Teams Brings Powerful New Possibilities to Classrooms
As part of Microsoft’s late November/early December updates, the Teams platform is being supercharged with some exciting and powerful new possibilities for teachers.
App Integration in Assignments
Inside the Assignments pane, a new “Apps” pane appears underneath the box where instructions are typed. This allows for educators to now directly attach an assignment created in outside applications into the assignment, rather than sharing as an external link. Apps supporting this new feature at launch include Flipgrid, Nearpod, Buncee, Whiteboard.chat, Wakelet, and more! The full list and breakdown videos from the app partners can be found at Microsoft’s official blog post here.
Microsoft Whiteboard as Assignment
Educators can now assign and use Microsoft Whiteboard as an assignment, opening the door to unlimited possibilities for collaboration and project curation in a single, unlimited canvas. Educators can assign previously created Whiteboards as reference materials for another Assignment, or they can be assigned to individuals or groups for collaborative exploration and project-mapping as needed. Let the student creativity flourish by adding one of the Whiteboards to an Assignment today!
Video Recording in Assignments
Sensing a theme, yet? Continuing to bolster the options available to educators in the Assignments pane is the latest addition: video recording! Educators are now able to record and attach a video directly from inside the Assignments pane, which can be helpful for visual instructions, a mini-tutorial to remind students of the lesson taught that day, or more. Students will also have the option to record a video and submit it alongside their original assignment, which is terrific for foreign language teachers and language acquisition, instrumental band/chorus performances, and projects or anything else that may need just a bit more clarification behind the work submitted.
Reading Progress Feedback Tools and Time Limits
After the amazing release of Reading Progress, Microsoft is backing it up with some excellent new reporting tools. These reporting tools allow for educators to share the results of the Reading Progress assignment back to the students in either a Full Report (with words-per-minute, the marked-up passage, and percentage data) or in a Simplified Report which just shares the marked-up passage. These new Reporting Tools can be set for the entire class, or designated for each individual student, allowing for those who are more anxious with scores and reports to only see the color-coded report, instead. Also added to Reading Progress is the ability to set time limits for passages, in a variety of time intervals, that can be set from a drop-down box when assigning a passage through Reading Progress initially.
These updates bring an enhanced feature-set to supercharge the Assignments and activities that educators can roll out to students through Teams.
You can find more information and links to other resources supporting these updates at the Microsoft Education Blog.
A downloadable PDF handout with clickable links to use with teachers describing the contents of this update can be found here.