love but need it to meet specific curriculum requirements? Select one or more educational standards, and the tool adjusts your content to reflect what students should know and be able to do — without losing the original context of your lesson.

Example: A middle school science teacher has a hands-on weather observation activity. She selects the relevant Next Generation Science Standard and the tool weaves in the learning expectations, so her lesson now clearly supports the required competencies.

Differentiate Instructions

Adapt your instructions for different grade levels and add scaffolding — like step-by-step breakdowns, example answers, or hints — so every student can access and engage with the task.

Example: A high school English teacher adapts a literary analysis prompt for students reading below grade level. She selects a lower grade target, adds "Hints" as the scaffold type, and chooses "Expanded" length. In seconds, she has a version that guides struggling readers through the same assignment.

Modify Reading Level

Rewrite any text to match a specific grade level while preserving the original meaning and key vocabulary. You can also generate a glossary — with clear, age-appropriate definitions — right at the end of the passage.

Example: A secondary social studies educator wants learners to work with a primary source written at a university reading level. Using Modify Reading Level, she produces a version that keeps the document's key ideas and important historical terms intact while simplifying sentence structure for her students.

Add Supporting Examples

Enrich your content with real-world, historical, or scientific examples that make abstract concepts more concrete and relatable — without altering your original text.

Example: An elementary teacher is introducing the concept of ecosystems. She adds two "Real World" examples at "Moderate" depth, and the tool appends relatable scenarios — like a local pond ecosystem and a school garden — that help students connect the concept to their own experiences.

See it in action

Here is a quick look at how Modify Content works:

Open Teach and select Modify Content
Paste your content or upload a Word/PDF file
Choose your modification — Align to Standards, Differentiate Instructions, Modify Reading Level, or Add Supporting Examples
Configure your options — grade level, scaffold type, number of examples, and more
Generate and review — the AI produces a modified version for you to approve, edit, or regenerate
Save your result — download as a Word document or copy the text directly

Tip: You can iteratively refine the output using the description box to request adjustments — like changing sentence length, clarifying a concept, or modifying specific sections.

Tips for getting the most out of Modify Content

Tip	Details
Start with clear, detailed input	The more context you provide, the more relevant the output. A well-written paragraph gives the AI much more to work with than a few bullet points.
Always review before saving	AI-generated content is a starting point, not the final word. Check that the output matches your instructional goals and is appropriate for your students.
Combine modifications	Use Align to Standards first, then Differentiate Instructions on the result. Layering modifications can help you build exactly the version you need.
Preserve key vocabulary	When modifying reading levels, use the key terms feature to ensure important subject-specific words stay in the text, even if the overall reading level changes.

Requirements

To use Modify Content:

License: Microsoft 365 Education (A1, A3, or A5)
Role: Educator (the feature is not available to students)
Input: Minimum 50 characters of content to generate modifications

Helpful links

Getting started with Teach
Modify content — Align to Standards
Modify content — Differentiate Instructions
Modify content — Modify Reading Level
Modify content — Add Supporting Examples
Share feedback with us by joining our EDU Insider Program

Have questions or ideas? Drop them in the comments below — we would love to hear how you are using Modify Content to save time and support your students!

Until next time,

Leif Brenne · Microsoft Education

Learning Zone spotlight: Ace your note-taking skills

NevoGat — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:56:51 GMT

A monthly spotlight from the Learning Zone collection, featuring ready-to-use lessons that bring timely classroom topics and practical learning skills into your teaching.

Strengthen habits that make learning last

By this time of the semester, the early energy of a new term has settled, content is getting denser, and assessments are already visible on the horizon. It is a good moment to ask a simple question:

Are your students’ notes helping them, or just filling pages?

Research on memory suggests that without revisiting material, much of it fades within days. Small shifts in structure and review habits can make a real difference over time.

Ace your note-taking skills in Microsoft Learning Zone gives you a focused, interactive way to address this in class. In one session, students explore practical, research-informed strategies for organizing notes, reviewing within 24 hours, and using simple systems such as structured layouts and annotation. The lesson includes short self-practice activities and connects directly to the way they are already working.

Assign the lesson in Learning Zone and give your students tools they can use for the rest of the year.

This lesson is part of a curated library of ready-to-use interactive lessons in Microsoft Learning Zone - a free Windows app that allows educators to easily create and deliver interactive classroom experiences.

