Technology, Innovation & Pedagogy Video  Have students ever come to your office hours confused about the material because they did not quite understand a concept discussed or may have written something incorrectly while trying to take notes and listen at the same time? This situation is what led Fran Blase (Provost & Associate Professor of Chemistry) to apply for a Teaching with Technology grant in 2011. She received the grant and worked with IITS to implement Panopto (lecture capture system) in her classes. This short video shows the experiences of three students who are taking classes that use Panopto. Brittany Robinson ‘19, Hanna Yoon ‘18, and Cooro Harris ‘19 Recorded lectures can be beneficial to students with diverse needs. Some students need notetakers, some want to review materials later, and some miss class. Think about the Universal Design for Learning (UDL)! If you have any questions, your colleagues Karin Åkerfeldt (Professor of Chemistry), Lou Charkoudian (Assistant Professor of Chemistry), John Dougherty (Associate Professor of Computer Science), Rachel Hoang (Associate Professor of Biology), and Robert Manning (Professor of Mathematics) are happy to share their experiences using Panopto. If you would like to try Panopto with your classes, follow these instructions or contact us for an appointment.

Editor’s note 7/7/2015: This post was updated to clarify TLS connection requirements. Protecting your incoming and outgoing emails is a top priority for us, which is why we are always working to improve mail flow encryption. With new security vulnerabilities constantly being uncovered, and communication privacy being in the spotlight now more than ever, we seek to upgrade our service to only use the most secure Transport Layer Security (TLS)-based encryption available. In the last year, we have made several improvements to our service, and your mail has never been more secure. You can find out more about how we use TLS to secure your emails by reading, "How Exchange Online uses TLS to secure email connections in Office 365." TLS 1.2 support added Towards the end of last year, we rolled out support for TLS 1.2 and, as a result, we now offer the best-in-class industry encryption for email traveling to and from our service—as long as the other party also offers the same level of protection. TLS 1.2 connections now account for around 60 percent of all TLS connections to and from Exchange Online. All mail between our data centers is encrypted with TLS 1.2 using the most secure cipher suite we support. This change also adds TLS 1.2 support for browsing to the Exchange Online Protection Admin site. New cipher suite order We also updated the cipher order, used by our servers to conduct TLS negotiations, to include more secure cipher suites and prioritize Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). Just over 75 percent of all inbound TLS connections and 50 percent of all outbound TLS connections are now protected by PFS. The new cipher suite order can be seen below. Protocols Cipher Suite PFS Cipher/Strength TLS1.2 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384_P384 Yes AES/256 TLS1.2 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256_P256 Yes AES/128 TLS1.0|1.1|1.2 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P384 Yes AES/256 TLS1.0|1.1|1.2 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P256 Yes AES/128 TLS1.2 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 No AES256 TLS1.2 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 No AES128 TLS1.0|1.1|1.2 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA No AES/256 TLS1.0|1.1|1.2 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA No AES/128 TLS1.0|1.1|1.2 TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA No 3DES/192 TLS1.0|1.1|1.2 TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA No RC4/128 TLS1.0|1.1|1.2 TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 No RC4/128 The first four cipher suites provide PFS security. For all cipher suite pairs, the stronger key strength is preferred. AES is preferred to 3DES and RC4, which are provided for legacy support but will be removed in future. SSL 3.0 support withdrawn With the discovery of the POODLE attack, web browsers and websites have been quick to respond and the demise of the protocol version has be sped up as a result. While mail flow is not exposed to the same level of risk, support for SSL 3.0 in our service was turned off to ensure only the most secure versions of TLS are supported. RC4 cipher support is being withdrawn Starting in June, we will remove support for the two legacy RC4 cipher suites on our list as we push to remove support for weak ciphers. This will result in a minority of connections to servers that only support RC4-based ciphers falling back to unencrypted. However, it does ensure that, for Forced TLS connections and SMTP Client Submission where TLS is compulsory, all TLS connections will not be able to use these weak ciphers and those connections will fail. To avoid this happening, you will need to upgrade your servers to support AES ciphers. Devices and applications such as multi-function printers that send mail will also be affected if they only support RC4. You will need to make sure that all your devices and applications have the latest firmware and software updates. —The Information Protection team The post Enhancing mail flow security for Exchange Online appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post was written by Mauricio Oliveira, IT infrastructure and technology manager at Kroton.  