Unit 2: Using Teams
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Unit 2 - Using Teams in a Classroom
You are Here: Unit 2 > Estimated Completion Time: 9 minutes plus three videos equal to 23 minutes
💡 Learning Objectives
- Knowing how to maximize Teams for your classroom will allow you to understand faster how this application will meet your needs.
- Teams will assist virtual, hybrid, and face-to-face student learning.
- Understanding situations within Teams to avoid will promote quicker integration with your content area.
🔑 Key Idea
The Teams application is evolving to the needs of education regularly. However, until Microsoft perfects this application for classroom use, some situations need to be avoided to minimize frustration.
Why Use Teams in your Classroom
As described by Tholfsen (2020) outlined a few ways to assist in getting the most out of Microsoft Teams, a digital communication and collaboration "hub", while remote teaching and all of these points support face-to-face, in building students, as well:
- Connection and Collaboration: Use the Teams built-in meetings features to effectively 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 the collaborative classroom.
- Inclusion: In order to ensure learners of all abilities are included, understanding which tools and technologies improve accessibility and foster an inclusive classroom becomes critical. With built-in capabilities like the Immersive Reader, message translation, and Live Captions for meetings, Teams is a non-stigmatizing platform.
- Meaningful Feedback with Rubrics: An important part of good teaching practice is providing timely and useful feedback. Teams Assignments have built-in rubrics which may be reused with any assignment. Rubric grading helps increase assignment transparency for students and allows you to give more meaningful feedback. These feedback mechanisms not only help students learn and improve their work, but they’re also a consistent and transparent way for teachers to grade.
- OneNote Class Notebooks, included with Teams: OneNote is a multifaceted note-taking tool that is built into Teams and can be used for a variety of lessons and activities. 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.
Top 10 Things to Look Out for While Using Microsoft Teams
On her blog, Lengelle (2020) describes ten situations in Microsoft Teams to be aware of.
One: @mentioning a member not included in the Team
- Microsoft 365 and security settings have always been working top-notch. As a result, when using an @mention someone in a channel where the user is not part of that Team, permissions will not auto-magically change, and you won't find a match for that user.
Two: Changing a Microsoft Team from Private to Public
- From a Microsoft Teams perspective, the Team will now be available for users to join without requiring approval(s). Instead, they will become "Members" automatically if they decide to join.
- You may not know that there is an automatic relationship between Teams and SharePoint. A built-in group called Everyone except External users will be added to the associated SharePoint site by changing the privacy settings. Then, the user(s) will access the content with Edit permissions on the site. Clicking on the "Conversations" tab in SharePoint (on the quick launch), Teams will add the users to the Microsoft 365 Group to join the fun!
Three: Renaming a Channel in Teams
- After deciding on the Channel name and "purpose," because of the association with file handling, SharePoint can get highly untidy after a Channel rename.
- Teams translate every Channel by a folder in the SharePoint "universe" you'd think renaming a Channel will rename the (associated) folder in SharePoint? Not so. However, if you use the "Open in SharePoint" option, it will still work, but you'll still see the old name.
- Pro Tip: Avoid renaming the folder directly in SharePoint! Doing so will generate an error, and meanwhile, a new folder has been RE-CREATED in SharePoint, with the old name!
- and continuing on the topic of confusing users...
Four: Creating a Private Channel in Teams
- Using a Private Channel is a feature in Microsoft Teams that is available for creating groups of students. Unfortunately, this is where the Team permissions model breaks down. You want to allow a different set of people but stay in the same context (the Team). You'll receive the Channel lock icon, and everything "looks" correct. But over in SharePoint, a NEW site with your items is created. Because you are breaking the member permissions, SharePoint must share the items in the best way possible. Locating those items becomes even more complicated because those "private" sites are not visible in the SharePoint Admin Center but only using PowerShell (Sept 2020).
Five: Posting in Multiple Channels
- Sometimes it's helpful to share the same information across several Teams (the classes you created) simultaneously. Using the "Post in multiple Channels" option, you avoid copy/paste, which is time-consuming and not as easy as possible, especially with the Return key acting as the Send Now button.
- Using the Post in multiple Channels options will send your message to each selected Team and have a specific thread of replies, but changing the subject or your Post's content will be cascaded to the other channels.
Six: Adding Someone Else in Teams Chats
- Teams Chat supports discussing with a particular student, rather than the entire class Team. But sometimes, you may want another member to join the discussion.
- Because you're currently in a One-To-One chat situation, adding another recipient will automatically create a new Chat group, separated from your current one-to-one.
- Note: Microsoft Teams will prompt you to an automatically created Chat group and not generate a second group with the same collection of contact names!
Seven: Sharing Documents in Teams Chats
- Compared to sharing files in a Channel, this experience is the same, except the storage location, is different! Files shared in Teams Chats are given to SharePoint in a slightly different method.