What’s New in Microsoft EDU, Bett Edition January 2026

MikeTholfsen — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 16:20:10 GMT

Welcome to our update for Microsoft Education and our special Bett 2026 edition! The Bett conference takes place in London during the week of January 21st - January 23rd, and Microsoft Education has 18 exciting updates to share! Check out the official Bett News blog here, and for our full Bett schedule and session times, be sure to check out our Microsoft EDU Bett 2026 guide.

January 2026 topics:

Microsoft 365 Updates for Educators
Microsoft Learning Zone
Microsoft 365 Updates for Students
Teams EDU and OneNote EDU Updates
Microsoft 365 LTI Updates
Minecraft EDU

1. New Educator tools coming to the Teach Module in Microsoft 365

Unit Plans

Soon educators will be able to create unit plans in Teach. Using a familiar interface, educators will be able to describe their unit, ground in existing content and educational standards, and attach any existing lesson plans. Unit plans will be created as Microsoft Word documents to facilitate easy edits and sharing.

When: Preview in Spring 2026

Minecraft Lesson Plans

Minecraft Education prepares students for the future workplace by helping build skills like collaboration, creative problem-solving, communication, and computational thinking. Coming soon, you will be able to create lesson plans in Teach that are fully teachable in Minecraft Education. And if you’re new to Minecraft Education, the lesson plan includes step-by-step instructions to get started.

Just like the existing lesson plan tool in Teach, Minecraft Lessons can be grounded on your class details, existing content, and educational standards from 35+ countries.

When: Preview in February 2026

Modify Content

When: In Preview now

Teach supports educators in modifying their existing teaching materials using AI-powered tools that save time and help meet the diverse needs of learners. With Modify existing content, educators can quickly adapt lessons they already use—without starting from scratch—by aligning materials to standards, differentiating instructions, adjusting reading levels, and enhancing text with supporting examples.

Each modification tool accepts direct text input or file uploads from cloud storage, making it easy to transform current curriculum resources. These tools help educators maintain instructional intent while ensuring content is accessible, standards aligned, and effective for all learners.

Align materials to standards

Aligning instructional content to educational standards helps ensure lessons clearly support required learning goals and set the right expectations for learners. The Align to Standards tool rewrites existing lesson instructions so they reflect the intent of the selected standard—focusing on what learners should understand or be able to do—without copying the standard’s wording.

Scenario:
An educator has a lesson instruction for a reading activity on ecosystems. After selecting a state science standard, the educator uses Align to Standards to produce a revised instruction that emphasizes system interactions and evidence-based explanations while preserving the lesson’s original purpose. This allows the educator to strengthen alignment quickly without rewriting the lesson from scratch.

Differentiate instructions

Differentiation helps ensure every learner—regardless of readiness, background knowledge, or support needs—can access and engage with instructional tasks. The Differentiate Instructions tool adapts existing instructions based on specific supports an educator selects, such as adjusting reading level, including a single type of scaffold, or targeting a desired length.

Because this tool is designed for single shot use, it produces a clear, accurate adaptation that adheres directly to the selected inputs.

Scenario:
A secondary biology educator has lab instructions written for general education learners but needs versions for learners requiring additional scaffolding. Using Differentiate Instructions, the educator quickly generates modified instructions that include step-by-step breakdowns, sentence starters, or graphic organizers—making the lab more accessible without changing the learning goal.

Modify reading level

Adjusting the reading level helps ensure instructional content remains accessible while preserving essential vocabulary and core concepts. The Modify reading level tool rewrites text to match a specified grade level, simplifying or increasing complexity as needed while maintaining meaning. Educators can also choose to generate a glossary with clear, age-appropriate definitions of key terms.

Scenario:
A social studies educator wants students to work with a primary source written at a university reading level. Using Modify reading level, the educator creates a version that maintains the document’s key ideas and important historical terms while simplifying sentence structure for lower secondary learners. By adding a glossary, students can access learner friendly definitions alongside the adapted text.

Add supporting examples

Concrete examples strengthen understanding by connecting abstract ideas to real world applications. The Add Supporting Examples tool enhances existing instructional content by appending relevant, accurate, and age-appropriate examples—without altering the original paragraph.

Scenario:
An educator teaching thermal energy transfer has a paragraph explaining that heat moves from warmer objects to cooler ones, but the concept feels abstract. Using Add Supporting Examples, the educator adds real world examples—such as a metal spoon warming in hot soup or an ice cube melting on a countertop—to help learners visualize how heat transfer works. These examples reinforce understanding and make the concept more accessible for secondary learners.

