Technology advancements are now accelerating faster than our ability to adapt, leaving a huge gap in digital skills. A recent Microsoft study has revealed that 82 percent of UK jobs already require digital skills, and that 69 percent of leaders feel their organisation suffers from a digital skills gap, even though 59 percent of employees believe in the importance of developing their digital skills.

The skills gap is only getting wider. By 2025, there are expected to be three million new tech jobs in the UK, and 60 percent of employers are expecting their reliance on advanced digital skills to grow in the next five years. In effect, organisations hoping to grow and remain competitive in the future need to build a workforce that is equipped to fill these roles and thrive in a digital world of work.

Yet many employees don’t have the skills they need to perform their role currently, let alone in the future.

Demand for digital skills also goes beyond the technology sector. A recent employer survey by the Learning and Work Institute found that the proportion of employers who saw basic digital skills as important for employees was particularly high in certain sectors – including media, marketing, advertising and PR (100 percent), IT and telecoms (99 percent), and finance and accounting (97 percent).

However, even in the industry with the lowest proportion – manufacturing – nearly nine in ten (87 percent) employers said that basic digital skills were important for their workers.

So, what more can businesses and employers do to ensure that we have a steady supply of tech talent joining the sector? And, importantly, how can Microsoft help?

Introducing the Microsoft Connector Community

Whilst many business leaders recognise that their organisation is facing a skills shortage, the challenge often comes in knowing what to do about it.

At Microsoft, we believe that part of the answer to tackling the UK’s digital skills gap is collaboration. Bringing together organisations from across the public and private sector to work collectively and deliver tangible benefits to the prospective careers of young people, while driving growth and innovation across the economy.

The Microsoft Connector Community, part of the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector, is designed to bridge the digital skills gap. It nurtures a connected community of businesses and organisations that collectively leverage their brands, reputations and resources to address the need for digital skills in the workforce and connect talented individuals to opportunities.

We believe that taking a collaborative approach ensures a steady and well-equipped technology talent pipeline. This is essential to addressing the skills shortages faced by employers today, as well as mitigating future shortages.

I’d like to share my thoughts on how this could work:

1. Creating a connected talent ecosystem: When employers work together to support, empower and inspire young people, rather than bombarding them with too many competing options, we all benefit. By using the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector to advertise digital vacancies, digital skills bootcamps and opportunities for learning and training, we can create a highly visible and inspiring platform that enables young people to find the opportunities that are right for them. In addition, by pooling vacancies across one platform, with a single access point for roles, we can recycle and share talent. We can also signpost applicants towards other vacancies and employers, even if they have been unsuccessful in applying to a different company.

2. Simplifying the talent pipeline: We can help simplify the technology talent pipeline by reimagining how we advertise digital vacancies and training opportunities. For example, we can reach a larger and more diverse pool of candidates by simplifying the language that we use across our digital vacancies. This might increase engagement with candidates from non-conventional technology and digital backgrounds – allowing us to widen our talent pool and employ people who bring a unique and diverse perspective to the sector.

3. Leveraging expertise and insight: A coalition of like-minded individuals enables us to learn from one another’s expertise and experience, helping us to identify, profile and address the systemic issues that are stifling the UK’s economy. What’s more, the Apprenticeship Connector can also support business leaders and employers to better understand the social impact of the work that they’re doing. With demographic and geographic insight, we can identify and better target under-represented and under-served groups.

Building a Connector Community in Greater Manchester

As part of Microsoft’s UK Get On commitment, we’re committed to helping 30,000 people find jobs in the technology sector in Greater Manchester.

I recently had the pleasure of joining colleagues in the region for an event focused on building a connected talent system, as part of National Apprenticeship Week. After the event, I caught up with Greater Manchester Regional Lead, Marie Hamilton, for her take on how the introduction of Microsoft Connector Community could empower the next stage of the Get On campaign in Greater Manchester, and across the UK. Marie said:

“Greater Manchester is now the fastest growing technology hub in Europe, but to maintain this growth, we need to build a skilled and sustainable digital workforce. Working collectively across sectors and industries, regionally and nationally, allows us to understand and measure the skills gap, as well as enabling us to build a shared plan to tackle it.

