Microsoft Teams For Education

Hopefully by now you have realized that Microsoft Teams, as a platform is a lot bigger than either the free "lite" version you may be using or the full blown paid version provisioned within your organization. Teams as a solution includes a lot of features that most of us will never use. In reality the most common features used are:

• One-to-One Chat
  
• One-to-One Audio and Video Calling
  
• Group Chat
  
• Group Audio and Video Calling
  
• Teams Chat
  
• Teams Audio and Video Calling
  
• Document Sharing
  
• Scheduling Conference Calls and Meetings
  

There are however much greater capabilities relating to Voice calls, once your organization includes the Online Phone System (PBX), and starts to assign numbers to conference b=ridges, devices and users. An area in Teams that is important to me is the ability to define policies to control what happens within any of the core features. Polices can be created for:

• Teams Configuration
• Messaging
• Meetings
• Calling
  
• Teams App Permissions and Setup
  
• Organization Wide
  

However, in this uncertain time, for me, probably you too, having with my kids full-time made me wonder what technology could help them. Now the schools where I live all use Google Chromebooks, Google Classroom and few other ad hoc platforms, and honestly they are not using them at the moment for online / distance learning either. In fact I am not even sure how they would use them to create a rich online platform for learning. This is where Microsoft Teams Education comes in. A platform built over the top of Office 365 and Teams providing the ability to use all the core features, plus manage classes, assignments, teachers and even after school clubs.

When creating a Team within the regular Microsoft Teams, you only have a single option, albeit you can set the team to either public or private. However within Microsoft Teams Education you get the following:

This allows you to create a structure of Staff, Class, Learning and Club Teams, where you can then add users into it, as you would a normal team. For example if we select "Class", we get a couple of extra things that we can set.

If you choose to not add Teachers and Students at this point then you can do so later once you are inside the team itself.

Once the team is in place, as the Teacher, you can then perform some basic actions.

• Upload Class Materials
  
• Upload Class Notebook
  
• Create Assignments
  
• Create Quiz
  
• Grade Quizzes or Assignments
  
• Review Grades
  

To create a Quiz or Assignment, the Teacher navigates into the Team, clicks Assignments, and then create, choosing what to create.

They can then complete the assignment details.

Once the assignment is created and save, it is listed in the assignment tab for Teachers and Students. It is also posted to the general channel as a chat for everyone to see.

When students then log into the Team they can access the assignment, complete as needed.

The Students can then either attach existing files, and then turn in the assignment.

The Teacher can then review the submitted work and grade it as needed.

As you can see Teams for Education works great for Teachers and Students. There are many more features that can be used as well :-)