Fill in the Blanks, Matching and Quizzing

New Learning Activities are coming soon! We’re excited to introduce three new Learning Activities designed to make classroom experiences more dynamic and personalized: Fill in the Blanks, Matching, and Quizzes. Whether it’s completing paragraphs to strengthen comprehension, pairing terms with definitions in a timed matching game, or testing knowledge through quick self-assessments, these activities bring variety and fun to learning.

Fill in the blanks creates paragraphs where learners can check their understanding by filling in missing terms. Matching is a game where learners can match terms and definitions while racing against the clock, aiming for fast completion and accuracy. And Quizzes allows students to quiz themselves and assess their comprehension. Learning Activities are available across our education products, in a standalone web app, in the Teach Module, in Teams for Education, in the Study and Learn agent and Study Guides.

When: Spring 2026

Teach Module updates in Teams Classwork

In Teams Classwork, you can already use Copilot to create Lesson Plans, Flashcards, and Fill in the Blank Activities. Coming this Spring, you will see the ability to create and modify more content, better matching the capabilities of Teach in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App. This includes modifying content with AI, Minecraft Lessons, and more!

When: Coming soon

Teach Module and Class Notebook integration

We're bringing Copilot-powered creation tools directly into OneNote Class Notebook. Teachers will be able to generate Learning Activities and quizzes or modify existing content (like adjusting reading level or adding supporting examples) without leaving the page where they're already planning.

When: Coming soon

2. Spark classroom engagement with Microsoft Learning Zone

Educators worldwide are always looking for innovative ways to engage students, personalize learning, and support individual growth, yet limited time and resources often stand in their way. Microsoft Learning Zone, a new Windows app, empowers educators to transform any idea or resource into an interactive, personalized lesson using AI on Copilot+ PCs. The app also provides actionable insights to guide instruction and support every student’s progress.

Learning Zone is now available to download from the Windows app store and included at no additional cost with all Microsoft Education licenses.

Just in time for Bett 2026, Learning Zone has earned the prestigious ISTE Seal of Alignment - a recognized mark of quality, accessibility, and inclusive design. This recognition reflects our commitment to delivering meaningful, inclusive, and research-backed digital learning experiences for every learner. As noted by ISTE reviewers: "Microsoft Learning Zone saves educators valuable time while delivering personalized instruction that addresses individual learning needs."

Microsoft Learning Zone home page and example activity

Getting started with Microsoft Learning Zone is simple. Educators begin by defining their lesson goals and preferences and can also choose to reference their teaching materials or trusted in-app resources by OpenStax. From there, AI does the heavy-lifting, generating a complete, interactive lesson with engaging content slides and a variety of practice activities. Educators can also quickly create Kahoot! quizzes using AI, bringing live classroom gamification into their lessons with just a few clicks.

Learning Zone is more than content creation; it provides a full classroom-ready solution: from assignment to actionable insights. Once a lesson is created and reviewed, educators can assign it to students. Students complete lessons at their own pace, on any device, while the lesson flow adapts to their responses, helping reinforce understanding, revisit missed concepts, and build confidence over time. Educators, in turn, gain clear, actionable insights into student progress and mastery, enabling them to personalize instruction and better support every learner’s growth.

Learning Zone is a classroom ready solution including management and actionable insights

Learning Zone also includes an extensive library of ready-to-learn lessons developed in collaboration with leading global organizations, including the Nobel Peace Center, PBS NewsHour, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), NASA, OpenStax, Figma, and Minecraft Education. Ready-to-learn lessons are available to educators and students on any Windows device and are a great way to inspire curiosity and bring meaningful learning of different subjects into the classroom.

Ready-to-learn library in partnership with trusted global organizations

Learning Zone is available today:

Visit https://learningzone.microsoft.com to learn more and download the app.

3. New AI-powered tools for student learning in Microsoft 365

Study and Learn Agent

Bring the interactive, conversational Study and Learn Agent in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App to your students. Available to all Microsoft EDU customers, the agent does not require an additional Copilot license. It is going into preview now, in January 2026. Join the Microsoft Education Insiders community at https://aka.ms/joinEIP and get information about getting access to the Preview.

Study and Learn helps learners understand concepts, practice skills with activities like flashcards, and prepare for tests with study guides and quizzes. Additional activities including fill-in-the-blanks, matching, and others that will continue to be added.

Purpose-built for learning in collaboration with learning science experts, Study and Learn aims to help foster reflective and critical thinking. Over time, it will provide a more personalized, adaptive, inclusive experience to make learning relevant and bolster motivation.

