Learning online can be just as engaging, student-specific and social as learning in a classroom with the right tools on your side. Microsoft Teams has become one of the best tools for teachers and students alike for remote learning. No one needs to feel out of touch just because they aren’t in a physical classroom.

Microsoft Teams is a digital hub that brings assignments, content, apps, and conversations together all in one place and lets educators create lively and engaging learning environments. This program helps teachers build collaborative classrooms, connect in professional learning communities, and even connect with colleagues – all from a single experience.

Benefits Teachers Can Look Forward To Using With Microsoft Teams:

• The OneNote feature helps students take notes and helps teachers organize lessons. OneNote is a multifaceted note-taking tool that is built into Teams and can be used for a variety of activities and lessons in the classroom. 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. With remote learning, digital notes are much easier to manage and way more practical than paper ones.

• Hold classroom meetings efficiently and effectively. Use the Teams built-in meetings features to 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 a collaborative classroom. 

• Using the Immersive Reader tool helps students of all learning and reading levels feel included. The Immersive Reader tool is a free screen-reader tool that assists all types of learners with reading, writing, math and communication. Students using Teams can launch the Immersive Reader tool from their assignments, message posts and chat boxes. Using this helpful tool, students can have specific documents, like assignment directions, read aloud to them. The speed of the narration can be slowed down, text sizes can be changed, and fonts can be changed as well. They even have fonts that are designed to help students with dyslexia better read and engage with material. It can even translate documents into a different language for students that are multilingual. This is a fantastic, inclusive feature and can help reduce the stigma from a lot of learning difficulties students may not feel comfortable sharing. 

• Use built-in rubrics for grading: Microsoft Teams Assignments have built-in rubrics for teachers. Rubric grading helps increase assignment transparency for students and allows educators to give helpful and productive feedback. These feedback mechanisms not only help students learn and improve their work, but they’re also a transparent way for teachers to grade with consistency,  This feature is incredibly popular with both teachers and students and the rubrics are easily shareable as well.

• Communicate with other staff all in one place: Since Teams is a great tool and hub for educators, it has built-in staff teams and PLC (professional learning community) for teachers to share and communicate with. This feature provides a one-stop place for communication for educators to share ideas and get help with a myriad of issues. Having other educators and staff be just a click away is a great resource for any teacher. 

Quick Tips For The Classroom To Get Even More Out Of Microsoft Teams!

Quick Tip 1: During a lesson, teachers can moderate the class discussion by muting students, making them presenters, or if needed, removing them from the meeting. Record the lesson, so students can review it on their own time.

Quick Tip 2: Have interactive discussions with your class by sharing the screen to present the lesson and encourage students to ask questions using the chat feature. 

Quick Tip 3: Create and grade quizzes easily in Teams using Microsoft Forms.

Quick Tip 4: Record any class session in case some students can’t join during the live session.

Quick Tip 5: Create a separate “Fun” Channel. Have a virtual science fair, play interactive games, read your favorite books together. 

Quick Tip 6: Show a film by sharing system audio in a meeting. 

Students And Teachers Alike Can Benefit From Remote Learning Tools!

Did you know there are programs that teachers can take part in to assist their own knowledge of online learning spaces? We at De Alba Math Center provide tools for teachers to prepare their classes for examinations in the online classroom. 

Our solutions allow access through Microsoft Teams, Summit Learning, and Google Classroom, where students can access our instructional videos and print De Alba Math-handouts and foldable. We also provide printed resources like workbooks for students to use as consumables.Contact us today and find out how we can support your classroom learning experience, no matter where it takes you.