Forum Discussion
School-wide roll out: What works and what doesn't?
Hi,
The issue I have with creating numerous channels is that the Class Materials folder doesn't appear in the different channels. So if I create Topic based channels and try to put supporting files in the Files tab then by default the documents can be easily edited or deleted by the students. Unless I manually go into Sharepoint and adjust the permissions. (Which is doable, but it's an extra step which overwhelms some staff. )
The same issue occurs if I were to do weekly channels. However for the same reasons you mentioned, weekly channels don't fit so well into schools. I'm more likely to have 10 topics, each spanning about 4 weeks long.
Small Group channels are an interesting idea that I've never tried. Probably more suited to older students. I think I'd prefer to be able to set Teams Assignments to a small group of students so that they could work together on tasks. Again, there are various work arounds to this. None of which are as smooth as a teacher or student would want.
On a side note.... I'd especially love to be able to set a Blank whiteboard within Teams assignments to groups of students to help them brain storm. ( Ian Mikutel ). I wonder how this might work also with Breakout rooms coming to teams. Imagine if there could be a huge white board split in Segments for each breakout group. Then when you come back together you'll be able to see the whole thing.
Overall, Teaching with Teams has been really good. I feel that various small things in all of the place that aren't quite right yet. For example, if there are 5 history classes that should all be doing the identical work then Should they be in one team or five,
Option One If they are all put into One team then obviously they can all share the same Files tab. (But then hosting Teams Video call meetings is horrendous as students would be getting lots and lots of extra meeting invitations because you can't easily invite only groups of students, whilst still hosting within a channel.
Option Two Whereas if they are Five separate teams then they would have 5 separate Files Tabs. But theres no easy way to cross post files to all file tabs at a time. (OneNote and Assignments can both do cross distribution though)
Option Three: Have five teams, then also create an extra Sharepoint all 5 classes. But where should this sharepoint exist. Or would it be better to use some form of Moodle.
I'd love to hear further feedback on how this situation is tackled by others and what they suggest.
I could go on all day about odd quirks here and there as to how it all works. Definitely room for improvement in both my understanding of how should be implemented, and also some room for improvement from MS in simplifying some stuff. These are necessarily easy questions to solve and I appreciate the effort from MS to continually refine these processes