Our National Apprenticeship Week event demonstrated huge enthusiasm for using the Connector Community model to further the progress made by Get On – as shown by the attendance from not only our largest private sector customers but also across the public sector, academia, central and local government”.

Marie Hamilton, Greater Manchester Regional Lead

What’s next?

Over the coming months, Microsoft will be holding a series of regional roundtable events to help businesses and organisations understand more about the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector, and the Connector Community.

To find out more, please visit the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector platform.

Microsoft Get On

At Microsoft, we believe everyone deserves access to the skills, knowledge and opportunity needed to achieve more. Through our Get On commitment, we’re helping 1.5 million people build tech careers and connecting 300,000 to tech job opportunities.

You can find out more by visiting our Digital Skills Hub, where you’ll find a host of information and resources designed to provide business leaders and employers with insights on how to close the UK’s skills gap, harness new technology and drive innovation.

You can also explore Microsoft Learn, which has an array of certifications, modules and learning pathways designed to help business leaders to upskill employees, as well as supporting individuals to take control of their careers and build vital digital skills.

Find out more

Microsoft Digital Skills Hub

Microsoft Apprenticeship Network

How Microsoft is connecting jobseekers to employers

About the author

I am the UK Apprentice Lead for Microsoft in the HR team. Working with apprenticeships since 2012, I have also worked with SMEs creating, designing, and delivering large corporate apprenticeship programmes. My role at Microsoft is all about creating and developing an apprenticeship strategy that supports our UK business and delivers an exceptional experience for both our apprentices and our business.

The post New connections: how we’re bridging the UK digital skills gap appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We get some regular questions from teachers and IT teams that we have summarised below, plus you can get more tips in our Keeping students safe while using Teams for distance learning guide.

1. How do I manage access to my Channel meeting?
2. How do I stop others joining my online lessons?
3. How do I mute my students during a lesson?
4. How do I remove someone from a meeting?
5. How do I get approved external people to join my meetings or classes?
6. How can I download an attendance list?
7. How do I manage my meeting?
8. How do I let a student present during an online class?
9. How do I record my class?
10. As an IT admin, how can I get a policy guide?
    

1. How do I manage access to my Channel meeting?

You can make changes to your meetings via the Meeting options button. There are three ways to do this for scheduled meetings:

• In Teams, go to Calendar, select a meeting, and then Meeting options.
• In a meeting invitation, select Meeting options.
• During a meeting, select Show participants in the meeting controls. Then, above the list of participants, choose Manage permissions.

We recommend you set up the lobby option, to help manage the next often-asked question.

2. How do I stop others joining my online lessons?

Using the lobby and the features around joining meetings with students is the best way to stop unauthorised people joining online lessons. The lobby can be enforced at an administrator level and or through individual meetings.

By requiring participants to sign into Teams before they join a meeting, you can recognise who is joining the meeting and if they should be allowed.

Staff can also control chat settings as they need to. You can control the chat settings in channel meetings, including blocking, deleting and muting.

To block, navigate to the channel thread for your meeting. Select the Format button and change Everyone can reply to You and moderators can reply.

To delete messages, you can right-click and delete the messages. Your IT administrator needs to grant you the correct permissions to do this.

If a student is disruptive or behaving inappropriately in class conversations, you can mute them. To do this, Select More Options on your Team’s tile, the Manage team. Select the Members tab, then select the checkmark box under Mute Students.

3. How do I mute my students during a lesson?

Let students know that you’re muting their audio, then from the participants list, click Mute all.

To prevent students from unmuting, select More options next to Participants > Don’t allow attendees to unmute.

4. How do I remove someone from a meeting?

Make sure you have set up the lobby feature. By doing this, you can admit only the staff and students who are supposed to be in the lesson. If you have another teacher or teaching assistant in the class, make them a presenter. They can monitor and admit students who joined late.