When: January 2026 Preview

Learning Activities app

The Learning Activities Web App is now here! This web-based experience brings all your favorite activities together in one place, making it easier than ever to create, customize, and share engaging content. Whether you’re an educator designing lessons or a student building study sets, the web app offers a streamlined interface for finding or creating Flashcards and Fill in the Blanks with Matching, and Quizzes coming soon. You can easily access all your activities that you have created in other products from the web app, too.

When: Available now!

4. Updates for your favorite teaching tools - Teams EDU and OneNote EDU

Set AI Guidelines in Teams

To help bring clarity to AI use in the classroom, AI Guidelines in Assignments allow educators to set clear expectations for when and how students can use AI—directly within the assignment experience. Educators start with a set of default, standardized AI use levels, and can apply them at the class or assignment level, with the ability to customize descriptions to reflect their school or district guidelines. These guidelines are clearly visible to students, reducing confusion and supporting responsible, transparent AI use, while also encouraging learners to use secure, education-ready Copilot.

When: In Preview Q1

Add Learning Activities to Teams Assignments

Learning Activities are coming to Teams Assignments and supported LMS platforms in preview, helping educators integrate interactive practice into the assignment workflows they already use. Educators can add activities such as Flashcards, Fill in the blanks, and Matching, and share resource documents that enable students to create their own learning activities within an assignment or the Classwork module. Students complete activities seamlessly within Assignments or their LMS, with progress captured as part of the assignment experience—supporting active, student driven learning while keeping setup, instruction and review in one familiar place.

Educators can add Learning Activities or share resource documents directly within Assignments.

Students can create their own learning activities from educator-shared resources within an assignment or Classwork.

When: In Preview Q1

New information literacy features in Search Progress in Teams Assignments

Now students don't just gather sources—they investigate them. Four new research prompts (Source Reputation, Factual Importance, Cross-check, Source Purpose) make their thinking visible as they research. Read more about these new features in the preview blog here, and stay tuned for Microsoft Learn course updates to come.

When: Available now

Add Learning Zone lessons to Teams Assignments and LMS

Learning Zone lessons are coming to Teams Assignments and Microsoft 365 LTI for LMS platforms in preview, allowing educators to bring interactive lessons directly into the assignments and grading workflows they already use. Educators can attach Learning Zone lessons during assignment creation, while students complete them fully embedded within Assignments or their LMS, with progress and scores automatically synchronized for review. This preview helps educators save time, reduce manual setup and grading steps, and confidently deliver interactive learning experiences—while keeping assignment creation, student work, and review all in one place.

When: Preview in February

Embed Learning Activities in OneNote

You asked, we're building it. Soon, learners and educators alike will be able to copy a Learning Activity link, paste it into any OneNote classic page, and have it render inline – all to help folks engage without leaving the page.

When: NH Spring 2026

5. Create with Copilot in your LMS

In addition to supporting the new Learning Zone lessons in assignments, we are adding exciting new Create with Copilot options in Microsoft 365 LTI which bring the AI-powered capabilities of the Teach Module directly into LMS content creation workflows. From within their course, educators can use Copilot to draft lesson materials and other instructional content which is seamlessly published to the course using familiar Microsoft 365 tools. Create with Copilot is also available in LMS content editors to help educators compose content, discussion posts, and more. This includes the ability to modify existing content, if supported by the LMS platform. By embedding the creation experience where courses are designed and managed, Microsoft 365 LTI helps educators preserve instructional intent, reduce context switching, and move more quickly from planning to teaching.

Microsoft 365 LTI is available to any Microsoft Education customer without additional licensing. LMS administrators can deploy the integration to an LTI 1.3 compatible LMS like Canvas, Blackboard, PowerSchool Schoology Learning, D2L/Brightspace and Moodle to get started!

When: Preview in February

6. Dedicated servers coming to Minecraft Education

Minecraft Education is launching a new feature that enables IT administrators and educators to run dedicated servers to host persistent worlds for use in classrooms and after-school programs, similar to Minecraft Bedrock’s dedicated servers (for the consumer version of the game).

Dedicated servers enable cross-tenant gameplay, which is a gamechanger for expanding multiplayer experiences in the classroom or running Minecraft esports programs with other schools. This feature is currently in Beta to release in February for general availability for all Minecraft Education users. (Minecraft Education is available in Microsoft A3 and A5 software subscriptions for schools.)

