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Are you using your Academic Agreement to its full potential?

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Did you know that if your organisation has an Academic Agreement in place with Microsoft, you can have a subscription to the Microsoft IT Academy?

This is a global program what provides resources and curriculum for your institution to deliver inspiring and cutting edge technical courses and skills; and not just to students, but faculty and technical staff too.

For instance, in terms of Office 365 you have all of these resources available with the IT Academy programme:

Office 365 Certification

A table showing the education materials and courses available to the organisation via IT Academy.

The Microsoft IT Academy provides one low cost curriculum for all students and staff; it’s comprised of 250 e-learning courses, practice tests, a library of over 500 e-reference books, lesson plans as well as a digital literacy curriculum. As part of the package, IT Academy also provides access to DreamSpark; which has free software for staff and students and includes programs like Visual Studio and Server 2012.

There are also academic discounts available on official courseware and certification licences. Recently, IT Academy has introduced an offer called Second Shot; this allows a student or staff member to retake an exam should fail the first time round.

As an organisation you would receive a Teacher Certification Start kits, which includes 10 Microsoft Office Specialist exam vouchers and 20 Microsoft Technical Associate exam vouchers; meaning a reduction in training costs, professional development opportunities and a chance to learn about different products entirely, permitting you to utilise them completely within your learning environment.

Microsoft is committed to delivering valuable resources that equip students with the best skill set, showing employers that they can stand out from the crowd. In this respect, Microsoft has been working in conjunction with the awarding body AQA, to ensure that its resources available in the IT Academy programme such as MTA, support CS and ICT GCSE courses; and if students follow up the learning with the certification it demonstrates to future employers that they have business ICT skills. The academic impact of a MOS certification can be extremely positive. From a recent Certiport study, 87% of student’s worldwide say they were able to complete assignments in less time and 60% of student’s worldwide are taking on more complex projects.

For information on pricing and to see how you can add ITA to your Academic Agreement please, view this presentation.