If a participant is accidentally admitted to the meeting or is being disruptive, you can remove them from the meeting by clicking Show participants in the call controls, right clicking on the participant, and selecting Remove participant.

Make sure you have set your lobby controls on to ensure they cannot re-join the meeting without entering the lobby first.

5. How do I get approved external people to join my meetings or classes?

There are two ways you can allow users from other organisations: external access and guest access.

External access

External users have no access to your organisation’s teams or teams resources, but they can find, call, chat, and set up meetings with you. External access is turned on by default, but your IT team may have updated the settings. To make sure external users can join your meetings and classes, you’ll need to ask IT to manage external access.

Guest access

This allows an individual user to join a team with nearly all the same capabilities as a native team member. They can chat, call, meet, and collaborate on organisation files. A guest user can be given nearly all the same Teams capabilities as a native team member. Again, you’ll have to ask IT to enable guest access in Teams.

6. How can I download an attendance list?

You may want to track student’s attendance in online classes. An easy way to do this is by downloading a meeting attendance report. Firstly, make sure your IT team have turned it on. They can do this via Manage meeting policies in Teams. Then you can download the attendance list from the Participants pane of the meeting, by clicking the download arrow.

7. How do I manage my meeting?

Once you’ve managed your meeting options and started class, you can do a range of things within the meeting to make your class more interactive and fun.

Change class view

You and your students can change the class view. You can do this in More options, and choose from:

Gallery

The default view. Useful for small meetings or breakout rooms.

Large Gallery

Allows you to see the entire class. Shows up to 49 attendees.

Together mode

Useful for reducing meeting fatigue, Together Mode is good for large discussion groups.

Spotlight mode

Spotlight mode puts the teacher on everyone’s screens, so it’s useful when you need everyone’s attention. Only teachers can turn this on and it will stay until you turn it off. To do this, click Show Participants then More Options. In the menu, choose Spotlight me.

Set up breakout rooms

Breakout rooms are great for facilitating smaller discussions. Only the organiser will be able to set these. In the meeting controls, select Breakout Rooms.

From there, you can select the number of rooms, and number of users per rooms. You can choose to assign users automatically or manually.

You can see more meeting options in our reference guide.

8. How do I let a student present during an online class?

If a student needs to present content during a meeting, you can promote an attendee to presenter during the meeting. To do this, open the Participants pane, then Manage permissions. In Meeting Options, you can update the Who can present option. You can also manually select attendees by right clicking on their name and selecting Make a presenter. You can turn them back into attendees the same way once they are done.

9. How do I record my class?

You can record classes to share with students who are away, or for them to review later. To do this follow these steps:

1. Click on More options
2. Press Start recording. This will notify everyone that the recording has started.
3. To stop recording, go to More options and select Stop recording.
4. Once the recording is processed, it’s saved on Microsoft Stream.

Once the recording is ready, you can watch it in the char or select the More Options icon to watch it on Microsoft Stream where you can enable closed captions and search the meeting transcript. You can also share the lesson with others.

10. As an IT admin, how can I get a policy guide?

The Microsoft Teams for Education Policy Wizard simplifies policy management for your students and educators. You can quickly apply the most important set of policies to create a safe and productive hybrid learning experience.

Discover the Policy Wizard.

Hybrid learning resources for educators

• Getting started with Teams
• Learn how to use meetings
• Build accessible lessons

Hybrid learning resources for parents

• Getting started with Teams
• Parent’s guides to meetings
• Discover accessibility tips

Find out more

Join a training event

Visit the UK Hybrid Learning Hub

Download the hybrid learning guide: Keeping students safe while using Teams for distance learning

Read more education blogs for hybrid learning tips and best practices 

About the author

Alan has been involved in education for over 20 years, both in the classroom and as a senior leader. He moved to work for Microsoft to share best practice and empower staff and students to embrace the ever-changing digital world.

