May 18th 2021
Microsoft Teams is launching new tools for learning
Recently, Microsoft has announced that they are launching new tools to make Teams an even more collaborative and productive hub for learning.
The first tool we want to share with you is ‘Reading Progress’. This new feature will help aid students in improving their reading fluency. When it comes to reading, it’s difficult for teachers to help students improve their reading and speech ability, when learning remotely. Internet dips and poor bandwidth can cause lag in calls, which can affect the teachers assessing in real-time.
How does Reading Progress Work?
Teachers can upload the text they want their students to read. The student can then submit a voice recording to their teachers, who are then able to listen in and assess any mispronunciations, as well as rate the student's accuracy. Any mistakes are highlighted in the reading material and students can clearly see where they can make improvements.
This feature is also exciting for businesses that are providing remote language lessons as well as schools to aid with reading assignments. But did you know there are already a host of features in Microsoft Teams to help improve collaboration even further?
Create groups in Teams
With Teams you can create groups that you can assign different people to, for example you could replicate the classroom structure, just like you normally would at a school but virtually or create specific groups for study sessions. These groups are protected and can only be accessed by those that have permission in your network. With each group comes its own workspace where teachers and students can chat to each other and share files and host meetings.
Conferencing in Teams
Conferencing is also a huge advantage of Teams. When used in conjunction with created groups, teachers can easily host video calls, without having to add students manually or needing to send out an invite link every day. What’s great is after each call is held in a group, teachers can download an attendance report to see which students were missing. But it doesn’t just end there, there’s tons of team integrations and more and more apps are being supported and developed to increase its roster of third-party tools.
Third Party Integrations
Our final recommendation is Microsoft Whiteboard. It is a fantastic virtual whiteboard for teachers to use when presenting, and even allows students on the other end to participate in real-time making online lessons more engaging!
If you would like to implement teams into your organisation then get in touch today, simply fill in our quick and easy contact form below or via this link and our business consultants will get in touch to help.
If you want to learn about more tools that can help schools improve efficiency and save money, please view our whitepaper today.