___________________________________________________________________________________

And finally, just to recap all the news we have for you this month, here’s a quick review of all the features that are generally available or are rolling out soon:

Teach Module Microsoft 365 Updates for Educators
- • Unit Plans – available in spring
- • Minecraft Lesson plans – preview in February
- • Modify content – align to standards. Private preview now
- • Modify content – modify reading level. Private preview now
- • Modify content – add supporting examples Private preview now
- • Modify content – differentiate instructions. Private preview now
- • Teach Module integration into OneNote Class Notebooks – preview in spring
Microsoft Learning Zone
- • Available to download from the Windows store, at no additional cost
- • Provide full classroom ready solution including lesson management and insights
- • Teach Module, Teams Assignments and LMS integration in March
Microsoft 365 Updates for Students
- • Study and Learn Agent – preview in late January
- • Learning Activities – Fill in the Blanks generally available
- • Learning Activities – Matching Activities in private preview now
- • Learning Activities – Self-quizzing available in private preview in February
Teams and OneNote EDU Updates
- • Set expected AI use in Assignments – private preview end of January
- • Add Flashcards to Assignments – private preview in February
- • New information literacy features in Search Progress
- • Embed Learning Activities in OneNote – private preview in spring
Copilot in your Learning Management System
Dedicated Minecraft EDU servers

Have any feedback to share with us? As always, we'd love to hear it!

Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education

Microsoft Education Solutions Guide - available for all IT Admins, partners and schools

MikeTholfsen — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 14:37:12 GMT

What is ESG- Education Solutions Guide

The Microsoft Education Solution Guide (ESG) was developed to simplify and enhance understanding of the license features and products that you have available to you in a Microsoft 365 tenant. Initial focus and intent were to create better tools to understand the tenant setup and configuration to enhance security and compliance. Link to full guide is here.

It consists of three stages:

Goals and Objectives for ESG

Goals

Develop prescriptive deployment guides that provide a centralized resource with education-specific scenarios to assist organizations in defining, managing, and organizing their tenant and appropriate applications.

Reduce the overall complexity of tenant and service deployment.
Establish baseline recommended pathways to facilitate a common and agreed-upon configuration based on subject-matter experts.
Utilize AI technology to uncover and compare recommended settings against user requirements based on documented configurations.
Implement phased configurations to aid customers and partners in understanding what they may not know or should consider during discovery to meet customer expectations.
Highlight unused features and products to ensure customers fully leverage the potential and benefits of their purchased product licenses.
Identify opportunities for partner participation in achieving customer goals and expectations based on customer requirements and ESG findings.
Create an easy pathway for customer change management to enhance control, security, compliance, and privacy of tenants.
Develop custom assessments to evaluate product entry for items such as Copilot, Defender, Purview, Intune, Zero-Trust, and Microsoft Entra ID.

Objectives

Deliver information for features available (used/unused) to users based on license model.
Prescriptive recommendations based on education scenarios. - Present upgrade license opportunities from A1 to A3 to A5.
Security analysis exposing gaps and issues proactively to allow modifications before it's too late.
Promote partner access to customers that have defined gaps based on assessments and are requesting partner assistance.
Better discovery and assessment analysis with new tools.
Designed to be more self-serving customer and partner access management.
Speed up user adoption for educators and IT Admins alike.

Recommended Roles for Implementation

IT Admin
Identity Admin
Security Admin
Compliance Admin
OneDrive Admin
SharePoint Admin
Exchange Online Admin
Teams Admin

Navigation

ESG has seven main sections in the navigations.

ESG – Microsoft Solutions Guide overall, Microsoft Education license (A1-A3-A5), and Microsoft addons licenses.

Baseline Phase – Overview, Products and Features, Licenses. All five sections (Setup, Identity, Applications, Security and Compliance, and Devices)

Standard Phase - Overview, Products and Features, Licenses All five sections (Setup, Identity, Applications, Security and Compliance, and Devices.

Advanced Phase - Overview, Products and Features, Licenses. Three sections (Identity, Applications, and Security and Compliance)
Addons – Any addon products and when/where they can be added to your current license configuration.
Windows – Education specific Windows based products and features.
References – Any process or configuration that is not outlined in the three license phases will be included here.

Phases

Deployment Sequence

The Baseline phase is the first step in the three-phase approach:

Baseline (A1) → Standard (A3) → Advanced (A5)

The Baseline phase is the foundational first phase in the Microsoft Education Solution Guide deployment sequence, aligned with the Microsoft 365 A1 education license.

