Current Event: 10/19/2015

Evan Schrader
September 23, 2015
The New Microsoft Office Is Here/You'll Never Have to Buy Microsoft Office 2016 Again
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/22/technology/microsoft-office-2016/index.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/10/17/microsoft-office-2016-review/

This article describes the release of Microsoft Office 2016.  Microsoft Office 2016 is the newest of Microsoft's most successful product line, the Microsoft Office series.  The Microsoft Office series is a collection of applications used for presentations, work, or other functions.  Now, Microsoft Office 2016 is connected with Office 365, an online rival to Google Drive, so people are able to share and collaborate within Microsoft Office 2016.  Microsoft Office 2016 is available world-wide as of September 22, 2015.  Another great new feature is that once you have both Office 2016 and Office 365, you can download Microsoft Office 2016 on as many computers as you want, not just one.

Microsoft Office 2016 and Office 365 are applicable to our Emerging Tech course because all Blue Valley School District email accounts have subscriptions to Office 365.  I think that Office 365 will gradually replace Google Drive as our school's default school-work application because the students are already used to using Microsoft Office applications like PowerPoint, Word, and Excel, and it will be just as easy as Google Drive to share and collaborate on projects.

One interesting fact that I found was that on Office 2016, you don't technically "share" projects, but you actually send an email link via Microsoft Outlook, which you and your group partners can then work on and edit simultaneously.