Microsoft Calling!

A number of students had the opportunity to provide feedback to Geri and Brayden from Microsoft concerning the use of Office 365 tools during both remote and face to face teaching and learning. Six Year 7 students, Emmanuel’s Year 12 Modern History class and students from the Virtual Schools Network Modern History and Geography classes connected with Geri in Idaho and Brayden in Utah to provide feedback on all areas of Office 365. Students were interviewed about how they use the tools, as well as providing feedback on their favourite tools in Office 365. They were also given the opportunity to talk about how they would like to see these tools developed in the future. One common piece of feedback was allowing OneNote to have more formatting functions that can be found in Word.

It was a great opportunity for our students to provide direct feedback to Microsoft about the products they use every day in their learning.

Student Voice

“The call highlighted the way for us, the students, to give feedback on the positives and negative elements of online learning. Remote learning due to this year’s global pandemic has excelled for many students around the world, so there is a huge significance in making sure Microsoft products work efficiently. Due to this call we were able to assist in hopefully making a positive change to remote learning which will better our performance in the future.”

“I found that the call with Microsoft employees was important, as it was a great way of exchanging and discussing feedback between students who use Microsoft 365 in their everyday learning, and representatives who are seeking to adapt their applications better to students’ needs. I learned that my voice, along with my classmates, is important to Microsoft because we hold a unique position in which we are using these applications for our day-to-day learning in unprecedented conditions. Our learning is dependent on educational software such as Microsoft 365. This call aided Microsoft to understand the needs of students undergoing remote or online learning, and suggested changes that would allow students to use Microsoft 365 apps efficaciously.”

Mrs Kylie Kingdon – Head of Humanities