Standard Phase - The Standard phase is the second phase in the Microsoft Education Solution Guide deployment sequence, aligned with the Microsoft 365 A3 education license.

The Advanced phase is the third and most comprehensive phase in the Microsoft Education Solution Guide deployment sequence, aligned with the Microsoft 365 A5 education license.

Sections

	Setup	Tenant setup is key to establishing a secure and valid tenant. Setup goes through domain assignments, administration, and service management.
	Identity	Establishing an identity via Microsoft Entra ID and establishing authentication methods, Single Sign-On, and user procurement methodologies.
	Applications	Applications like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange Online is the core to a Microsoft tenant. Getting these applications setup are essential to allow users in education to access services and apps like Learning Accelerators.
	Security and Compliance	Security via each phase is essential to maintain order and blocking access for bad actors. Along with security compliance/privacy considerations that are established to adhere to a multitude of local and government requirements worldwide.
	Devices	Managed and unmanaged devices are another key to helping secure the network and potential cyber-security considerations that enter the network via these devices.

How do you use ESG?

ESG uses deployment guidelines for content that contain education scenario specifics. These prescriptive “Purple Boxes” allow education organizations the ability to see prescriptive guidelines and recommendations based on an edu scenario.

ESG has a linked path for each modules based on the phase (Baseline,Standard,Advanced).

Users can follow the deployment content to establish or redefine the tenant configuration in order to enable additional services and products.

What’s Next

Go to https://aka.ms/esg to access Microsoft Education Solutions Guide.

Stage 2 – A custom agent to discover the tenant configuration settings and allow customers and partners the ability to qualify what is set to standard recommendation. This agent will also have the ability to access partner content and internal Microsoft resources.

Using an AI Agent to discover tenant settings based on Graph API calls and Microsoft MCP Server for Enterprise to evaluate against known Microsoft recommended settings.

Part 3 – Change management from discovery data baselines to access and deliver any updates/changes/modifications, daily/weekly/monthly.

Using Reading Coach in the classroom: Microsoft 365 LTI app + educator tools

EmmaGray — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 22:20:04 GMT

Hi everyone! As we work to better support learners on their journey to becoming confident readers, I’m excited to share a few updates about Reading Coach – our free, AI-powered reading fluency tool – and highlight how it’s now even more accessible for your classroom.

📣 What's new: Reading Coach in the Microsoft 365 LTI

We've heard from educators that managing multiple LTI® integrations can be overwhelming. That's why we're thrilled to announce that Reading Coach is now available in the unified Microsoft 365 LTI!

This means you can access Reading Coach alongside other Microsoft education tools – like Class Notebook, Assignments, Reflect, and more – all from a single integration in your Learning Management System (LMS).

What does this mean for you?

✅ One integration, many tools: No need to install separate LTI apps for each Microsoft education tool

✅ Simpler for IT admins: A single app to configure and manage

✅ Same great Reading Coach experience: All the AI-powered fluency features you love

If your school uses Canvas, Schoology Learning, Blackboard, Brightspace by D2L, Moodle ™, or another LTI 1.3 Advantage platform, ask your LMS administrator about enabling the Microsoft 365 LTI.

Where to find Reading Coach in the Microsoft 365 LTI

Navigate to the Microsoft Education placement in your LMS and select Course settings in the top right under your profile image.
Ensure Reading Coach is toggled on. If you don’t see it, your administrator might need to enable it for your district.

To learn more, check out these resources:

For educators: Microsoft 365 LTI User Docs
For administrators: Microsoft 365 LTI Deployment Guide

📖 How-to: getting started with guided practice in Reading Coach

Guided practice allows educators to create reading assignments that students can join with a simple link or code – no complex setup required.

What is guided practice?

Guided practice features bridge the gap between free reading and formal assignments. Educators can create two types of practices:

Practice Type	What It Does
Open Reading	Set a time goal (for example, "Read for 20 minutes"). Students can read anything in the app – AI stories, library passages – to reach their goal.
Single Passage	Share a specific text for students to read. Paste your own content or choose from the built-in ReadWorks library.

🎬 See It in Action

Watch this quick demo video to see guided practice features in action:

Step 1: Access Reading Coach as an educator

Go to coach.microsoft.com or access Reading Coach through the All Apps list on microsoft365.com. Keep an eye out for a lightweight guided practice preview in Reading Coach in the Microsoft 365 LTI soon!
Sign in with your school Microsoft account (Microsoft Entra ID).
Look for the Teacher/Student toggle at the top of the home page – make sure you're in Teacher view.

