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June 25, 2026
Welcome to our big ISTE 26 for Microsoft Education blog – we have 23 updates to announce! We’re thrilled to share new AI innovation and insights for education and show them in action next week at ISTELive 26 in Orlando, Florida, US. Join us at the show to learn more and hear about the latest from Microsoft Education at our booth and in dozens of sessions.
Enjoy, and see you there!
ISTE Topics
- Microsoft 365 – Learner updates
- Microsoft Learning Zone updates
- Microsoft 365 – Educator updates
- Teach and Learn apps for Windows
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Agents
- Learning Management System Integration updates
1. Microsoft 365 – Learner updates
Copilot Notebooks and Study guide now available to all Microsoft 365 Students and Educators
Copilot Notebooks are AI-powered workspaces for a subject or group project built on reference materials – bringing together all context behind a topic in one place for you or your group to collaborate on. They are now available to all Microsoft 365 Education licenses (A1, A3, A5) without requiring an additional Copilot Premium license. Also, the Study guide feature in Copilot Notebooks is now generally available. Copilot Notebooks are located in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app waffle.
In Copilot Notebooks, users can add a variety of reference documents, summarize and analyze the content, create mind maps, Study guide, and soon also create Word, Excel, PowerPoint decks.
Study Guide takes the materials learners already have and helps turn them into a collection of organized summary and deep dive topic pages as well as activities including flashcards, quizzes for self-quizzing, fill-in-the-blanks and matching. The important part: it is grounded in the sources you provide.
Get started:
- Take the professional development course at aka.ms/notebooksandstudyguidemodule
- Learn more about Study guide
Study and Learn Agent in additional languages
The Study and Learn Agent is rolling out additional languages beyond English (US). Once the localized experience is fully rolled out, you can use it at https://aka.ms/studyandlearn after setting your browser or OS to the desired locale supported by the agent. The learning quality of the conversations will continue to get better over time. You can check out the Study & Learn agent launch blog here.
We’ve also just launched a new white paper called: Learning by design: Learning science foundation of the Study and Learn AgentThis white paper from Microsoft Education shows how the Study and Learn Agent is designed to keep learning with students as they understand, practice, and build mastery through productive effort, while taking its place within the larger education ecosystem as a learner-centric complement to great teaching. Feel free to share feedback here.
2. Microsoft Learning Zone updates
From generation to classroom instruction with Learning Zone
Microsoft Learning Zone is a teaching and learning platform powered by hybrid AI, enabling educators to turn ideas, standards, or trusted content into structured, interactive lessons, deliver them as self-paced or educator-led experiences, and gain formative insights into student progress. By bringing creation, delivery, and feedback into one integrated experience, Learning Zone makes it safe and intuitive to adopt AI in everyday teaching.
Since launching earlier this year, we’ve been listening closely to educators in real classrooms and are excited to introduce new updates that make Learning Zone even more powerful and practical in the classroom.
Experience Learning Zone generation on any Windows 11 PC
Starting at ISTE, educators on any Windows 11 PC can try Learning Zone’s lesson generation experience through August 2027.
Educators can create up to 10-slide lessons and explore AI-powered interactive lesson creation – making it easy to experience the value and bring relevant and custom interactive lessons to their classrooms.
Teach in class with educator-led interactive lessons
Learning Zone is expanding beyond self-paced learning with a new live classroom experience.
With educator-led interactive lessons, educators can guide the entire class in real time while enabling every student to actively participate. Students join a lesson lobby and follow along on their own devices, while educators control the pacing and flow of the lesson. When it’s time to practice, students can complete activities at their own pace, while educators receive real-time insights that help them adjust instruction on the spot.
This creates a balanced classroom experience, combining structured teaching with flexible, student-centered engagement.
Accessible where you teach
Learning Zone integrates with the tools educators already use including Teach in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App, Teams Assignments, and leading LMS platforms.
Educators can create interactive lessons directly from Teach in Copilot, as well as create new or assign existing lessons through Teams or via Microsoft LTI in their LMS. Students complete their work in their existing environment, with grades syncing automatically.
These integrations are designed to reduce friction, streamline assignment workflows, and keep teaching and learning in one connected ecosystem.
Expanded language support
By Back-to-School 2026, Learning Zone will expand generation support to additional languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese, in addition to English and Spanish, supported today, helping more educators create lessons in their native language and support diverse classrooms worldwide.
As a reminder, the Learning Zone experience and ready-to-learn gallery are already supported in 53 different languages.
AI literacy ready-to-learn lessons powered by The Economist
Learning Zone, in collaboration with The Economist Educational Foundation’s Topical Talk, introduces a free classroom-ready AI literacy collection.
