Free Teaching Resources From Microsoft

I recently discovered some great, new, teaching resources from Microsoft. Most of them are centered around their products like Photostory, Movie Maker, and Bing, but the the Teaching Guides have lots of good ideas and tips that would work for a wide variety of products.

For me, one of the more handy guides was the Digital Storytelling guide. Hopefully we know that when we give students the opportunity to create something related to what they are learning they are more likely to remember what they have learned and be able to apply it in the future. In this guide there are tons of examples of how projected-based learning helps improve student achievement and how digital storytelling is one, easy way to introduce project learning to your students. There are also lots of handy tips on taking pictures, recording audio and ideas for lessons. On the digital story telling site there are video examples and templates you can download right into Photostory for easy use.

Here is the Digital Storytelling Guide. You can head over to their website if you want to download it, for free of course!


Microsoft has also provided other guides like how to get the most out of Office products, a guide to using Movie Maker and a huge booklet on all the free tools that Microsoft offers and how you can use them with kids. (One of my favorites is Photosynth. If you have not seen what it can do, you gotta check it out.)

I have also discovered that Microsoft will be providing daily teacher technology tips, tricks and ideas for the classroom leading up to May 4, 2010, National Teacher Day. Twitter users can follow @TeachTec or hash tag #TeachTips for teacher technology tips. Facebook users can follow Microsoft TeachTec. Check out the Microsoft  Teacher Tech and the Microsoft Blog posts for additional details.


So head on over to the Microsoft Education site where you can get all the guides. Also while you are there be sure to check out the free how-to articles and technology integration lesson plans.