Kroton is the largest private education provider in Brazil, serving more than a million students of all ages across our vast country. As a leader in both distance learning and on-campus education, we have always believed in the power of technology to transform and improve learning. Giving our students familiarity with the latest tools is also critical to their ability to successfully position themselves for the latest job opportunities. When we merged with Anhanguera in 2014, we realized it was an opportunity to start with a clean slate and standardize on the productivity tools that would best support our students and organization going forward. Kroton’s staff was using Office 365, and everyone at Anhanguera was using Google Apps for Work. We performed a very deep evaluation of both solutions, comparing every feature that mattered to us, over the course of three months. In our comparison, Office 365 emerged the clear winner for a number of reasons. For one, Office 365 makes it easy for us to give students what they need to work together from anywhere. When they register for a class, they immediately get access to a virtual classroom with learning materials, collaboration spaces and more. The entire process is automated, so we can be sure everyone is getting the best tools for their education. We’re very excited about Yammer Enterprise, which will enable us to provide a protected social networking environment where students can really get to know each other and benefit from multiple perspectives and skills; this is an especially valuable opportunity given the breadth of diversity in our student populations. Plus, we’re trying Office Mix, an add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint, to deliver internal trainings, and combining access to our three learning management systems through Active Directory and Office 365. Whether we’re using an on-premises, cloud or hybrid model, we know Office 365 will support it seamlessly. As time goes on, we plan to expand the boundaries of what we can do with Office 365 and integrate it even more closely with our existing systems. For example, we’re using technology to match our students’ skills and locations with employment opportunities, while also gathering information on what’s most in demand from new hires. We’re thinking about integrating this program with Office 365 single sign-on for greater platform control and interoperability. At Kroton, we feel a strong sense of responsibility to prepare our students for a dynamic, fast-changing world, and to increase economic prosperity in our country and our region. Microsoft is a great business partner for our mission, and Office 365 is the right choice for us. For more information, read the full story here at Why Microsoft. The post Choosing Office 365 over Google Apps for more than a million students across Brazil appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today we’re excited to announce The Office Dev Show, a new dedicated Channel 9 show devoted to all things Office 365 dev-related. The show, hosted by Sonya Koptyev, will include guests from the Office 365 Extensibility engineering team, as well as key community members. The show will feature new code and capabilities that have been added for devs to customize the Office platform, including the desktop, online and mobile versions, as well as a series on how to "Get Started" building on the platform. The Office Dev Show airs weekly, on Wednesdays. The first show, released on July 17, 2015, features an interview with Yina Arenas, senior program manager, who describes all the great features available in the Office 365 unified API Preview. Upcoming shows In the following weeks, you can look forward to a series on Getting Started developing on Office, as well as detailed shows around File Handlers, Fabric UI, Office on iPad Extensibility, Store Updates and more. New shows will be released every Wednesday morning. The post A new way to keep up with all the Office 365 Dev news, tips and tricks appeared first on Office Blogs.

Microsoft Office has long been the home base for homework. Students use Word to write papers, Excel for their math classes and PowerPoint for presenting a final report in class. But students across the country have also used this technology to do so much more. From writing editorials to drafting love notes, students can rely on Microsoft products to help them create, revise and re-imagine. And now, with an accessory like the Universal Foldable Keyboard, students can be creative even when they can’t bring along their laptops. To get the imaginative juices really flowing, the Microsoft PC Accessories team is hosting a student writing contest. In 300 words or less, tell us how you use technology to be creative—in or outside of the classroom. Ten winners will receive Universal Foldable Keyboards and the grand prize winner will snag a Surface Pro 3. We want to know how technology enables you to leave your mark on the world. For some added inspiration, check out this Sway from our summer intern Molly, who uses her Universal Foldable Keyboard to write comedy sketches on the go. Winners will be rewarded handsomely. Each week, from July 17th to July 31st, five "Microsoft Write Now Authors of the Week" will each receive the just-released Universal Foldable Keyboard. The grand prize winner, to be announced August 5th, will receive a Surface Pro 3 outfitted with a Surface Pro Type Cover and an Arc Touch Bluetooth Mouse. Submissions will be accepted from now until July 31st, so "Write Now!" To submit your submission, email your essay to WriteNow@microsoft.com with the subject line WRITE NOW. Entries must come from a student, be 300 words or less, and should be written in a Word document or with Sway. Be sure to include your full name, school name and email address in the body of the email. See official rules here. Don’t have Office? If you are a student, there’s a good chance you’re eligible for free Office. Go to office.com/getoffice365 and enter a school-provided email address to find out. —The Microsoft PC Accessories team The post Write Now—student writing contest appeared first on Office Blogs.

