Four opportunities for IT admins to get ready with Copilot Chat for education
Microsoft Education is offering four live webinar opportunities for IT administrators who want to confidently deploy and manage Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Each session covers the same practical guidance, so you can select the date that best fits your schedule. What you’ll learn We’ll walk through Copilot Chat configuration from the tenant level to the end-user experience, including options for students ages 13+, CSV, SDS, and PowerShell uploads, agents and extensibility, and current licensing and security controls. You’ll leave with actionable guidance to help deploy, manage, and optimize Copilot Chat safely across your organization. We’ll also share a brief look at some Microsoft Education experiences including Teach in Copilot, the Study and Learn agent, Copilot Notebooks, and Learning Activities. Choose a session and register September 16th, Wed @ 8am Pacific time - Register for the September 16 session September 30th, Wed @ 8am Pacific time - Register for the September 30 session October 14th, Wed @ 8am Pacific time - Register for the October 14 session October 28 th , Wed @ 8am Pacific time - Register for the October 28 session Reserve your spot today. Pick the session that works best for you and join us to build a secure, manageable path to Copilot Chat adoption in your education environment. Mike Tholfsen Group Product Manager Microsoft EducationWhat's New in Microsoft EDU - Back to School 2026 webinar
Get ready for back to school (Northern Hemisphere) with the latest product updates from Microsoft Education. In this webinar, we’ll showcase new AI-powered tools, teaching resources, and product updates designed to help educators save time, personalize learning, and support every student. You’ll see what’s new across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams for Education, OneNote, and more, including: ✅ Teach module in Microsoft 365 Copilot ✅ Copilot Notebooks ✅ Study and Learn agent ✅ Learning Zone ✅ Teams for EDU updates ✅ The latest OneNote EDU updates And more! Join us for practical demonstrations, helpful tips, and new ideas you can put to work as you prepare for a successful school year. And don't worry if you can't make it live, we will be recorded and posting this on the Microsoft Education YouTube channel afterwards. 📅 When: Wednesday, August 26th @ 8am Pacific Time 🔗 Register here: https://df.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/df.8c4f06fc-399f-4603-8023-f5fd92601bd1@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47?source=copyLinkOneEventsShareDialog Mike Tholfsen Group Product Manager Microsoft EducationCalling all IT Admins - webinar on configuring Copilot Chat and updates for Students 13+
This IT Admin-focused workshop walks through how to configure Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, from your tenant all the way to the end-user experience. When you enable Copilot Chat for students 13+, they will also get access to the new Study & Learn agent, Copilot Notebooks, Learning Activities and more. We cover the latest features that are available — including the new 13+ student configuration options, CSV, SDS and Powershell uploads, Copilot agents & extensibility, and updated licensing & security controls. By the end, you’ll be able to confidently deploy, manage, and optimize Copilot Chat in your environment so your users can safely harness AI productivity from day one. This 45-minute webinar will be led by Bill Sluss Principal Product Manager from the Microsoft Education team. When: Wednesday, August 19th @ 8am Pacific time Register: https://df.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/df.95feda23-419a-4d99-bfad-f7e4fd52a498@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47?source=copyLinkOneEventsShareDialog Mike Tholfsen Group Product Manager Microsoft EducationHands-on webinar: Set up your classroom in Teams for Education plus the new Study and Learn Agent
Join us on Wednesday, August 5th at 8:00 AM Pacific Time for a practical, 60-minute webinar to get your Microsoft Teams classroom ready for the new school year in the Northern hemisphere. Get your class set up in Assignments and Classwork, learn about new tools like Learning Activities, use Student AI Guidelines to set the right expectations for your students, and see how the Study and Learn Agent can be a study partner for your students. Follow along with your own Microsoft 365 Education account as we walk through each one. Register here: https://aka.ms/August5Training The session will be recorded and posted to the Microsoft Education YouTube channel so you can watch it later or share it with colleagues. Agenda - Get your Teams EDU classroom ready and learn about the Study and Learn Agent. ✅ Teams EDU Classwork / Assignments setup ✅ Learning Activities in Assignments and Classwork ✅ Student AI Guidelines in Teams Assignments ✅ Copilot Study and Learn Agent We look forward to seeing you on August 5th! Also, be sure to check out and sign up for our Microsoft Elevate Educator community. Mike Tholfsen Group Product Manager Microsoft EducationHands-on webinar: Teach Module in M365 Copilot and Copilot Notebooks (available for all educators)
Join us on Wednesday, July 8th @ 8am Pacific Time for an in-depth professional development webinar on the new AI-powered "Teach" module in M365 Copilot that is fully rolled out and available to everyone. We will also be covering Copilot Notebooks and the Study Guide which is now also available to all M365 Educators and Students. This will be a 60-minute hands-on webinar where the Product Management team will walk through the new updates in detail and you can follow-along at home with your own M365 Education account. To reiterate, the Teach Module and Copilot Notebooks are available globally to all educators using Microsoft 365. 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. Register here: https://msit.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/msit.ed7f065d-57a5-437c-ba23-12b0ef06a259@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47 Agenda: How to use the new AI-powered "Teach" module in M365. ✅ Lesson plans and the new Keep Going feature ✅ Learning Zone integration ✅ Modifying Existing content ✅ Learning Activities ✅ Coplot Notebooks plus Study Guide We look forward to having you attend the event! Also, be sure to check out and sign up for our Microsoft Elevate Educator community. Mike Tholfsen Group Product Manager Microsoft Education teamHands-on webinar: Study and Learn agent in M365 Copilot
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-2d7cd011db47Accelerating the Flow of Learning
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.comHands-on Session: From idea to interactive lesson with Microsoft Learning Zone
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!More standards are coming to the Teach Module and Teams for Education!
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 EducationWhat's New in Microsoft EDU - March 2026
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
