Submitted by Fiona Beal
In around October 2015 Microsoft moved the Microsoft Educator Network to its new destination now called the Microsoft Educator Community. Have you perhaps visited the new site and joined?

What is the new site about? 

This new site is a central destination where you’ll have access to over 1.5 million educators around the world, a fresh selection of professional development courses and resources, thousands of inspiring lesson plans, and access to live lessons and virtual field trips. The new community site is a combined experience of the Microsoft Educator Network and Skype in the Classroom. Some additional changes with the new site are:

• A more visual, clear, and friendly design based on educator feedback
• Simple navigation to easily find useful information
• Interactive training (ranging from basic to advanced) with more badges
• Access to guest speakers, virtual field trips, and more educators globally
• Ability to easily create, consume, and share lessons, discussions, and more
• A single location to find information and resources on technology use in the classroom

If I belong to the old Network with I automatically have a profile on the new Community?

This post will answer that questions and help you get started by outlining a few steps that will help kick-start your engagement with the new educator community.

Step 1: Head over to the new Community 

Click on https://www.educatornetwork.com/. This page will take you to the new Microsoft Educator Community homepage. You’ll notice that there is no Sign Up option if you are new to the Community. There is only a Sign In option. Click on that one.

Step 2: Select a region

You will be asked to select a region (continent) and after that a country

Step 3: You will now be asked to sign in

There are quite a few options for signing in. You can select from Office 365, Microsoft (i.e. windowslive.com) Skype, Facebook or Twitter.  If you are a previous member sign in with the same email that you used before.

Step 4: You will need to fill in your profile

Sign-up on the new site by creating a profile if you have never signed up before. Current Microsoft Educator Network members may be prompted to provide the necessary verification to pull your profile data over. I found a rather odd photo on my profile even though I was a previous member. 

Update your profile to depict your expertise and make it easier for other community members to find and connect with you. Some of your details will have been moved across but possibly not all. I found that only two of my badges have been moved across.  But on closer look I see the words ‘Recover account‘ at the bottom of More About Me! That looks useful.

However after clicking on Recover Account I get taken to a page that says that if you are using a different email address you might want to recover your previous information. My email address is the same as it was! 

At this point update your profile and fill in any missing details.

Step 5: Decide where to start exploring

You’ll see a number of options available on the site. We’ll look into these options in the next post on the Microsoft Educator Community. 

Visit Microsoft’s educator community today!