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Microsoft Teams for EDU

Iron Contributor

What are the features of Microsoft Teams for EDU which will differentiate it from the standard Microsoft Teams? Is there anyone who could give us a sneak peek at what we can expect.

I'm quite excited about Microsoft Teams and I have started playing around with it. I can see its potential in creating a unified user interface to do what Microsoft Classroom was meant to do - but which came across quite disjointedly. I know that it may seem like a setback for the early adopters of Ms Classroom - sorry for that! However, that is how it goes in IT for those who are on the cutting edge of technology. Sometimes you get cut!

There are posts like Meet Microsoft Teams, with some information. It would be nice that, while we tinker with Teams, we have a better idea of features that we may expect - so that we can plan with that in mind.

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Answering my own question. This is what we have so far (taken from the post linked to above, with my comments in italics):

The new classroom experiences in Teams will help teachers manage their daily workflow more easily than ever before. Using Teams, they can:

  • Quickly and efficiently create classes with automatically populated student rosters from their school information system (Probably part of SDS)
  • Share files and teaching materials (Part of standard Ms Teams)
  • Make announcements (Part of standard Ms Teams)
  • Divide the class into project groups and monitor progress
  • Create, distribute and grade quizzes; deliver personalized learning with OneNote Class Notebooks (is this a promise of better integration with Ms Forms and obviously OneNote?)
  • Distribute, collect and grade assignments. (Part of the old Ms Classroom and OneNote ClassNotebook)

Any further explanation?

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Solution

It has appeared today in my Teams dashboard!

image.png

 

 

 

 

Indeed! Thanks for the heads-up. This is huge!

I would not have picked that up - instead waiting for a different Teams for EDU tile in the Office 365 dashboard.

Interesting at this stage is some small differences between the desktop app and online app interfaces:

  • When creating a new team from the desktop app, there are 4 options: Classes, PLC's, Staff Members, Anyone - as shown in your screenshot.
  • When creating a new team from the online app, there are only 3 options: Class, PLC and Standard.

Something else I have picked up is that Class Notebook settings are not yet available as supposed to be according to the FAQ page. This is probably being updated as we talk.

An aside - don't we need a separate space for Teams for EDU - or is it going to live in Classroom?

 

Like you, we are struggling to figure out just what features Teams for EDU provide over the regular Teams experience. Specifically, is there a gradebook? How are Forms quiz grades imported into Teams, or are they? How can students view their grades from Teams?

I would love it if they just integrated the grades into OneNote.  That would allow you to see and grade the work - and then just enter a grade.

 

The idea of an assignments tab that collects all of the assignments into one place and groups it by due date seems kind of slick... but it is annoying to have to switch between Teams and OneNote.

 

I would love a better connection between the two.

 

It looks like the "Classroom Notebook" add-on did this - but I think that it only worked for the 2016 version.  (If you're using the free version then I don't think it's there.)

 

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Solution

It has appeared today in my Teams dashboard!

image.png

 

 

 

 

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