Just in time for teachers, students and families preparing to head back to school—the all new Office for Mac is here. Packed with a whole new set of features, Office 2016 for Mac is sure to help scholars of all ages do their best work. To help you get most out of the new Office for Mac, we’ve narrowed it down to our top 10. Top 10 features and enhancements for students 1. If you save your Office documents in the cloud, a list of recently used files is available in the new Office for Mac. This helps you immediately pick up where you left off. Bonus: Pin the documents you use frequently and they will stay in the special "pinned files" list. 2. Working on an assignment with other students? Simply share your document in a few clicks and give permission to view or edit—all without leaving the application. 3. When you’re working with others in a Word document, PowerPoint presentation or OneNote notebook—several people can work on the same file simultaneously. And you can reply to people’s comments so that you can have a conversation right next to the relevant text. 4. Use Audio Recording in OneNote to record class lectures. Any notes you type while recording are synchronized to the audio. Later, when you review your notes, you can easily jump to the parts of the recording that correspond to the specific notes you typed at that moment. 5. Presenter View in PowerPoint is like mission control for your presentation. You see the current slide, next slide, speaker notes and a timer on your Mac, while the audience sees only the presentation on the big screen. 6. Side-by-side calendar in Outlook lets you see multiple calendars in a single view. 7. Clicking Smart Lookup in Word shows contextual information from the web. When you’re writing a report on the French Revolution, useful information will show up right next to your document (including a certain Napoleon Bonaparte). 8. Mathletes rejoice! Insert 11 types of equations in Word, Excel and PowerPoint and customize them to your heart’s content. You can also save frequently used equations to the Equation Gallery. 9. Make your presentations stand out with new transitions, pixel perfect animations and smooth video playback. 10. Want to make your report or presentation look awesome without breaking a sweat? Click the new Design tab to easily apply designer quality layouts, colors and fonts throughout your document. We hope you find these Office for Mac tips useful. If you have any favorite time-saving tips, please share them in the comments below. And don’t forget, if you’re a student or teacher, visit www.Office.com/student to see if you’re eligible to get Office 365, and the new Office for Mac, for free. The post Top 10 back to school features in the new Office for Mac appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post about Office 365 was written by Franck Le Moal, chief information officer at Louis Vuitton. I joined Louis Vuitton some years ago, and I still have the same passion for the company today as I did then—it is a fantastic, creative place that mixes innovation and modernity with history. My goal as CIO hasn’t changed drastically either: to deliver the best applications and IT tools to everyone at Vuitton, so we can work together to design, manufacture and distribute our products with a 100 percent focus on the customer. This tradition of customer service is the same now as it was in the 1850s, when Louis Vuitton honed his craft designing custom boxes and trunks according to clients’ wishes. We have the same spirit of innovation as we did in 1886, when Louis and his son, Georges, developed a revolutionary new lock to safeguard the goods inside their customers’ travel pieces. And we have survived the changing world of fashion for more than 150 years because we are agile and responsive. The applications and IT tools I bring to the company have to reinforce these qualities. That’s why Microsoft Office 365 has a place in the world of Louis Vuitton Malletier. We were first using Office 365 as a key pillar in a global collaboration initiative supporting our 6,000 sales associates working in 460 Louis Vuitton stores in 65 countries. Our associates develop close relationships with our customers, and Office 365 comes into play by helping them communicate with colleagues across the business to stay informed about our products. Customers in the luxury retail market know a great deal about what they buy—they visit our website, and they pay attention to social media. So it’s critical for our associates to talk to customers at that level, and there’s a lot for them to learn: we have many SKUs for leather goods alone, and we launch four different collections a year in shoes and ready-to-wear. Office 365 is a great, agile platform that we use to support daily exchanges between our merchandising and store teams. Office 365 is just as important in supporting collaboration between the designers and artisans who continue the tradition of excellence and craftsmanship at Louis Vuitton. Previously, we didn’t have one integrated platform for sharing design ideas and innovative practices easily among the 4,000 artisans who work together to deliver the best products to our customers. I love that we maintain the practice of collaborative craftsmanship at our 17 factories and ateliers across France but use Office 365 to speed up idea sharing—where to find a certain leather, for example, or how to improve on a pattern or refine the design of a buckle—to deliver better products more quickly. That’s a huge business benefit. We also see Office 365 as essential in helping us remain agile in an evolving industry. For example, when a new product is launched, its first week in stores is critical for collecting feedback from our sales associates. Yammer, the social network in Office 365, will be an excellent way to share product feedback from our factory teams. There’s another reason we value Office 365: as we grow globally, it enables us to address the risk of becoming too vertical in our operations. Reducing complexity and silos is key to staying agile, reactive and modern. For instance, in the past our staff had many different email addresses and many vertical tools; now everyone is united under the louisvuitton.com domain in a single collaborative platform. This reinforces that we are one company working in sync to deliver world-class customer service. With Office 365 at Vuitton, technology meets tradition—a winning combination that ensures our products and services continue to please our discriminating customers. —Franck Le Moal The post Building on a global culture of tradition and innovation to boost customer service and artistic excellence appeared first on Office Blogs.

