Microsoft Releases Four New Academic Products

• 09/01/05

Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com/education)has releasedfour new academic-specificproducts, all availablein time for thenew school year:Learning Essentialsfor MicrosoftOffice, MicrosoftShared ComputerToolkit for WindowsXP, MicrosoftStudent 2006,and MicrosoftEncarta AcademicOnline. Learning Essentials,which runs atop any version ofOffice XP or 2003, gives studentsand teachers a customized Officeenvironment with tools to helpthem start and complete assignmentsmore effectively and intuitively.The Shared ComputerToolkit is a powerful combinationof software tools and documentationthat help optimizeand reduce the total cost ofowning and operating WindowsXP-based computers in sharedenvironments such as schoollibraries and computer labs.Microsoft Student 2006 guidesjunior high and high schoolstudents throughthe learning processby offeringsubject-specifichomework tools,such as graphingcalculator softwareand the LearningEssentials program.Finally, Microsoft’sEncarta AcademicOnline gives everystudent one-click access toEncarta reference content inseven languages for 11 countries.All of the products,excluding the Toolkit, are availablefor Academic VolumeLicensing.

This article originally appeared in the 09/01/2005 issue of THE Journal.