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"Learning Suite by Microsoft is a set of innovative applications for education that create a robust, creative and collaborative learning environment for students and educators. It includes a new, integrated interface that lets you access all these applications in one place, where they are grouped around four categories aligned to how you work. It makes managing your tools simpler, and it is especially efficient when combined with Microsoft Windows® 7 and Office 2010."

Whether you are new to the computer, returning for review or just want to gain more 21st century skills, our free computer tutorials can help. From Computer Basics to Microsoft Office to Apple, we have a wide range of free computer tutorials to choose from.

"Google Drive, and the apps in it-Docs, Sheets, and Slides-are great for people looking for a simple Office suite. It's free, makes collaboration easy, and pretty much anyone can use it. But if you're used to something more traditional, like Microsoft Office, you may be hesitant to use it. Here's how to make Google Drive work more like the desktop suites you're used to"

"Cyber-bullying, update-addiction, sexting - from the perspective of a parent raising a ''digital native'' child, social media seems fraught with dangers. But new research suggests the risks inherent in social media use by younger generations might be overblown. danah boyd, assistant research professor at Harvard and principal researcher for Microsoft Research - like k.d.lang, she prefers the lower case - has completed a large-scale study on how US teenagers use the internet in general, and social media in particular. Her book is called It's Complicated, and is the result of in-depth interviews with scores of teens over an eight-year period."

"''More and more of our jobs are dependent on technological sophistication, and yet we're doing nothing to help prepare our kids for this,'' says danah boyd, assistant research professor at Harvard and principal researcher for Microsoft Research. ''We assume that if they figured out Facebook, surely they can figure out the skills needed to work at a company like Facebook. That's societally detrimental.''"

"Fargo is a simple idea outliner, notepad, todo list, blogging tool, project organizer. It's an HTML 5 application, written in JavaScript, runs in any compatible browser, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft IE 10. It integrates with Dropbox. From Dave Winer

"One of the key results of flipping my writing and literature classes has been that my students do much of their writing in-class on computers provided by the college. All of these computers have Microsoft Word on them, but I prefer to use Google Docs/Drive instead. Given that MS Word is the standard word processor for my college and most of the rest of the world, then this preference may require some defence. After all, my colleagues expect all of their papers to be submitted in doc or docx format, and my students are most familiar with Word, so what are the benefits of Google Docs that make it worth swimming against the tide?"

"A quiet revolution has taken place in recent months, as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other internet gatekeepers have revised their search algorithms in an attempt to bring users more personalized information. This subtle shift has enormous implications for students, researchers, and society at large, experts say. When web surfers use Google or Bing to look for information about, say, the national debt, the search results they now see at the top of the page might differ from those of their neighbor. That's because all the major search engines have revamped their formulas to include social media data as key indicators of a website's importance."

Education today thus faces several critical gaps: * Between the world that young people experience outside the classroom and the world within * Between the skills that students learn in school and those they will need later in life * Between those who have access to high-quality education and tools and those who do not It is increasingly an accepted truth that education systems must evolve to meet the needs of the students and societies they serve, changing their mission from knowledge transmission to preparation for future learning