Step 2: Create a new practice

Select Create a Practice.
Choose your practice type:
- Open Reading: Set a time goal.
- Single Passage: Paste custom text or browse the ReadWorks library.
Give your practice a name that students will recognize.
Select Create.

Step 3: Share with students

Once your practice is created, you'll see:

A unique Join Code (for example, "567123")
A direct link to share

Share either of these with your students via:

Your LMS announcement or assignment
Projected on your classroom board
Email or messaging

💡 The Join Code is great for younger students – they just need to enter 6 characters!

Step 4: Monitor student progress

From each practice in the Teacher tab, you can track:

Completion status: Who has started? Who has finished?
Time spent: How long did each student practice?
Fluency metrics: Words Per Minute (WPM) and Accuracy percentage
Individual history: Drill down into any student's reading journey

Requirements

To use Guided Practice:

Accounts: Requires Microsoft Entra ID (school) accounts
Same tenant: Educators and students must belong to the same Microsoft 365 tenant
No-cost: No additional licenses required beyond Microsoft 365 Education

Get Started Today!

Reading Coach is free for all Microsoft 365 Education users. Whether you're using it standalone at coach.microsoft.com or through the Microsoft 365 LTI app in your LMS, we're here to help every student build reading confidence.

Helpful Links:

📘 Reading Coach on Microsoft Learn

💬 Share feedback with us by joining our EDU Insider Program

Have questions? Drop them in the comments below – I'd love to hear how you're using Reading Coach in your classroom!

Until next time,

Emma Gray
Microsoft Education

Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) is a trademark of the 1EdTech Consortium, Inc. (1edtech.org)
The word Moodle and associated Moodle logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Moodle Pty Ltd or its related affiliates.

Hands-On Session: Teach Module in Copilot (available for all educators)

MikeTholfsen — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:15:37 GMT

Join us on Wednesday, December 10th, 2025 @ 8am Pacific Time for an in-depth professional development webinar on the new AI-powered "Teach" module in Microsoft 365 that is fully rolled out and available to all educators. This will be a 45 minute hands-on webinar where the Product team will walk through the new updates in detail and you can follow- along at home with your own M365 account! Sign up for the session at this link.

And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others! Here is our training agenda for the webinar 👇

How to use the new AI-powered "Teach" module in M365. Includes:
✅ Lesson plans
✅ Copilot Quizzes
✅ Standards integration
✅ Learning Activities
✅ Differentiate reading materials
✅ Teams EDU integration and Classwork
✅ First look at OneNote EDU and Teach Module integration

We look forward to having you attend the event!

Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education

OneDrive, Assignments, and Learning Accelerators are now Generally Available in Microsoft 365 LTI

tjvering — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 14:28:02 GMT

Enhance your LMS with the power of Microsoft 365

Today, Microsoft is announcing general availability of the OneDrive and Assignments (including Learning Accelerators) experiences as part of Microsoft 365 LTI®—bringing seamless integration of Microsoft 365 tools into learning platforms to simplify workflows and enhance teaching and learning whether you’re using Canvas, Schoology, Brightspace, Blackboard, Moodle or other LMS platforms. Microsoft 365 LTI makes it easier than ever for educators and students to leverage the full suite of Microsoft 365 Education tools within existing workflows. And now, the OneDrive, Assignments and Learning Accelerators (Reading Progress, Speaker Progress and more) experiences previewed in July with the new Microsoft 365 LTI build on all the capabilities of the classic tools and add additional features in one convenient tool. Educators and students benefit from a more seamless and up-to-date LMS experience with Microsoft 365 Education. Teach and learn with confidence knowing that Microsoft 365 LTI is backed by Microsoft's industry-leading security and compliance tools with Microsoft 365 Education.

Deploy and access the new Microsoft 365 LTI in your LMS today with the overview and deployment guides.

IMPORTANT: If you have deployed the Microsoft 365 LTI previously, you do not need to redeploy in your LMS – however, we do recommend reviewing the deployment guide for any new recommendations or deployment guidance, and revisit your Admin Settings to check your M365 Admin Consent status and review the apps enabled for your educators to have access to in their courses.