It combines Topical Talk’s teacher-led discussion on critical AI use with Learning Zone lessons that build the knowledge students need to contribute confidently and provide practical frameworks for assessing and verifying AI-generated information.
In addition to the updates announced above, we’ve continued to expand Learning Zone based directly on educator feedback, introducing richer, more flexible lesson creation with new activity types such as Sort, Group, and Match, and enhanced visual support through Bing-sourced and uploaded images. These updates enable educators to create more versatile, engaging, and high-quality lessons with greater ease.
3. Microsoft 365 – Educator updates
Teach in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App
Teach brings AI-powered teaching tools together in one place in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App. You can plan curriculum grounded in your existing materials and standards, create resources, student-facing content, learning activities, and adapt that content to individual or class needs. Teach now includes 11 teaching tools, and here’s what’s new.
Unit Plans
Unit Plans is the most requested tool in Teach, and it’s coming next quarter. It takes you past a single lesson to a full multi-lesson sequence, so you can plan a whole unit aligned to your standards and pacing. You set the unit length, how many lessons you teach each week, and the pieces you want included, and Teach generates a structured, week-by-week plan you can adjust and turn into individual lessons and assessments.
When: Coming next quarter
Teach remembers your classes and settings
Educators no longer need to re-enter their subject and grade level every time they use an AI creation tool. Remember Settings automatically saves past-used Subjects and Grades and carries them across Teach, Teams, LTI, and OneNote. Set your course information once and reuse it, or switch between multiple courses in one click.
This means a teacher with “Biology, Grade 9” and “Chemistry, Grade 11” can move between AI tools – lesson plans, quizzes, flashcards, rubrics – without ever filling in the same fields twice. Course details appear as a chip in the creation form, replacing blank fields with familiar context from day one.
When: In Preview now, Available in August
Teach in your language and region
AI creation tools across Teach, Teams, and Classwork now automatically detect language from the educator’s content and browser settings – no manual language picker required. Whether you’re working in Spanish, French, Japanese, or any supported language, generated content matches your actual teaching language without extra steps.
For English-speaking educators in the UK, Canada, and Australia, output quality has been improved to reflect regional spelling, date formats, and terminology. If the auto-detected language isn’t what you need, a simple override on the result screen lets you change it after generation
When: In Preview now, Available in August
Standards updates
We have been hard at work adding new standards to all our AI features with our partner EdGate, and are happy to share we now support 50+ countries, with more on the way! Standards can be added in Assignments, when creating rubrics, and in the Teach module when creating quizzes, lesson plans, or standards-aligned content. By ISTE, our educational standards coverage will span 54 countries and territories: Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, and the United States.
To request more standards, feel free to give us feedback at https://aka.ms/StandardsFeedback.
Assignments in Teams and Microsoft 365 LTI Updates
Learning Activities in Assignments and Classwork
Learning Activities – flashcards, fill in the blanks, matching, and quizzes – can now be added directly within Assignments and Classwork in Teams. Educators can attach an existing Learning Activity or create a new one without leaving the assignment workflow. Student progress is captured as part of the assignment experience, keeping interactive practice and review in one familiar place.
Students can also create their own Learning Activities from educator-shared resources within an assignment. Share a document or PDF, and students can generate flashcards or study activities from it, supporting self-directed learning without extra setup from the teacher.
When: In Preview now, Available in July
Student AI Guidelines
Educators can now set clear expectations for how students should use AI on each assignment — directly within the assignment creation experience. Four guideline tiers (from “No AI use” to “Full AI use allowed”) give teachers flexible, color-coded options they can customize to reflect their school or district policies. Guidelines are visible to students when they open an assignment, reducing confusion and supporting responsible AI use.
When: Available Now
Coming next in August: educators will be able to launch students directly into the Study and Learn Agent from within an assignment.
Standards alignment in Teams Assignments – Instructions and Rubrics
Educators can now add educational standards directly to their assignments in Teams. When you use AI to enhance your instructions, it takes those standards into account. And when you generate a Rubric for the same assignment, it pulls in those same standards as input – so your instructions and rubric stay aligned without extra work.
When: Available Now
Group Assignments Updates
Creating differentiated groups for assignments just got easier. Educators can now reuse student groups from previous assignments – select a past assignment, pick the groups you want, and apply them to a new assignment in seconds. No more recreating the same reading groups, project teams, or skill-level clusters from scratch each time.
After publishing an assignment, educators can move students between groups without recreating the assignment. Need to shift a student from one reading level to another mid-unit? A single “move member” action handles it cleanly while preserving existing student work.
Coming next in August: Learning Groups let educators assign differentiated content (documents, URLs, resources) to each group within a single assignment — so every student gets materials matched to their level, all managed from one assignment view.
