BEIJING, Nov. 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — At the Microsoft Tech Summit 2017 on November 2, Teach For China (TFC) was featured in Karim Batthish’s – Vice President of Microsoft, Office 365 Program Management Director, technology keynote. Karim shared with the audience how TFC and Microsoft have together utilized technology to empower both students and fellows in rural, low-resource schools.

Karim Batthish, Vice President of Microsoft, Office 365 Program Management Director presenting the application of Office 365 in the TFC fellowship program.

The Microsoft Tech Summit is the annual tech conference and summit held by Microsoft. This year’s showcase included Microsoft’s latest research in pioneering fields such as AR (augmented reality) and AI (artificial intelligence), and shared accomplishments made by Microsoft and its partners in China to expand digital transformation opportunities.    

TFC fellows were among the first to adopt Office 365 mini assistant to share educational resources in rural China. At the summit 3,000 IT professionals and more than 30,000 online Microsoft enthusiasts, learned how Office 365 had helped 1,500 fellows and 200 TFC staff to improve productivity, education content resource sharing, and team collaboration.

The partnership between Microsoft and TFC, builds upon a decade of innovative work at TFC to find ways technology can further address education inequity.

Founded in 2008 as a nonprofit program under the management of the Lead Foundation, TFC works to address the imbalance in education resources between urban and rural areas in China. TFC attracts, recruits, trains and supports graduates to join a two-year Fellowship and work full-time in rural, low-income, under resourced schools. Here fellows (teachers) work to raise student’s aspirations, dreams and improve their academic outcomes. By placing fellows in cohorts for two-years, schools, and their communities, benefit from having a continuous supply of high quality teachers. Research shows that the quality of teaching is the single biggest factor that impacts a child’s educational outcomes. In the long-term TFC nurtures and supports alumni as they seek ways to continue expanding educational opportunity for all across the public, private, education, development sectors. In the last nine years, TFC has supported 1,500 fellows in 270 elementary and middle schools in Yunnan, Guangdong, Gansu, Fujian Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Microsoft helped to professionalize fellows external communications, create a greater sense of identity and enhance data security by creating email accounts for all fellows. In the future, Microsoft will continue to work in collaboration with TFC to find additional ways that technology can transform classrooms, improve student outcomes and reduce the inequality that exists between rural and urban students. TFC knows that technology has the power to transform education; and is committed to exploring innovative models of technology-driven education in order to ensure that one day, all children in China will enjoy access to a quality education.

About The Lead Foundation

The Lead Foundation is a non-profit foundation registered with the Beijing Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau in April, 2014. The Lead Foundation is one of the first in Beijing to be officially recognized as a charitable organization. The China Foundation Center has consistently given the Lead Foundation an FTI* [note] score of 100 every year since its inception, making it one of the most transparent foundations nationwide.

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SOURCE Teach For China