As somone that has spent the majority of their working life at Microsoft, Craig Bartholomew has been involved in a lot of our better known products...in his current role as a General Manager in the Education Products Group, he is driving towards serving a very important set of customers that are the basis for our future - that of the student and the educator.

Education is currently the only vertical market that has a dedicated product group in Microsoft, and the aim of it is not only to deliver new products that are directly cater for our customers here, but also to add value to our existing installed base of customers.

The Education Products group has been in existence since 1991, starting with Encarta, but there is now much more besides.  Products Craig discusses here in some detail include:

• Microsoft Encarta - our online and offline encyclopedia
• Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office - a free addon for our Office applications
• SharePoint Learning Kit - a SCORM 2004-conformant e-learning delivery and tracking application built as a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 solution.
• Microsoft Student - a superset of Encarta, which also helps student with things like Math, foreign languages and more

Through a combination of products like these, and initiatives such as Partners in Learning in learning, we really want to make the lives of students and educators better.  Learning styles are a very personal thing, and through the application of technology, we hope to be able to better individualize experiences.

You can keep track of all of the latest developments here: www.microsoft.com/education.

Jonny Chambers