Many performance improvements and architecture changes in the upcoming release of Exchange Server 2016—which is now available as a Preview to download—are based on our experience running Exchange Online at extreme scale. Our software development process allows us to incorporate things we’ve learned in the cloud in the product releases that we deliver to on-premises customers. We explain some of these under-the-hood improvements on this week’s Office Mechanics. Exchange engineering team veteran Greg Taylor provides insights into what IT admins can expect in Exchange Server 2016. He explains that the team focused on three key areas to enhance the newest member of the Exchange family: Simplification: both in server architecture and migration from Exchange Server 2013 and 2010. Reliability: key learnings from running Exchange Online enabled the team to get further ahead of potential failures through automation and predict problems before they occur. Performance and reducing total cost of ownership: improvements in indexing, search, connectivity and more, along with making sure we can run on low-cost commodity servers versus high-performance (and high-cost) servers. Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive list of the new capabilities coming to Exchange Server 2016. In-depth information can be found in today’s Exchange Team blog announcing the availability of the Preview. And to see what’s coming in Outlook, check out Ben Walters’ recent show: Early look at the new Outlook on the desktop, Windows 10 and phones. —Jeremy Chapman The post Bringing cloud technology on-premises in Exchange Server 2016 appeared first on Office Blogs.

We had a great time at Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) last week, where more than 14,000 people gathered to celebrate our Partners’ vital work and to share information that will help them continue to serve our customers and grow their businesses. Office 365 was a huge part of WPC, and we gave our Partners a first look at some innovations we are unleashing to help organizations transform how they work. We also announced a significant expansion of the Cloud Solution Provider program to include Azure and CRM Online as well as Office 365, and we are making the program available to all eligible Partners in 131 countries. Mobile and cloud technology were big topics at WPC, which is unsurprising when you consider how much they have changed the way we work and the number and variety of devices we use every day in both our personal and professional lives. Office 365 is designed for today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world, and recent improvements make it even easier to be highly productive on multiple devices and switch seamlessly between Windows, Mac and Android platforms. Shortly after releasing Office for Android phone, we made Office 2016 for Mac available to Office 365 subscribers and introduced another round of important updates to the Office 2016 Preview for Windows. We also recently announced our plan to bring Sway to more platforms and devices. As busy as we were getting ready for WPC, we still delivered on our commitment to continually provide a highly secure service with powerful tools. We added Compliance Search to make it easier for you to search all of your Office 365 data, extended the Office 365 archiving and eDiscovery compliance toolset to include content stored in public folders, and announced new activity logging capabilities to give you more control over your information. We believe these and other significant investments in security are reflected in the recently published 2015 Magic Quadrant for Secure Email Gateways from Gartner, which positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant. In addition, we enabled one-click access to third-party apps and launched PowerShell.office.com, a new website designed to help IT administrators get started on Windows PowerShell for Office 365. Finally, we released the Skype for Business Windows Phone app, announced the preview of our new Skype for Business services in Office 365, made significant formatting improvements to Office Online, and offered an early look at our plan to integrate Cortana with Office 365. For even more Office 365 news, have a look through the below roundup of key items from the last couple of weeks. Enjoy! GE selects Office 365 for employee collaboration and productivity—Discover why GE chose Office 365 to enhance collaboration and productivity for its 300,000 employees in 170 countries worldwide. Building on a global culture of tradition and innovation to boost customer service and artistic excellence—Learn from Franck Le Moal, chief information officer at Louis Vuitton, how Office 365 is helping the celebrated design firm stay customer-focused. Canadian Cancer Society improves TCO, collaboration with Office 365—Find out how the nonprofit Canadian Cancer Society is using Office 365 to reduce its