When: In Preview now, Available in August
4. Teach and Learn apps on Windows
We’re excited to introduce Teach and Learn on Windows, two new preview experiences designed to help educators and students get started faster with AI-powered teaching and learning. These lightweight experiences live right on the Windows taskbar, giving educators quick access to curriculum creation tools and giving students a simple launchpad into interactive study experiences.
With Teach, educators can quickly access the same teaching tools they’ll find in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app to create lesson plans, interactive Learning Zone lessons, quizzes, rubrics, and other curriculum materials, all from the Windows taskbar.
With Learn, students can join and practice learning activities like flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks, and matching. For eligible users, Learn will also provide a path to the Study and Learn agent, helping students get guided support as they practice, reflect, and build understanding at their own pace.
Teach and Learn are available as new preview experiences for EDU Insiders today. We look forward to learning from educators and students as these companions evolve.
5. Microsoft 365 Copilot Agents and Grounding
EDU Data Grounding delivers more relevant responses from Copilot, leveraging data generated by Classwork, Assignments, Grades, Insights, and more. Built directly into Copilot with targeted Educator content experience allows for quick and relevant content throughout Microsoft 365 Copilot Experience.
6. Learning Management System Integration updates
Copilot Teaching tools in Microsoft 365 LTI are now available in public preview
Copilot teaching tools are a set of tools available in familiar LMS flows for creating and updating content where educators can easily access AI-powered teaching tools to quickly make modifications to language, reading level, length, difficulty, alignment to relevant standards. They can also create Microsoft Learning Activities like flashcards, fill in the blanks, and matching games that can be shared with a class as study aids embedded directly into course content.
LMS administrators who have deployed the Microsoft 365 LTI in their LMS can enable the Copilot Teaching Tools preview in Admin Settings:
Instructors will see the new options in LMS course content menus where they can also link or embed Microsoft 365 files or create Microsoft Education Assignments where Learning Activities also can be used to engage students in practice. Follow the guide for your LMS to discover Copilot Teaching Tools today!
Learning Zone interactive lessons and Learning Activities now in Microsoft Education Assignments
Instructors can now assign a Learning Zone interactive lesson or add a Learning Activity to an assignment for practice. Microsoft Education assignments integrate seamlessly into your LMS as assigned content and send grades and feedback to the LMS gradebook automatically. With the Assignments app enabled by your LMS administrator in Microsoft 365 LTI, instructors will find Learning Activities and Interactive Lessons available in the Attach menu of Microsoft assignments. Make your next assignment interactive with Learning Zone lessons and Learning Activities.
Supercharge your LMS with Microsoft 365 LTI and AI-powered experiences
Microsoft 365 LTI, Copilot Teaching Tools, and Learning Zone interactive lessons for your LMS don’t require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license – any instructor or student with a Microsoft Academic license (ex: A1, A3, A5) will have access.
Microsoft 365 LTI is LTI® 1.3 Advantage Certified, and works with Canvas, PowerSchool Schoology Learning, Blackboard, Brightspace by D2L, Moodle and other platforms that conform to the LTI Advantage standard. LMS administrators can Learn more about deploying Microsoft 365 LTI in your LMS.
LTI® is a trademark of the 1EdTech® Consortium, Inc. (1edtech.org)
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And finally, just to recap all the news we have for you this month, here’s a quick review of all the features that are generally available or are rolling out now:
- Microsoft 365 Copilot – Learner updates
- Copilot Notebooks available to all Microsoft 365 Educators and Students
- Study Guide in Copilot Notebooks at general availability
- Study and Learn agent new languages and image support
- Microsoft Learning Zone updates
- Educator support for all Windows 11 devices (trial)
- Live Classroom teaching scenarios
- Integrated in Teams, LMSes and Teach Module
- Expanded language support
- New activities like matching, grouping and more
- New Economist lessons available
- Microsoft 365 Copilot – Educator updates
- Teach module – Unit Plans preview
- Remember Settings in Teach Module
- Set AI Guidelines for students in Teams Assignments
- Assign Study & Learn agent (later this year)
- Support for new countries for Standards and Curriculum (now over 50 countries)
- Standards integration into Teams Assignments
- Learning Activities integration in Teams Assignments and Classwork
- Collaboration Groups in Teams Assignments
- Resue existing groups in Assignments
- Learning Collaboration Groups in Teams Assignments (coming soon)
- Teach and Learn apps for Windows
- Teach app for Windows (preview this summer)
- Learn app for Windows (preview this summer)
- Microsoft 365 Agent updates
- EDU grounding available for Assignments, Grades and Classwork (now at general availability)
- Learning Management System Integration
- Copilot Teaching tools (preview)
Have any feedback to share with us? As always, we’d love to hear it!
We are always looking to improve the education experience in Teams, and our favorite way to do that is with your support and awesome ideas!