Alan thrives on helping both individuals and organisations realise the value of what they already have and how to help everyone save time through technology.

The post How to deliver safe and productive hybrid learning for students appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

At Wilberforce Sixth Form College, we encourage staff to provide constructive feedback while collaborating. This environment means people can share what works or how something could work better. By encouraging staff to practice and develop their confidence, it enables them to share hints and tips with each other.

Although there is a need for whole staff training, to run an online live event, peer-to-peer training is far more effective. It helps get a consistent message across by having colleagues training each other.

We were running Teams live Welcome and Taster days for the College. In the build-up, we worked with about 15 staff members to help them practice for their event and build their confidence. When things went wrong, we laughed about it, and worked together to fix it.

“It was an amazing experience for us to be involved in. It helped to build our confidence with digital technologies but also actively encouraged us to think of creative and innovative ways to work.”

Kelly McGurk

How to make sure everyone is safe during an online live event

Have a safeguarding policy and share it with staff regarding online live events. Provide best practice guidance for recording and co-producing events. Talk about how to protect personal information such as background and surroundings. We also have guidance for students on how to respond and act appropriately online.

If you’re producing the events, it’s best to ensure pressure is minimised as much as possible. Ensure staff training is for all abilities and confidence levels.

How Teams has enabled us to put wellbeing at the forefront of our digital transformation

We have work channels with a professional tone. This meant that teachers could work from home. However, we also have social channels too. This gives staff the chance to reconnect and gain back some of the social aspects of their life missing with the shift to remote learning.

Meetings, events and open days are always a team experience. People can feel overwhelmed and daunted at the prospect of doing these remotely. With Teams Live Events, staff can still easily collaborate from anywhere, ensuring staff felt comfortable, confident, and supported.

How to train staff to stream an online live event

1. Meet with your Tech Team to discuss the best way forward with regards to hosting online live events. In our case, the decision was to use Teams Live Streaming.
2. Give staff training on how to use Teams Live. We used Teams itself, and rolled out training to all staff over two days. We also ensured these were recorded for staff to view after the event.
3. Reassure staff that others will be on hand to help if anything goes wrong. By doing this, we were able to minimise the pressure around the events.
4. Encourage staff to practice setting up Teams Live Events with each other, taking turns to be a presenter and a producer. Ensure the Tech Team are also on hand to help.
5. Create a culture of shared risk. This will foster the approach of having a go and to continually keep practising. Reassure staff that if things do not go to plan, it is not the end of the world.
6. Don’t overwhelm staff with too much all at once. Provide step by step guides and video tutorials that are done in smaller chunks and build up as staff can increase their confidence.
7. Constantly refer to parallels with technology that staff are already comfortable with. For example, if they have done Teams meetings then reassure them that a Teams live event is very similar. Get staff feedback on their preferred methods of training and buddy up staff within their faculties/wider college environment so those who are more technical minded can help those who are less confident.
8. Make sure staff are set up using two monitors. This was decided as the preferred method of working for us and made the live event run smoother.
9. Trust staff to deliver their online live event where they feel most comfortable – whether at home or in a work setting. We were able to deliver 66 events throughout the day. These were attended by 2000+ students both live and on catch-up. During the event, the Tech Team were on hand to support staff if needed.
10. Immediately after the event staff were encouraged to share their experience with others. If any events were not how the presenter wanted them, these were removed from the website to be re-recorded later.

How to run successful online live events

One of the reasons we were so successful in such a short space of time was because the college management placed their trust in the abilities of our teachers to adapt to change and plan the strategy.

From a teacher’s perspective, our training really helped to bring staff together and working in complete collaborative and developmental ways. This is not the usual way for teaching to occur, due to time and location constraints.