total cost of ownership (TCO) while improving collaboration, productivity and mobile support. Microsoft announces new top-of-the-range E5 plan for Office 365—Discover how E5, the new Office 365 option, will offer business customers added benefits. Microsoft Office in a world of multiple devices—Learn how Office 365 delivers exceptional cross-platform functionality at an outstanding price. New Office 2016 for Mac makes life easier for the cross-platform crowd—Discover how Office 2016 for Mac makes switching between a Windows PC and a Mac pain-free while preserving the familiar look and feel of the Mac. DORMA delivers access to innovation for 7,000 global employees with Office 365—Learn why DORMA, the trusted global partner for premium access solutions and services for enabling better buildings, chose to set up an intranet based on Office 365. U.S. Air Force moves to the cloud with Collaboration Pathfinder—Find out how the U.S. Air Force is taking flight with Office 365. Management consulting firm picks Office 365 at critical growth moment—driving professionalism, productivity and collaboration—Discover how Office 365 is helping Loeb Consulting Group grow its business. Microsoft makes Office 365 freely available to nonprofits—Learn how qualifying nonprofit organizations can use Office 365 free of charge. USEK goes greener helped by Microsoft Office 365—Find out how the USEK university in Lebanon is using Office365 to reach its environmental goals while providing better service to faculty and students. Digital India: Microsoft to focus on rural internet, cloud solution—Discover how Microsoft is working with the Indian government to transform rural India with cloud technology. The post Office 365 news roundup appeared first on Office Blogs.

Windows 10 is here! The best Windows yet, delivered as a service and kept automatically up-to-date with new innovations and security updates, launched last week as a free upgrade. As part of the launch, we also released the all new Office Mobile Apps for Windows 10. Customers in 190 countries can now download and install the apps from the new Windows Store and immediately start being more productive on the go. In conjunction with the launch, we also spelled out which capabilities in Windows 10 will benefit Office 365 admins. Windows 10 is big news, but it’s not our only news. As part of our ongoing work to deliver the richest email and calendar experiences on the web, we announced an array of exciting updates to the web version of Outlook in Office 365. "Outlook on the web," formerly known as the Outlook Web App (OWA for short), is getting an improved user interface (UI) and new features to help you work more efficiently, stay on top of your inbox, and do a better job of managing your calendar. We also launched Send, a new app designed for quick, brief, in-and-out email, similar to a text or instant message. Send is connected to Office 365, which means your conversations are synced with Outlook, letting you continue the conversation from anywhere. And just like regular email, you can message anyone with an email address. In addition, we announced the general availability of Sway, the digital storytelling app that lets users create and share interactive reports, presentations, assignments, lessons, projects and more. We’ve started rolling out Sway to all eligible Office 365 business and education customers worldwide, and of course, any consumer can use Sway with a free Microsoft account. We also introduced Sway for Windows 10, along with new layout and publishing capabilities. All of these innovations and improvements are part of our ongoing commitment to make Office 365 the best productivity solution for every device and every platform. Below is a roundup of some key news items from the last couple of weeks. Enjoy! Review: Windows 10—Learn why you should upgrade to Windows 10, according to the editors of Wired. Microsoft’s cloud bets pay off as Office 365 sees big growth—Find out how Office 365 is growing quickly and contributing to the company’s cloud strategy. UL—product safety leader maintaining security and moving at the speed of innovation with Office 365—Find out why protecting customers’ intellectual property is UL information security director Robert Jamieson’s top priority—and how Office 365 helps him achieve that goal. Adventist Health System boosts productivity with Office 365 ProPlus while complying with HIPAA—Discover how Office 365 helps this large healthcare organization stay productive, secure and compliant. Office 365 joins IFTTT to automate routine tasks—Learn more about using IFTTT on Office 365. Microsoft levels up web version of Outlook for business customers—Find out more about the changes, upgrades and improvements Microsoft has made to the web version of Outlook. Souping up Office 365—Learn how Microsoft is continuing to improve Office 365. The post Office 365 news roundup appeared first on Office Blogs.