- When sharing a file in a Chat (not a Channel), that storage location is in your OneDrive. Upon inspection of your OneDrive root location, you will find a folder called Microsoft Teams Chat Files. Inside are all the files shared in your chats, with the correct permissions given to appropriate users.
Eight: Sharing Documents in Teams Chats (personal) and Adding Someone Later
- To explain, let's say there are three people already chatting (as of Sept 2020), and then there is a need to add another member to the conversation. Now you will be asked to enter the name of the other conversation member and choose from the following:
- 1. Don't include Chat history
- 2. Include history from the past number of days [number]
- 3. Include all Chat history
- Those options are self-explanatory, and you can choose based on your needs.
Nine: Users Share Files in a Teams Chat Then Leave the Chat Thread
- Warning: if you leave the Chat, you can't add yourself back (even when you created the group), and only the remaining people can do so. The "Files" tab is empty, BUT the Files continue sharing with the other participants. Furthermore, your messages will remain in the thread.
Ten: Users Share Files in a Teams Chat Then Delete Those Files
- Specifically when deleting the files from the "Microsoft Teams Chat Files" in your OneDrive. Despite the file still being visible in the Teams Chat, the user you shared the document with will encounter:
- Error message when clicking on the document,
- Error "404 Not Found" when trying to open in the browser,
- Error message "Sorry we ran into a problem, the file didn't download" when trying to download it
- A simple action of restoring the file from the Recycle Bin will resolve the problem, and the file back into the Microsoft Teams Chat Files folder and restore the permissions.
👍 Check for Understanding
- Teams offers a secure method for students to connect and collaborate.
- The ability to include students of all abilities is possible with the many support tools built into this Microsoft platform.
- Teams operates alongside SharePoint for file management.
- Understanding how SharePoint functions will save a lot of time when providing students resources for their learning.
- Posting in multiple channels is possible, use this feature for reminders that do not require customization for separate channel members.
- Remember it is the same message for ALL channels - message updates are sent to all copies of your post.
Pushing Your Learning Further
Video resources created by Kevin Stratvert | YouTube Creator | 656K subscribers
How to Record Meeting in Microsoft Teams
In this step-by-step tutorial, learn how to record, share, and get back to your recordings in Microsoft Teams.
Recording your class lecture is an excellent way for students to revisit the content presented. Another use of sharing the recorded class discussions is providing absent students a method to stay current with the class by re-watching the "same" content.
How to See Chat & Hand Raises when Presenting in Microsoft Teams
In this step-by-step tutorial video, learn how to continue to see all conversations, chats, and hand raises even if when you're presenting using your full screen and have just one monitor.
⏱️ Timestamps
0:00 Introduction | 0:45 Example of a problem with Desktop Sharing | 2:21 Example of the problem with Sharing Window | 2:50 Example of the problem with PowerPoint sharing | 3:47 Solution to seeing chats and hand raises | 5:15 Wrap up
How to Use NEW Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams
In this step-by-step tutorial, learn how you can use the new breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams. Use breakout rooms to support small-group collaboration and discussion. You can open and close rooms more than once during a session or move participants between rooms. Only meeting organizers can create and manage Breakout Rooms.
Breakout rooms allow you to have students work together within small groups providing a student-to-student presence with the material learned.
⏱️ Timestamps
0:00 Introduction | 0:27 Create breakout rooms | 1:29 Manually assign participant to room | 2:23 Recreate breakout rooms | 2:56 Re-assign participants to new rooms | 3:30 Room settings | 4:18 Start rooms | 5:09 Join room as organizer | 5:44 Make an announcement | 6:33 Close rooms | 7:24 Review breakout room output | 7:56 Wrap up
🏴☠️ Teach like a space-ninja Pirate
Breakout Rooms offers another student activity to foster collaboration allowing everyone to participate at their comfort level. For example, if using a breakout room for a brainstorming session, ask the group members to choose a note keeper from the room discussion and have those notes available to all attendees when the brainstorm session is over.
The ability to incorporate this style of student activity will take practice. After trying, your students may request a meeting in a breakout room to discuss the content you are covering.
References:
Lengelle, V. (2020). Top 10 Things to Look Out for When Using Microsoft Teams. Retrieved from https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/itops-talk-blog/top-10-things-to-look-out-for-when-using-microsoft-teams/ba-p/1662023
Stratvert, K. (2020). How to Record Meeting in Microsoft Teams. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCTpb9yeGfY&t=2s
Stratvert, K. (2020). How to see Chat & Hand Raises when presenting in Microsoft Teams. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2I5m1YWM38
Stratvert, K. (2020). How to use NEW Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMfsilBhW7A
Tholfsen, M. (2020). Top 5 Ways Teachers Can Use Microsoft Teams During Remote Learning. Retrieved from https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2020/04/top-5-ways-teachers-can-use-microsoft-teams-during-remote-learning/