I’m still not used to the British summer. Here it is, time to head back to school already, and I’m still waiting for the summer weather. (Did I blink and miss it back in June?)
In honour of this exciting back-to-school time, Microsoft has released new, free education add-ins for Office, and over 20 new templates and how-to resources for teachers using Office in the classroom.
Here’s a bit about the add-ins, from our good friends at Office:
The Interactive Classroom Add-in for PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 and OneNote 2007 and 2010 provides real-time polling and interactive note-taking to foster interaction and collaboration between educators and students.
This add-in connects a teacher’s PowerPoint presentation to students’ OneNote notebooks. During a presentation, teachers can:
Students can answer and respond through their individual OneNote notebooks, hand-held clickers, or computers, and the results display in the presentation.
Students also get consolidated notes that match those of the instructor so they can keep track of what they need to learn.
The Mathematics Add-in for Word 2007 and 2010 and OneNote 2010 uses dynamic 3D graphs and charts to help educators illustrate complex maths problems and concepts. From algebra and pre-calculus to physics and statistics, teachers and students can unravel equations and visualize formulas through 2-D and 3-D graphs. The add-in helps students plot functions, calculate numerical results, and dynamically solve for "x".
Empowering students, teachers, and chemists to easily author documents in the language of chemistry is at the heart of the Chemistry Add-in for Word. The Chemistry Add-in for Word makes it easier for students, chemists and researchers to insert and modify chemical information, such as labels, formulas and 2D depictions, from within Microsoft Office Word. It harnesses the power of Chemical Markup Language (XML for chemistry), making it possible to not only author chemical content in Word, but also to include the data behind those structures. Put simply, the Chemistry Add-in for Word and Chemical Markup Language help to makes chemistry documents open, readable and easily accessible, not just to other humans, but to other technologies as well.
All of the add-ins can be downloaded from the Office Education site, along with the templates, how-to guides (including a great new one on OneNote) and many other resources.
Best of luck with the new school year!