Microsoft Champions Summit Spring 2014 - Day 2 #WindowsChampions #ChampionsSummit

On Monday we traveled to Redmond to visit the Microsoft Campus. I was completely blown away by how beautiful it is.

First we visited Building 99 - Microsoft Research.

We learned about virtual assistants located in the research building. This directions robot uses Microsoft Kinect technology to recognize when someone steps up to him to ask for directions. You could ask for directions to a specific room or give a person's name who works there. If you were looking for someone specific, he would let them know that you were on your way to them. It was pretty neat.

Next we met Michael Cohen, creator of Gigapixel ArtZoom. He explained his project to us and gave us a demo of how it works. Basically, they took high quality photos as a 360 panorama of Seattle. You can zoom in to see areas of Seattle up close {from very far away} and view the area as if it were right in front of you. There are "hidden" performers, acrobats, and artists throughout the panorama. When you find them, you can click on them and view a short clip about their work. It's a pretty amazing concept. Since launching the website, they've been approached by other cities around the world to create a Gigapixel ArtZoom. Check it out!

We headed to a space called The Garage on the Microsoft Campus next for lunch and informational sessions. We had 6 hours of sessions, so I'm just going to sum up my favorites for you.

My favorite session was about Bing internet search. First of all - did you know that you can earn credits for Bing Rewards just by searching? You can use those credits for a variety of items. I used my first redemption to get 100 GB of extra storage in my OneDrive account. Now I'm saving up for a Surface tablet for my school. But what was most informative for me was about Bing in the Classroom. Here's the facts on what Bing in the Classroom is all about...

Part of Microsoft’s continued focus on promoting digital literacy in education, Bing in the Classroom is an ongoing program focused on helping kids use technology to inspire and satisfy their curiosity. It provides ad-free, safer, more private search in schools, daily lesson plans that inspire critical thinking, and a rewards program that community members can use to earn tablets for their schools. More information can be found at http://www.bing.com/classroom, and you can track the progress of specific schools at http://www.bing.com/findyourschool.

• Ad-free, safer, more private search. Bing in the Classroom removes all advertisements from Bing search results, filters adult content, disables the use of searches to send personalized ads, and adds specialized learning features to enhance digital literacy. {Program excludes Bing apps.} Over 4.5 million students in more than 5,000 schools are covered by our enhanced search, with over 35 million ad-free queries served to date.
• Daily lesson plans. Bing is well known for having a big, beautiful homepage image that changes daily and inspires visitors to explore their world. With Bing in the Classroom, we’ve used that homepage inspiration to create free daily lesson plans that help students learn how to search the Web effectively while inspiring their curiosity.
• Earn Surfaces with Bing Rewards. The Bing in the Classroom tablet program is an extension of an existing Bing program, Bing Rewards. With Bing Rewards, you can earn credits just by searching the Web on Bing from your browser or phone and for trying out new Bing features. And now, with Bing in the Classroom, you can donate those credits to the school of your choice; Microsoft will pool them with other supporters of that school and, as soon as your school meets the credit minimum, send it a Microsoft Surface tablet with Type Cover. About 60 people using Bing Rewards can earn a tablet for a school in a month.
• Keep track of your school. Bing in the Classroom offers a page for every school in the U.S. that tells you not only if it is receiving ad-free, safer search but also how many Rewards credits have been donated, by how many people, and how many Surface tablets schools have earned.

The next session was on Skype. On April 28 Skype made group video calling free for all! That was the big announcement of that session, and I was given a sneak peak of some upcoming features that will be released soon. But my lips are sealed! :)

The session on Digital Spring Cleaning was awesome. I learned a lot about how Outlook.com makes email easy to deal with. Some awesome features that Outlook has are sweep, an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every newsletter email {that way you can for sure unsubscribe in case the company just happens to not include a link in the email}, rules, flags, floating icons to delete/flag/mark as unread. {I'll write a special post on Outlook later to explain all of this in more detail.}

I also learned how OneNote can make your life so much easier by creating a place to catch all of your notes, recipes, to-dos, travel plans, etc. Did you know that OneNote is now free for everyone to download and use? It's available for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Mac, iPad, iPhone, & Android. The best part is that it syncs across all of your devices. Planning a home renovation project? Use OneNote to create a plan with pictures, notes, URLs, etc. on your computer and then access it from your phone or tablet while shopping for supplies. Very handy!

The image below {click to view larger size} sums up everything I learned in the Digital Spring Cleaning session. The facts are actually a pretty interesting read.

{click image to view larger size}

Come back tomorrow for the final post to see what I did on my last {full} day in Seattle!

Disclosure: I am a Windows Champions blogger and I received loan of a laptop and tablet, and may receive other equipment from Microsoft to assist me in evaluating Microsoft products and services for my blogging activity. I was sent to Seattle to attend the Champions Summit and received products while attending the summit. All opinions expressed are my own.