Microsoft Office and an important role in education

The coronavirus forced changes and alterations in the plans of all areas of daily life. One of the environments that was most affected was the educational one. The vast majority of the student population, both at school and university level, had to transfer learning spaces to the virtual world.
The possibility of teaching and learning through the internet was already developed, but in the face of the emergency, large companies had to make modifications in order to provide a better service. One of the firms that provides services for companies, organizations and institutions in general is Microsoft and, therefore, one of the latest news about Microsoft Office is the importance that its tools acquired in this context.

The educational package

The news about Microsoft Office comes through the service it offers for schools. With Microsoft Office 365 Education, the firm's alternative to obtaining products on a monthly basis instead of purchasing them one by one completely, they offer schools and universities the possibility of accessing their products to facilitate online teaching.
Productivity tools have three types of plans, with different tools and prices. The Microsoft Office A1 basic package is free for centers that accredit its status as a teaching building, the A3 has a value of € 3.20 per user per month and the A5 costs € 7.85. Products are offered for both students and teachers, faculty and educational staff. Within each option people can use the advantages of the most popular Microsoft Office package such as Word, Power Point, Excel and Outlook. Options A3 and A5 add applications such as Publisher and services to manage large databases.

Actions against the coronavirus

The possibility for schools to use Microsoft Office for free became more necessary in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Almost without warning, all the students found themselves at home and the education had to be completely transformed into an online format.
In this context, Microsoft complemented the services of Microsoft Office 365 Education with Microsoft Teams. Teams is one of the central tools of Microsoft 365 as it is the workplace for chatting, holding meetings and carrying out shared work.
Not only did they decide to integrate and encourage the use of Microsoft Office 365 Education and Teams with the aim of improving classes, but they also acted to contribute to graduation celebrations by enabling the possibility of transmitting them online.
All schools and universities could use the company package provided by Bill Gates to broadcast live events with up to 20,000 participants and 16 hours in duration.

Experiences around the world

The latest news about Microsoft Office and the use of its popular programs to improve the educational environment have been very prominent in important countries such as Spain or Taiwan.
In Taiwan more than 4,000 schools used Microsoft products to cope with the situation that unleashed the covid-19. The work to apply the methodology was carried out together with the Ministry of Education of the eastern country and focused on 2.5 million students and 200,000 teachers who were empowered and trained to use the educational package. Both Office 365 Education and Teams provided establishments with more than 20 applications and an effective communication channel to strengthen education virtually.
In the Community of Madrid in Spain, work was also carried out jointly between the Ministry of Education and Youth and the technology company. To enable Microsoft Office products for educational purposes through 365 Education and the Teams tool, access was granted to 650,000 students and 35,000 teachers. The goal was to continue collaborative teaching remotely. The teachers were provided with a special training program that, according to Microsoft officially reports, as of June 1, it has 44 sessions that mean more than 70 hours of training.

Microsoft Office is one of the most important groups of programs in the computing world. Its use in educational spaces, and its progress in the context unleashed by the pandemic, open the doors to a new stage of education.