Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students and educators have had to navigate a wide range of learning scenarios, from remote, to hybrid, and in some parts of the world, a return to face-to-face learning. In many of these cases, schools and districts had to adopt new technologies to maintain teaching and learning efforts. Now, these institutions have an opportunity to use this technology to continue to rethink and redefine traditional classroom approaches for their students. One major way schools are making this happen already is by moving from relying on pen and paper towards empowering students and teachers to write and teach with digital ink and ink-enabled devices. Digital inking also helps schools and institutions promote sustainability by lowering paper and printer usage. Instead of having students buy and carry around notebooks for every class, or having educators print out worksheets for a given topic, everyone can write directly on their Surface device. This can make a huge difference, as an average school uses about 50 reams of paper[1]—about 2.5 trees[2]—per teacher annually. Some schools who have made the switch already are seeing impressive sustainability results. Wellington College, a boarding school in the U.K., wanted to provide the same devices to each student and faculty member on campus. Due to their two-in-one functionalities and high-performance inking capabilities, the school chose to provide each student with Microsoft Surface devices. After adopting Surface devices for their digital inking capabilities, the school calculated it was saving 3.8 million sheets of paper every school year. If you stacked those sheets on top of each other, that stack would be about 250 meters high— five times the height of Nelson’s Column in London! Leaders at Wellington College also calculated that they were able to save about £120 for each device purchased, by no longer having to purchase printer paper and toner. 
That’s why we set out to reimagine the Microsoft Classroom Pen. For us, reducing pen costs to meet the needs of purchasing institutions while keeping the inclusive design fit for students of any age were of utmost importance. And on April 27, to continue empowering educators and students to achieve more, we will be proud to launch Microsoft Classroom Pen 2. Microsoft Classroom Pen 2 is optimized for use with Surface Go and Surface Pro and enables students of all ages to write and draw naturally on their screens via an improved design and longer enclosure. The durable pen tip is replaceable, and it’s easy to prevent loss with a built-in slot for a tether or the clip that attaches to Surface Type Covers. And even with those improvements, the Classroom Pen 2 is only half the cost of the original.Microsoft Classroom Pen 2 will be available exclusively to education institutions starting on April 27, 2021. It will be sold in packs of 20 for a cost of $399.80 USD ($19.99 per pen) and includes batteries and replacement pen tips. Learn more about Surface in Education at Surface.com/Education and connect with a local Surface Education reseller in your market. [1] reference.com [2] ribble-pack.co.uk
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