💡 Building Future-Ready Skills: ESGTS and Microsoft Certifications
Hello everyone! I’m a lecturer at the Escola Superior de Gestão e Tecnologia de Santarém (ESGTS) in Portugal, and I’d like to thank Microsoft for the great work they’re doing with the Microsoft Learn for Educators (MSLE) program. We first heard about it in February 2025, when we started our onboarding process. The program immediately caught our attention because it offers two complementary learning paths, Microsoft Certifications and Microsoft Applied Skills, both of which align perfectly with the courses our School already teaches in Computer Science. The flexibility of these learning paths, some longer (Certifications) and others shorter (Applied Skills), along with multilingual support and hands-on labs through the Skillable platform, without students or teachers needing to use their own Azure credits, were key reasons why we decided to adopt the program. We’ve also seen growing interest in the topics covered by Microsoft certifications such as AI, AZ, DP, MS, and SC, among others. We quickly began training and certifying our teaching staff using the vouchers provided through the MSLE program, with the goal of soon extending this training to our students as well: In addition to our academic training, our School’s strategy also focuses on developing students’ skills using official vendor content. This effort led to our first in-person MSLE training session — AZ-900: Azure Fundamentals — held on June 11 and 12, 2025. More Info: https://www.ipsantarem.pt/esgts-microsoft-learn-for-educators-az-900-azure-fundamentals-1a-edicao/Golden Path for Education - Part 1a
What is Golden Path Golden Path was developed to simplify and enhance the security of deploying a Microsoft 365 tenant solution in education. It consists of three stages: Stage 1: Deployment Guides are available online at Golden Path. This stage includes: Baseline - Stage 1a Standard - Stage 1b Advanced - Stage 1c Stage 2: A Discovery/Assessment AI tool is used to expose the tenant's configuration and analyze it against the tenant's license configurations, tenant and service settings, Microsoft's general education recommendations, and customer requirements. Stage 3: Drift Configuration management helps understand changes made against the established configuration in the tenant. These changes can be reversed or modified before any breaches or irregularities create problems. Goals and Objectives for Golden Path 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 Golden Path 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. Baseline Stage 1a Baseline is stage 1a in the overall development of the Golden Path for Education. It is based on a majority of licenses within the tenant at the Microsoft 365 A1 for Education level. It also is a set of recommendations for ALL Microsoft Education tenants. Navigation Golden Path has three folders in the navigations. Golden Path Baseline References Golden Path folder consist of the Golden Path overall review. It goes over the entire program and the how and why it is built. Currently there are two pages, Golden Path overview and Baseline Overview. Golden Path overview menu Golden Path overview Stages (Deployment Guides, Discovery/Assessments, Drift Management) Modules (Setup, Identity, Applications, Security, and Devices) Phases (Baseline(A1), Standard(A3), Advanced(A5)) Baseline Overview Steps for each phase (Setup, Identity, Applications, Security, Devices) Licenses that are included General information links List of links for all applications and products included with A1 license List of links for all features included with A1 license Baseline menu Setup Tenant setup is key to establishing a secure and valid tenant. Setup goes through domain assignment, administration, and service management. Overview - Review all the steps that are part of the setup phase section Step 1 - Create your Office 365 tenant account Step 2 - Configure Security Center admin settings Step 3 - Secure and configure your network Step 4 - Sync your on-premises active directory Step 5 - Provision users Step 6 - Sync SIS with School Data Sync (SDS) Step 7 - License Users Identity Establishing an identity via Microsoft Entra ID and establishing authentication methods, Single Sign-On, and user procurement methodologies. Overview - Review all steps that are a part of the identity phase Step 1 - Understand identity definitions Step 2 - Configure Microsoft Entra ID basics Step 3 - Consider education identity steps Step 4 - Consider identity applications Step 5 - Set up access to operation services Step 6 - Set up identity lifecycle Step 7 - Configure security in identity Step 8 - Manage access controls Applications Applications like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange Online are the core to a Microsoft tenant. Getting these applications setup are essential to allowing users in education to access services and apps like Learning Accelerators. Overview - Review all steps that are a part of the application phase Exchange Online o Step 1 - Design an Exchange Online environment o Step 2 - Set up Exchange Online o Step 3 - Configure compliance and security in Exchange Online o Step 4 - Configure address books, shared mailboxes, and clients Microsoft Teams o Overview - What is Microsoft Teams for Education o Step 1 - Configure Microsoft Teams for Education o Step 2 - Configure Microsoft Teams policies and settings for education organization OneDrive/SharePoint - Overview o Step 1 - Plan your OneDrive and SharePoint Deployment o Step 2 - Share within OneDrive and SharePoint o Step 3 - Configure security and access controls in OneDrive and SharePoint o Step 4 - Compliance considerations with OneDrive and SharePoint Security and Compliance Security via each phase is essential to maintaining 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. Overview Step 1 - Security Considerations 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. Overview Step 1 - Review device management structure Step 2 - Plan device management Step 3 - Configure settings and applications Step 4 - Deploy and manage devices Windows 11 features and tips References menu Mulit-tenant solutions - Architectural recommendations base on multi or large tenant solutions. Accessibility Deploy Office 365 applications Pooled storage management How do you use Golden Path? Golden Path uses deployment guidelines content that contain education scenario specifics. Golden Path 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/gp4edu to access the first part of Golden Path. Part 1b (Standard -A3 content) NEXT Part 1c (Advanced – A5 content) Part 2 - We will create a mechanism to discover the tenant configuration settings and allow customers and partners the ability to qualify what is set to standard recommendation. Using AI to deliver user requirements against the configuration will allow additional paths to enable services and features that allow the user/customer to achieve their objectives. Part 3 – Deliver drift management solution for management of unrealized or understood changes that need to be approved or modified.Microsoft Learn Educator Training & Tools for MS Learn resources
To prepare you for delivering cutting-edge technical instruction in your classes, you will have access to online learning paths, technical training sessions, and our on-demand Virtual Educator Prep Sessions. These training opportunities will provide you with valuable information to ensure you successfully deliver your courses incorporating Microsoft curriculum.How to use VM Environments to Complete Power Platform Labs on MS Learn
Microsoft Learn just introduced a better learning experience with hands-on-labs that citizens, professional developers, educators, and students can complete using VM Environments. This allows all developers, students, and educators to build and run lab solutions without using up any of the school, work, or personal account resources.
Microsoft Mesh Education Licensing
Microsoft Education and Product Teams, I am writing to advocate for the inclusion of Microsoft Mesh (Immersive Spaces and Events) within the Microsoft 365 Education SKU family (A1, A3, and A5). Currently, Mesh is available across nearly every commercial license family, from Teams Essentials to E5 Enterprise, but is explicitly excluded from Education tenants. As documented in several Learn Q&A threads and service plan manifests, the MESH_IMMERSIVE_FOR_TEAMS service plan is simply not provisioned for EDU customers. The current state is one of silent exclusion, creating several critical hurdles: Pedagogical: Immersive technology is one of the most requested features for remote and hybrid learning to combat "Zoom fatigue" and increase student engagement. Education is a high-value use case for 3D immersion. Parity: Universities and K-12 institutions on A5 licenses pay for "top-tier" features but are denied the innovative tools available to a "Business Basic" user. If you are a small business on a basic plan, you have Mesh. If you are a world-class University on A5, you are blocked. This isn't a "procurable" add-on; it is a licensing eligibility wall. Implementation: Current Microsoft guidance suggests schools move to Business or Enterprise licensing to access Mesh. This is not a viable solution for institutions with thousands of users, complex compliance requirements, and student-data privacy frameworks built specifically around EDU SKUs. We aren’t asking for a discount; we are asking for eligibility. We urge the product team to: Add the Mesh Immersive service plan to the A3 and A5 EDU license entitlements. Provide a clear roadmap for when Education tenants can expect feature parity with Commercial tenants. Education should be the vanguard of immersive collaboration, not an afterthought. We would appreciate a formal update on when this licensing barrier will be removed.
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