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What’s New in Microsoft Teams for February

Microsoft Teams for Education

Discover what’s new in Microsoft Teams for Education

Our team at IT Systems have put together a guide to all that is new in Microsoft Teams for Education for February 2023. Scroll down to unveil not 1, not 2 but 11 new features.

Classwork in Microsoft Teams

One solution to create and organise class content in Teams!

The new classwork app is launching soon to Teams for Education. This app will be able to manage your entire curriculum! Classwork will allow educators to create and organise class resources including assignments, files, links, channels, class notebook pages and so much more. In Classwork, educators can organize resources into modules aligned with their curriculum structure so that students can more easily navigate the class and find relevant resources.

Grading in Microsoft Teams

Revamp your grading experience with Microsoft

Teams for Education is revamping its grading experience with grading improvements such as weighted grading categories and showing average grades to students. These features aim to make the Grades experience in Teams more streamlined for both educators and students alike.

Educator will be able to enable average grades for students in the new grade settings experience.
Students will be able to view their grade in the class and track their progress.

Weighted grading categories allow educators to assign percentage weights to different types of assignments. Which can also be turned on in grade settings. If a class is using grading categories, average grades will be calculated by multiplying the average score in each category by that category’s weight.

Both features are being launched this month!

Reading Coach in Teams

Automatic lowering of hand in a meeting

We all know of someone who regularly forgets that their virtual hand is raised. More often than not, a raised hand will be left raised indefinitely. With this new update, users who raise their hand in a Teams meeting and then speak, will see a notification informing them that their hand will automatically be lowered. The notification will allow them to keep their hand raised if they choose to.

Reading Coach in Teams

New teams webinar experience

An updated webinar experience has been fully rolled out! By enabling the new webinar experience, you can use meeting registration and many new webinar features. These include dedicated event and registration pages , co-organisers as well as registration status overview and management. You will be even able to include presenter bios on the event page.

Search Coach in Teams

Search Coach, a simple but powerful new tab app

This is a simple and powerful new tab app that helps educators and students develop information literacy skills by forming effective queries and identifying reliable resources.

This app offers real-time coaching, easy access to advanced search techniques, and details about each website to help students learn to ask the right questions and search with confidence. To help educators get started, Microsoft have also created an ever-growing hub page of resources for teaching with Search Coach in the classroom.

Reading Coach in Teams

Reading Coach in Immersive Reader for Teams Assignments

In 2022,Reading Coach was launched in 2022, as part of Reading Progress in Microsoft Teams. Reading Coach provides students with an individualised and independent practice based on words that it identifies a student has mispronounced. Reading Coach has proven to be popular with both educators and students.

To enable students to practice with content that aligns with their interests and focus, without the need for a teacher to make an assignment in Teams, Microsoft are rolling out Reading Coach as part of Immersive Reader in many of our M365 apps, including Microsoft Teams Assignments, Word for web, OneNote and Flip.

Save & Share Templates

Save and share in Microsoft Whiteboard

Saving and sharing templates in Microsoft Whiteboard now allows educators to save and share templates. This provides a much more efficient and streamlined way of creating whiteboards in the classroom. This new feature enables teachers to create and save customised layouts and content. Which is perfect for those who frequently use similar whiteboards or have a preferred layout that they use as a starting point. These templates can be shared with other teachers and students.

@ everyone in Teams Chat

@ Mention everyone in the chat

Similar to how you can mention individuals in chat, you will soon have the option for “Everyone”. After typing @, you will see the same people results you see today, but a new option, “Everyone” will be available. By selecting “Everyone” and sending the message, a notification will be sent to all users in the group chat based on their selected notification settings.

Education Templates in Teams

Education Templates for Teams Meetings

When you wish to organise a meeting for online or hybrid learning such as a science class, education meeting templates let you automatically create the experience that’s right for you. With meeting templates, the meeting options will already be set, ensuring meetings adhere to your organisation’s best practices and policies.

Two new templates are included for education; ‘Class’ which is best suited for younger students where student safety is crucial and ‘Lecture‘ which is built for older students where collaboration is key.
 

Loop Component Support in Teams

Loop component support in Microsoft Whiteboard

As we speak, loop components support in Microsoft Whiteboard is rolling out to all our end-users! Live copy and paste any existing Loop component to or from Whiteboard as well as other MS365 applications. Users can also edit them in line with changes saved across all instances in real-time. Add different content types (such as dates, comments, tables, task lists etc.) with content manipulation functionalities (such as text formatting, adding, editing & deleting rows, columns & tasks etc.) and @mention users with email notifications.
 

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