Using Reading Coach in the classroom: Microsoft 365 LTI app + educator tools
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 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.New School Data Sync Experience is Now Generally Available
We are excited to announce the new School Data Sync (SDS) experience is now generally available. School Data Sync (SDS) is a free service for Education that helps to automate the process of synchronizing user and roster data from Student Information or Management Systems (SIS/SMS) with Microsoft 365. SDS has various enhancements and improvements over SDS (Classic).Hands-On Session: Teach Module in Copilot (available for all educators)
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
File versions taking all my storage space (Stream)/turn off versioning/delete all versions
(I'm using education version)Whenever I create or edit a chapter in Stream, it automaticly creates a new version for me in onedrive, the problem is, it actually duplicates the file, for example, if the video size is 1GB and I edited the chapter 50 times, then there would be 50 versions of this video file, and the file size would be 50GB, this issue is really bothering me, it basically takes up all 1TB of my storage, someone help plz.Minecraft Education-Hour of AI- the First Night
Hello,I'm a Greek teacher of English (TESOL).Yesterday I tried the new Challenge, Hour of AI- the First Night. Playing with my student, I kind of "studied" the detailes of this world, and I would highly recommend it to language teachers,too, not only ITs or CSs. It can be used as part of reading,speaking, listening and writing skills development, as the core of a CLIL lesson and as general students' awareness raising of how we can use AI safely,ethically and to our benefit. Please note that safely,ethically and to our benefit aren't buzz or empty words,but have the whole issues that concern teachers ,parents and other members of society.Worth trying and taking seriously.
Microsoft Forms (Require Number in Text Field)
Hello Everyone, I'm sure this probably a really simple question but how do I get Microsoft Forms to require a number entered as a text answer? The reason i'm asking is because I want to make an order form for monitor replacement for my school district but i'm finding that since its a text box they can enter anything. I had 3 responses that had questions and notes tacked into them and want to limit that for the future. ThanksOneDrive, Assignments, and Learning Accelerators are now Generally Available in Microsoft 365 LTI
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.AI-powered Teach Module in M365 now rolled out to all educators!
Here is an end-to-end tutorial video on the new AI-powered "Teach" module in M365 Copilot. This is available today for ALL Microsoft 365 educators globally! Includes: 📘 Lesson plans 📊 Rubrics 📝 Quizzes 🌍 Standards grounding (35 countries) 🎯 Learning Activities ➕ Lots more YouTube 📺 https://youtu.be/WkXVukl62KU?si=UT3FzN5fqXQ7KlBdLearning Zone: made to engage, built for student growth
Educators are finding new ways to make learning more engaging, inclusive, and connected. That is where Microsoft Learning Zone comes in, an AI-powered app on Copilot+ PCs that helps educators design interactive lessons that spark curiosity and active learning. Early feedback shows that Learning Zone helps save time while supporting personalized lessons that adapt to students’ needs and keep them engaged through interactive slides, exercises, and real-time feedback. Educators also value how the app supports high-quality classroom activities built on their existing teaching materials and a built-in gallery of free, trusted partner content, making it easier to create meaningful and inclusive learning experiences for every student. Designing interactive lessons that truly capture students’ attention can take hours of work. Learning Zone changes that by letting educators set goals and standards, review and refine what AI creates, and bring their expertise and creativity to make each lesson their own while AI takes care of the heavy work. Designed for Copilot+ PC Learning Zone is included with all Microsoft Education licenses (A1, A3, A5). AI-powered lesson creation is built for Copilot+ PCs. These thin, light, and secure Windows 11 devices are great for education, combining powerful on-device AI with all-day battery life 1 and advanced security. They help educators create lessons, adapt materials, and collaborate seamlessly, whether in the classroom, staff room, or at home. AI is integrated into familiar Microsoft 365 apps, allowing educators to use their own words to prepare lessons, translate content for families, or summarize insights from student work. Features such as Click to Do 2 , improved Windows Search 3 , and the enhanced Snipping Tool make lesson preparation, review, and feedback faster and more intuitive. 5 ways Learning Zone is getting even better As we approach general availability, these updates make it easier to create engaging learning experiences: Simplified lesson creation - Educators can describe their lesson goal, standards, and age group, and Learning Zone generates a ready-to-teach lesson outline that can be easily scanned and refined. Using AI, educators can adapt and personalize each section based on their pedagogical needs and guidelines before creating the full interactive lesson. Expanded language support - The app interface is already available in more than 50 languages. With general availability, educators will be able to generate interactive lessons in English and Spanish, with Portuguese, French, German, Polish, Dutch, Japanese, and additional languages coming throughout 2026. Rich and interactive activities - Each interactive lesson includes a variety of activity types that help students think, practice, and apply what they learn. Today, educators can use multiple choice, true or false, and fill in the blank exercises, along with content slides that support images and videos. Soon, Learning Zone will expand to include matching, sorting, and drag to group activities, giving educators more ways to create meaningful, engaging learning experiences. New learning partners - Educators can explore ready-to-learn lessons created with the Nobel Peace Center, PBS NewsHour, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), alongside NASA, OpenStax, Figma, and Minecraft Education. They can also quickly generate Kahoot! quizzes with AI to extend their lessons and boost engagement. Accessible learning anywhere - Educators can share lessons directly in Microsoft Teams, and students can play them from any device, so learning can happen in class or at home. Starting in 2026, Learning Zone will also support integration with Learning Management Systems (LMS) using Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI™), making it easier to connect with existing classroom tools. Global citizenship with the Nobel Peace Center We are proud to collaborate with the Nobel Peace Center to bring the stories and values behind the Nobel Peace Prize to today’s learners. Together we are launching a new collection of lessons in Learning Zone that help students explore what peace, justice, and human rights mean in their own lives and communities. Each lesson promotes reflection, collaboration, and creativity, and is supported by a companion world in Minecraft Education where students can extend their learning through hands-on design and problem-solving. The lessons highlight Nobel Peace Prize laureates such as Malala Yousafzai, Wangari Maathai, and the 14th Dalai Lama, inspiring students to build empathy, think critically, and understand their role as global citizens who can shape a more peaceful and sustainable world. Looking ahead Learning Zone’s move to general availability this December is just the start. We will continue to learn from educators and evolve the experience to make teaching more engaging and learning more personal. Learning Zone is now available to download from the Microsoft Store. If your school plans to explore it before January 2026, ask your IT administrator to enable the app so your educators can get started. View setup instructions here. Join us at Bett 2026 in London to experience Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft Learning Zone, and other AI-powered tools for teaching and learning. We look forward to connecting with you and sharing how AI can help every educator inspire their learners in new ways. Footnotes: 1. Battery life varies significantly by device and with settings, usage, and other factors. See Copilot+ PC claims. 2. Click to Do (preview) available image and text actions vary by device, region, language, and character set. Subscription required for some actions. See Copilot+ PC FAQs. 3. Improved Windows search works with specific text, image, and document formats only; optimized for select languages (English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, and Spanish). See Copilot+ PC FAQs.