“I would never have believed that such a wide variety of staff would have been able to deliver such a consistent and engaging experience for external students. It has given me the confidence to see that through teamwork there is no limits as to what can be achieved”
– Helen Appleby

Find out more

Learn how to run a live events

Explore resources to support remote learning

See how we set up our Welcome and Taster days

About the authors

Jon has been assistant principal at Wilberforce Sixth Form College for two years. His main roles are the development of teaching and learning including digital skills. Jon also manages the data and IT team. His main passion is teacher training and seeing colleagues learn new things and go on to pass these on to their students and colleagues. More recently, this has been centered around upskilling staff with Microsoft 365 and transforming the curriculum to make it more accessible via Teams.

Kelly is currently the Cross-College English Coordinator at Wilberforce Sixth Form College. Her lead role is to help develop levels of literacy (English) across the college. She is also interested in looking at how they can develop digital skills and digital literacy. Kelly has been involved with the TLA team in the past few years and has done a range of training sessions on how to develop the use of digital tech within the classroom. She is currently studying for her Masters in Education, specialising in digital technology and leadership. Her main passion is innovative and digitally centred teaching and learning, teacher training, and developing a wider skill set in all staff across the college.

Helen has been working at Wilberforce College for the last 20 years and has always had an interest in TLA. This has led to becoming a lead practitioner for TLA, as well as being involved with the coaching and mentoring of new staff and assisting staff to complete their NQT and QTLS status. She has delivered staff training in a variety of subjects from differentiation to using Microsoft applications. Many years ago, Helen completed an MSc in Teaching and Learning, focussing on the impact using technology has on student achievement in the classroom and the impact it has on student engagement and motivation. She is particularly interested in how coaching can help support teaching and staff confidence in the classroom.

The post Ten tips to help educators run live events on Teams appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Sometimes, having a lesson plan is the easiest part and recorded and uploading the lesson can be daunting. But we’ve got a step-by-step guide on how to record, upload, and share your presentations.

We’ll be doing this through PowerPoint and Microsoft Stream, which makes it easy to use and accessible, with transcripts and captions.

Add narration and record your PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has a really great feature to help you easily develop new content by adding audio narration to existing slides. This can also prove really useful for students when recording assessed presentations.

Top tip: Presentation Coach helps you prepare in private to give more engaging presentations.

1. Setting up the Recording tab in PowerPoint

Before you can use the Recording feature, you will need to make sure it’s in your main ribbon in PowerPoint.

1. Go to File, then Options, choose the Customise Ribbon tab.
2. On the list on the left hand side, change Popular Commands to All Tabs and find the Recording tab. Press add and it will move to your Ribbon. Press OK.
3. On the main ribbon tab, go to Slide Show, and it should be there.

2. Recording audio narration over your slides

Once you have added the Recording tab, you can then use the Record Slide Show function. This will allow you to record audio and video, over each slide in the sequence. You can pause or stop at any time, and re-record any sections that you are not happy with.

3. Exporting your slides as a video

Once you’re happy with the audio-narrated slide content, you can then proceed with exporting it to a video. This can either be exported locally to an MP4 video file, or alternatively, published directly to your Microsoft Stream account when using Office 365.

Effectively sharing your virtual lesson on Stream

Once you have uploaded your presentation to Stream, you will want to share them with your learners. You also might want to share other videos with colleagues or learners. These could include Microsoft Teams Meeting recordings, or other content.

The great thing about Stream is it can autogenerate captions using Automatic Speech Recognition technology. These are also available as a transcript so users can look for specific points in the video later on.

Top tip: Make your lesson more engaging by adding a quiz using Microsoft Forms.

1.      Turn on captions on your video

If you’ve already uploaded a video, you can go to the Edit Video option. Otherwise, you can do this as you’re uploading a video. In the Details section, select your supported language.

On the Options tab, set Autogenerate captions to On.

It may take a while for the captions to generate – It typically takes 1-2 times the video’s duration. For example, a one hour video, could wait around two hours to finish processing.

2. Sharing an individual virtual lesson in Microsoft Stream

Once signed-in to Microsoft Stream, your video content can be found under My Content. Individual videos can be shared easily via web-link, email or embed code.

