Microsoft invites educators to try its Literacy Skills Challenge

On September 8, Microsoft launched its “Literacy Skills Challenge,” which, as it describes, is a “gamified learning challenge” that will help educators and school leaders be familiarized with its literacy tools for building the literacy skills of their learners. 

Mike Tholfsen, principal group product manager of Microsoft Education, invited education professionals to join the game, which, at the time of writing, had 618 participants. According to Microsoft, aside from introducing its education tools, the launch is the company’s way to support International Literacy Day.

When you register for it, you can set up your preferences, from your professional roles to your knowledge level and the Microsoft products you want to learn about. Once set, you will be given a set of modules or “challenge collection” to complete in a limited amount of time. The topics vary a lot but are all related to Microsoft’s literacy tools that can all be handy for educators and other useful educational topics, such as dyslexia awareness, using Reading Progress and Reflect for the benefit of students, Office 365 tools, and more. The modules are further divided into different sections when you open them, giving you more details to explore certain topics.

Literacy Skills Challenge is free and will be available until October 7. Also, it only requires a Microsoft Learn account for you to join.

It is not Microsoft’s first attempt to improve the teaching experience of professionals in the field of education. Recently, it also introduced a new home page for Teams for Education and continues to use Minecraft to aid educators in teaching learners about a wide variety of topics.