Classic LTI retirements

Microsoft OneDrive LTI, OneNote LTI, Teams Assignments LTI and Reflect LTI are set to retire next September 17, 2026. The Microsoft 365 LTI replaces these separate LTI tools going forward and we encourage you to start proactively migrating your course this term. You will find migration guidance in our admin documentation to help take steps now. We will continue to provide any additional migration guidance as necessary

OneDrive and Microsoft 365 files with embedded editors and new placements

The new Microsoft 365 LTI tool expands beyond the capabilities of the existing OneDrive LTI tool with capabilities for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, including Microsoft 365 Copilot - and is now available within your LMS experience by embedding or linking documents, videos, PDFs, and images into course materials like assignments, discussions, modules, announcements and more.

Microsoft 365 LTI orchestrates management of permissions to prevent oversharing, and with dedicated course-level storage to support proper document lifecycle management, assignment workflows, and use of Microsoft 365 Copilot.

With Canvas, Collaborations are supported along with students editing and submitting Microsoft 365 documents as an external tool assignment without leaving your LMS.

This functionality replaces the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI which will retire September 17, 2026.

Learning Accelerators and AI-enhanced assignments available in your LMS - without the requirement for Microsoft Teams

With Assignments in Microsoft 365 LTI, you will be able to use Learning Accelerators, multiple-document submissions, AI rubric and instructions generation, AI-assisted feedback, auto-graded Forms and other assignment capabilities directly within your learning management system (LMS), without the need to create and sync a Microsoft Team for your class. Assignments in Microsoft 365 LTI no longer require Teams access, enabling more LMS users to benefit from AI-enhanced experiences that were formerly exclusive to Microsoft Teams for Education. And Assignments can be created, managed, completed, and graded, without leaving your LMS with grades and feedback available to sync automatically to the LMS gradebook.

New: Improve student speaking and presenting skills in 13 languages with Speaker Progress Exciting new AI Feedback features for educators to leverage, students can practice for in-class presentations or save class time by presenting and turning in their presentations for grading.

This capability is included automatically in the new Microsoft 365 LTI tool. Existing, Teams-based assignments will continue to work and can be copied to new courses, so no migration is necessary.

The assignments functionality in Microsoft 365 LTI replaces the classic Teams Assignments which will retire September 17, 2026.

Dive into the new Microsoft 365 LTI to streamline your LMS experience

We are bringing our Microsoft 365 Education capabilities for learning management systems together into a single, unified tool to streamline the user experience. Educators will be able to access Learning Accelerators, Reflect, OneDrive, Teams, and more in their LMS courses, without having to enable multiple tools separately, and without overcrowding menus where LTI tools surface. Whether adding content to a module, creating an assignment, or scheduling a meeting for a class, you will be able to easily access Microsoft 365 Education related features directly in your LMS workflow.

Microsoft 365 LTI is available for supported LMS platforms, including Canvas by Instructure, PowerSchool Schoology Learning, Blackboard by Anthology, D2L/Brightspace, Moodle™, and for any LTI 1.3 Advantage compliant platform.

Migration guidance and tools
Guidance for migrating users from the classic LTI tools to the Microsoft 365 LTI can be found in our First Time Configuration guide. We strongly recommend guiding users to leverage the new experiences for OneDrive, Assignments, Reflect and OneNote Class Notebooks in the Microsoft 365 LTI as the classic experiences are set to retire on September 17^th, 2026. We are working on additional guidance to help with migration of existing content ahead of classic LTI retirements, and more information will be available soon.

Compliance and regulatory resources

Visit the Microsoft Service Trust Portal to learn how Microsoft cloud services protect your data, and how you can manage cloud data security and compliance for your organization. You will find our latest HECVAT assessment along with other resources for Microsoft 365 LTI and all Microsoft apps and services.

For more information, and to keep up with future product announcements

Please visit the Microsoft Tech Community Education Blog and subscribe to keep up with what’s new in Microsoft Education.

We also hold bi-monthly office hours every first and third Thursday where lots of LMS + Microsoft 365 customers come to discuss scenarios and get assistance from peers, please join us.

Microsoft 365 LTI Office Hours
1^st and 3^rd Thursday of each month at 11am EST
Join link: https://aka.ms/LTIOfficeHours

How to get help or send feedback
For any issues deploying the integration, our Education Support team is here to help. Please visit https://aka.ms/EduSupport

Once deployed, there are links to Contact Support and Send Feedback from right within the app. These can be found in the user voice menu in the upper right on any view that appears within the LMS. Learn more about Microsoft feedback for your organization.

Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) is a trademark of the 1EdTech Consortium, Inc. (1edtech.org)
The word Moodle and associated Moodle logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Moodle Pty Ltd or its related affiliates.