Microsoft Teams in Office 365 Education is just into its second year since launching in June 2017 and is being touted as one of the best ways to further classroom engagement, strengthen professional learning communities and streamline staff communication.

 Microsoft Teams puts everyone on the same page, especially if they aren’t always in the same room. Microsoft Teams works off one central platform where everyone can see what everyone else is doing. You can upload and share any Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint and Power BI) and also comment on others’ work. Teams is also a complete chat and online meetings solution allowing users to host video, audio and web conferences and chat with anyone inside or outside an organization.

Teams For Education

Educators have used Teams to transform the learning experience at schools. Its uses are many.

• Microsoft Teams allows any virtual student or collaborator to participate via webcast and encourages collaboration across classes.
• Teams Assignments helps develop a digital classroom. Content, conversations and assignments are all in one hub so students can sign in, get started and begin connecting with each other.
• Rubric grading is also being introduced into Teams. Your teachers can create, store and apply rubrics to assignments to make it easier for students to get feedback. Not only does this help students improve their work, but it is a consistent way for your teachers to grade.
• With Microsoft Forms, a teacher can quickly add a quiz for students to complete and return. Plus Teams allows educators to keep track of feedback and grades.

What’s New?

Microsoft Teams is the fastest growing business app in Microsoft history. It is currently being used in more than 325,000 organizations, 87 Fortune 100 companies and is available in 44 languages. It only makes sense that Microsoft will continue to expand this valuable tool.

• Page locking in OneNote assignments. The pages of the student will now automatically “lock” as read-only when the due date/time passes. The teacher can still edit and annotate these OneNote assignment pages with feedback.
• Mute all students. Educators can now pause students from posting in the conversation tab.
• Join codes. Teams allows administrators to create a simple code for members to join a class, PLC or staff team, making it easy for many people to join a team all at once. Display the code in ‘projector mode’ so that everyone in the room can see it.
• Reusing a team as a template. Teachers can reuse an existing team as a template when creating a new team, then customize what they want to copy over: channels, team setting, apps, and even users.
• Archive teams. Safely store a Class, PLC, or Staff team content in read-only mode. Easily reference archived teams while setting up a Teams experience for the next school year. 

Love Microsoft Teams for Education? Let us know how you use it in the comments below.