In a matter of weeks, teachers around the world found ourselves forced to make the switch to remote teaching – thanks to the Coronavirus outbreak. Although teachers and students alike do have internet connections at home, they still face difficulties due to having everything scattered; one piece of information comes through email, another conversation happens in a text, and another file is sent through Facebook messenger. Teachers keep multiple tabs open for dozens of websites, toggle between apps, check notifications in four different places.

Well, most of them are used to it, more or less. It’s fine. But wouldn’t it be nice if they could put all of their school-related communication in one place?

Microsoft Teams gives you – dear teachers – that one place and so much more. 

What is Microsoft Teams?

Think of Microsoft Teams as a digital hub where you and your students interact online, a workspace where you can communicate, share files, and even meet online. This video shows how it works:

Teams is ideal for communication and collaboration during remote learning. It’s a seamless platform that not only streamlines your teaching workflow, but also makes it possible for you to create a space for more robust collaboration with your students.

Let’s look at how Teams works and what it can do for you.

1. Connection and collaboration: Use the Teams built-in meetings features to effectively hold classroom meetings, collaborate on virtual whiteboards, and share documents. With assignments, conversations, files, notes, and video calls all pulled together, Teams is a great all-in-one hub for the collaborative classroom. 

2. Inclusion: In order to ensure learners of all abilities are included, understanding which tools and technologies improve accessibility and foster an inclusive classroom becomes critical. With built-in capabilities like the Immersive Reader, message translation, and Live Captions for meetings, Teams is a non-stigmatizing platform.  

3. Meaningful feedback with rubrics: An important part of remote learning is good teaching practice. Teams Assignments have built-in rubrics. Rubric grading helps increase assignment transparency for students and allows you to give more meaningful feedback. These feedback mechanisms not only help students learn and improve their work, but they’re also a consistent and transparent way for teachers to grade.

4. Staff and learning communities: Saving time, being more organized, and collaborating more effectively during remote learning is critical. With Teams being a hub for education, a core part of this also includes built-in Staff teams and Professional Learning Community (PLC) teams to go along with Class Teams. This provides a one-stop shop for educators. Staff Teams and PLC teams allow educators and staff to easily communicate and collaborate during remote learning. 

5. OneNote Class Notebooks, built into Teams: OneNote is a multifaceted note-taking tool that is built into Teams and can be used for a variety of lessons and activities. With OneNote Class Notebooks, you have a personal workspace for every student, a content library for handouts, and a collaboration space for lessons and creative activities. You can also embed all sorts of interactive apps, lessons, and content onto the OneNote page. Especially with remote learning, paper notes and handouts are difficult to work with, and having a digital notebook for the class is a natural fit.

Try Microsoft Teams for 6 Months Free!

Remote learning is a journey for all of us, and we are grateful to the diligence and creativity of educators during this time. At Ctelecoms we provide free 6-month trial for Microsoft Teams so that teachers and students can be empowered to do their best while staying at home.

If you have an questions on how to effectively use Microsoft teams and ensure an ideal remote learning experience, feel free to contact our expert team.