If your organisation uses a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Office 365 and Microsoft Teams, then you already have the tools available to deliver quality teaching and learning remotely.

Improve communication

Microsoft Teams provides the perfect platform for you to communicate effectively with your students. If you don’t already have a Teams site setup, it’s quick and easy. If you setup a Class Team, you will have the ability to set assignments via Teams. Teams allows peer-to-peer or teacher-to-student chat, collaboration, video calls, and online meetings. It stores chats and files securely and the search bar allows the user to quickly find what they need.

If you don’t have Microsoft Teams, then email could be used to enable communication with your students. Depending on your school, college, or university policy regarding teacher-to-student communications, you may also be able to post updates and links to students and/or parents using a social media platform.

Create remote and on-demand lessons

PowerPoint Recorder allows you to record audio, video, and digital ink over your PowerPoint presentations. These can then be published to Microsoft Stream or exported as a video to upload to another video hosting site. You can then use your chosen communication method to send these out to students or post them to Teams or VLE.

Learn more

Flipped instruction with PowerPoint Recorder

Encourage collaboration

In traditional classrooms, students would work together on documents, sometimes digitally but often on paper. When working remotely, Office 365 can provide the tools needed to enable students to work together collaboratively across a range of devices. It updates in real-time, meaning collaboration and feedback is instant.

Other tools you could use to allow your students to collaborate include Sway and OneNote. If you’re using a Class Team then you will already have a Class Notebook area. Class Notebook helps you be more organised with a personal workspace for every student, a content library for handouts, and a collaboration space for lessons and creative activities.

Visually striking digital stories can be created with Sway. These can also be built by a group of students via a collaboration link.

Learn more

Streamline efficiency with Office 365 apps

Digital Storytelling with Microsoft Sway

Getting Started with OneNote

Digital questioning and assessment

There are many tools you can use for questioning and assessment but depending on whether you’d like to review the understanding later, or get more creative, you could use Quizzes in Microsoft Forms or Flipgrid videos.

Flipgrid is quick and easy to set up, you create a Grid and Topics and share these with your students. Leave instructions and link resources on the topics, so students understand what they need to do. You can even create advanced rubrics for assessing your student’s contributions.

Microsoft Forms can be used to create multiple choice quizzes, which can then be added to Teams or shared with students to complete. You can view the summary of responses for the class or view individual student results. The form settings allow you to change whether the students can have multiple attempts and they’re quick to create and share.

Learn more

Flipgrid – Educators Getting Started Guide

Creating Authentic Assessments

Whichever selection of tools you choose to use, there is support available to help you transition from teaching in the class to teaching online. It may seem daunting at first but remember the first day you stepped into the classroom and how you felt then and this is no different to that, but now your classroom is virtual!

Find out more

4 tips to make the most of remote learning and deliver an uninterrupted student experience

About the author

Elaine has worked for over 10 years in education, delivering ICT qualifications and training in Further Education, Higher Education, community learning, and apprenticeships. She now works as a Senior Learning Technologist at the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education. In the role, she helps more than 400 academic staff implement technology solutions in the classroom, as well as fully integrating Office 365 technologies into the work processes of support staff. As a MIE Expert and active member of the Microsoft Educator Community, Elaine drives the adoption of learning technologies throughout the Grimsby Institute and provides Microsoft Office Specialist training and support for staff development. Dedicated and passionate, Elaine recognises the growing need for digital capabilities within teaching, and believes that with the right support, technology creates better learning experiences.

The post Tools to support teachers with remote learning appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

1. Nurture unique skills

Grimsby, where I’m from, is a far cry from the streets of Paris. The old fishing town is almost completely cut off from the rest of England, with no direct motorway connections and a limited railway station (if you want to visit us, you’ll be taking country lanes to get here). During the entire event, I only met two people who had even heard of Grimsby, and I felt quite insignificant when chatting to people from more far-flung locales like Melbourne, Nairobi, or Ho Chi Minh City.

It got me thinking, if I was feeling like that, how must others from the town feel?

What would it be like if everyone from my home town experienced an event like E2? Strangers from across the globe, joined together, split into teams, and quickly finding that all-important team dynamic in order to co-operatively solve a problem.

Then it hit me: this isn’t limited to an event like the Education Exchange. This is life. This is how it should be, with individuals drawing on their own unique strengths, skills, and perspectives – listening to others and using these strengths to help everyone. Whether you’re a Grimbarian or a Parisian, we all have a unique set of skills to offer our peers. Developing that in our learners is vital to help inspire and build aspirations, no matter where they’re from.

2. Technology needs purpose

Technology is continuing to transform the classroom experience – but that doesn’t mean it’s something that should be used just because it’s there. It’s shouldn’t be simply a box-ticking exercise. To treat it as such misses the point and the power of technology in education.

As educators, we need to carefully plan and prepare for the introduction of any tech into the classroom. Consider…

• Why you’re deploying it
• How you want your students to learn
• What you wish to achieve

This lets our learners collaborate, communicate, grow, and – just as developmentally important – fail in a safe, guided environment.

Used in the right way, technology is an empowering force. In the hands of the right educators, we have the potential to change the world – one school, college, or university at a time. But any classroom technology must have a purpose if it’s to support and engage a learner’s journey.

3. Ed-tech breaks down social barriers

Education technology goes beyond a laptop in every school bag and engaging PowerPoint slides on hi-tech TVs. We only have to look at the work of inspirational educators like Koen Timmers to see how education can support the reduction of poverty and inequality.

Tech is helping to break down barriers like these, as well as overcoming obstacles like location, distance, and even time. With the right tools, ed-tech lets students gain a greater perspective, learn about and respect other cultures, and discover new worlds outside the classroom. We need to harness these tools not just to help educate students in terms of the curriculum, but also increase their worldly knowledge and empathy.

In other words, the final barrier is the four walls of the classroom. There’s a wide and exciting world beyond it. The Microsoft Education Exchange shows us that, but it’s the technology that helps every one of our learners not just explore it, but experience it in all its glory.

Find out more

Tools to transform your classroom

Student-centred learning

About the author

Elaine has worked for over 10 years in education, delivering ICT qualifications and training in Further Education, Higher Education, Community learning and apprenticeships. She now works as a Senior Learning Technologist at the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education. In the role, she helps more than 400 academic staff implement technology solutions in the classroom, as well as fully integrating Office365 technologies into work processes of support staff. As a MIE Expert and active member of the Microsoft Educator Community, Elaine drives the adoption of learning technologies throughout the Grimsby Institute and provides Microsoft Office Specialist training and support for staff development. Dedicated and passionate, Elaine recognises the growing need for digital capabilities within teaching, and believes that with the right support, technology creates better learning experiences.

The post 3 learnings from the Microsoft Education Exchange event appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.