Empowering educators and students with new devices, offerings

Core to Microsoft’s Education mission – to empower every student on the planet to achieve more – is working with students, teachers and school leaders on their journey to make the most of classroom time.

For Surface, it’s been exciting to see the great response to some of our newest products like Surface Go and Microsoft Classroom Pen, both designed with classrooms in mind. In case you missed it, Microsoft Classroom Pen is an all-new pen designed specifically with K-8 students and schools in mind. Affordable and easy to deploy, Microsoft Classroom Pen will be available exclusively to education institutions and sold in packs of 20 for a cost of $799.80 USD (approximately $39.99 per pen).

We’ve continued to see great demand for Surface in education, further bolstered by the launch of Surface Go last year. There continues to be a growing demand for devices that are lightweight and ultra-portable to make it easy for students and educators alike to work from anywhere – home, in the classroom or even on field trips. Bringing the power of Surface products to the classroom also means empowering teachers to transform their classroom with premium, reliable and easy-to-deploy technology that doesn’t waste valuable instruction time.

We continue to be inspired by the ways students and schools across the world use Surface products to drive transformation in the classroom and their organizations. Here are a few recent examples:

• Yeo Valley School. Located in the United Kingdom, Yeo Valley Primary School recently transitioned to a 1:1 device pairing in the classroom, deploying Surface Go for its students. With Surface Go, the students have immediate access to more resources and can easily switch between pen and ink, touch, or typing while using the devices in Tablet Mode, Laptop Mode, or Studio Mode, depending on what makes the most sense for the lesson and their individual learning styles. Yeo Valley also deployed Surface Pro for its teachers, fostering a consistency in form factor between teachers and their students while providing teachers with devices suited to their needs.
• Hillcrest Christian College. Located in Queensland, Australia, Hillcrest Christian College serves more than 1,550 students, ranging from grades K-12. The school recognized the need to provide the best learning tools to help students prepare for the digital world. The BYOD program fell well short of the school’s needs and expectation. Hillcrest already used Microsoft Teams and OneNote and was looking for devices that seamlessly integrate with its ecosystem. After trying out a variety of devices, Hillcrest selected Surface 3 devices for grades Pre-K-4, Surface Pro 3 and 4 devices for teachers and Surface Book 2 devices for students in grades 7-12. Hillcrest also developed the I Love Reading (ILR) program in which students use Surface Pen and Surface Pro to develop reading and writing skills at an accelerated rate via an English phonetic code. As a result, they are “seeing children reading 12 months ahead of where they would have historically been reading,” said Michelle Cecil, Education Consultant, who helped implement the ILR program.
• Blue Springs. Blue Springs Public School District has over 14,000 students in grades K-12 and as active Office 365 users, the teachers desired a lightweight, portable device that could withstand a full school day. After the teachers took a vote, the school district deployed 1,275 Surface Book 2 devices. Teachers love the ability to ink with Surface Pen and carry the device around the classroom, switching between Laptop and Tablet modes. In addition, the school district decided to move 5,000 students to a 1:1 classroom scenario, allowing teachers and students to take devices to and from school. Blue Springs purchased 5,000 Surface Go devices, telling us the size and portability, mixed with the price point, made it the perfect fit.

We aim to inspire and empower teachers to transform their classroom with reliable technology that improves valuable instruction time. That’s why we launched the Surface Donorschoose.org campaign, which enables teachers from across the United States to create a classroom project request for Surface devices. Starting today, Microsoft will match donations to help teachers add a Microsoft Surface Go for Education to their classrooms!

Lastly, eligible Microsoft 365 Education customers can get up to $50 off Surface devices through June 30, 2019. For more market-specific terms, conditions and eligibility please visit here for more information on the U.S., Canada or Australia or worldwide offerings.

We are constantly listening to and learning from our education customers and have an amazing team dedicated to continually improving our products and offerings.

Interested in learning more about Microsoft Surface for Education? Check with your local reseller or Microsoft representative to see which devices and prices are available to your school today.

Updated January 29, 2019 6:57 am

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