Imperial College London staff and students participated in a cloud training day, by “Azure Evangelist” Daniel Baker.

On Tuesday 31 March, Applied Computational Science and Engineering MSc students joined into a virtual training session, led by expert in Microsoft Azure – Microsoft's cloud platform – Daniel Baker. 

 “Azure Dan”, as Daniel Baker is known, took around 50 students and members of the wider Imperial community on an interactive introduction to Azure, using the Microsoft Teams platform, which is familiar to many staff and students now that the majority of us are working remotely. 

The day – with about 6 hours of interactive teaching and learning – is an initiative of Microsoft’s Education Team. For our MSc students it was an opportunity to learn about cloud concepts and see Azure Dan build out solutions in Azure.  

Azure Dan, who previously delivered these sessions in person, used Surface Hub 2 to annotate slides on a virtual whiteboard; the recording of the Azure Dan Session is now live, accessible with your College login details. Through demonstrations, Azure Dan covered a range of topics including, networking and IP addressing, virtual machines and storage.

Dr Gerard Gorman, course director for the Applied Computational Science and Engineering MSc, reflected that it was a positive event, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic, when many of our students are working from different time-zones.  “It’s a good event to participate in, and with remote learning and teaching at the moment, there’s more opportunity to do the session or re-visit the recording. Plus, it gives students a chance to usefully upskill for future careers.”

“It’s a good event to participate in, and with remote learning and teaching at the moment, there’s more opportunity to do the session or re-visit the recording. Plus, it gives students a chance to usefully upskill for future careers. Dr Gerard Gorman Course Director, Applied Computational Science and Engineering MSc

Participants found the day enlightening. It allowed them to see alternative ways of using Azure and was a good introduction for anyone wanting to get into Azure and understand the fundamentals. 

Imperial uses Azure for teaching and other projects, but the session was more than Azure training session, as it provided a good example for teaching too: Lecturers were able to see another style of delivery and how tools like Surface Hub 2 can be used. 

Joining the session were a number of representatives from other UK universities, who together with Imperial are involved in an Azure Fundamentals pilot, where students will have an opportunity to gain a qualification in Azure.