3. Curating and sharing a Channel of Stream video content

By creating a Channel in Stream, you can group related video content for easy access and viewing. This can prove particularly useful for curating collections of video-based learning resources.

4. Adding your virtual lesson to Microsoft Teams

As well as sharing your Videos and Channels using a link, email, or embed code – you can also embed content directly into Microsoft Teams. This helps maintain a streamlined experience for your learners, and ensures content is organised and accessible within the learning environment.

Creating engaging virtual lessons

By using PowerPoint and Stream, you can deliver engaging, accessible virtual lessons that you can share to your Class Teams, or share with learners and other educators. This will help create a fun, smooth learning experience for everyone, no matter where they are.

Find out more

Discover our remote learning resources

About the author

Chris is a Senior Learning Technologist at the University of Central Lancashire, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Since 2018, he has led development of UCLan’s innovative and sector endorsed DigiLearn model, to recognise and reward the inclusive digital practice of academic colleagues. Widening collaboration across the sector, Chris also co-ordinates UCLan’s DigiLearn Sector – a community fostered to connect digital practitioners from across HE, FE, schools, and beyond. As a Microsoft Learning Consultant, Chris now works with other institutions – supporting their adoption of Microsoft technologies, to improve both staff and student outcomes. He is also producer and co-host of the EdTech Talks podcast, and you can follow him on Twitter @ChrisLearnTech.

The post How to make engaging virtual lessons for students appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

So what does teaching look like when our students aren’t sat directly in front of us? What does it really mean to teach remotely? How do you inspire, manage, care for, and engage your students whilst you’re sat in your own home and they are in theirs? It can be difficult and daunting to find new ways of working in these times of change, especially when you are pushed out of your comfort zone and regular routine.

To help you deliver an uninterrupted experience for your students through virtual and remote learning, four of our top Microsoft Innovative Fellows have begun to explore these questions within their own schools and have kindly shared their insights with us.

1. Take the first step

Jimmy Edwards from St. Hele’s School in Plymouth recounts his first attempt at remote learning with Teams, what he learned and his tips to get started when you and your students are brand-new to Teams and remote learning.

Read more: 3 tips to get started with Microsoft Teams for remote learning

2. Prepare your workspace

Paul Watkins from Ygsol Bae Baglan in Port Talbot gives us his top tips for preparing your work station at home to be ‘teacher-ready’ even if you are wearing your fuzzy slippers. He shares his tips on how to take the fear out of being on camera with you students and how you can embrace Teams to help you reach your students remotely.

Read more: How to set up a remote learning workspace in 4 easy steps

3. Encourage student collaboration

Elaine Topham from Grimsby Institute outlines a variety of tools you may want to consider to foster communication and collaboration while in a remote learning situation. She has compiled a view of Office 365 tools that can help you with instruction and assessment.

Read more: Tools to support teachers with remote learning

4. Equip your students for the future digital workplace

Sarah Clark from Queen Anne’s High School in Fife shares with us a differentiated approach to remote learning. Making reaching your students accessible even if you are a novice at Teams or a seasoned technologist. Modelling a growth mindset with your students, sets them up for success in their future careers- particularly if they are using the same remote working technologies they will be using after they leave school

Read more: How to use Microsoft Teams for remote learning: tips for all abilities

While you may not need to utilise remote learning at this time, it is an excellent option when you consider your contingency planning for emergencies and disaster recovery. Floods, snow, fire, or other incidents that can prevent students from attending school require a thoughtful approach to remote learning.

Find out more

Explore resources to support remote learning

Discover how Imperial College London used Teams to connect and engage remotely

About the author

Jennifer King is an award-winning, international thought leader in Education with 20 years of experience in the education sector from classroom to corporations. She is passionate about the success of students and their teachers and how the power of technology can transform the way they work and learn. Jennifer was previously the Head of Film and Media at Strode’s College in Surrey before starting her own education consultancy. JKES was a Microsoft Education Partner with a focus on digital transformation, project based learning, and teacher professional development. Jennifer is also the creator of the Student Teacher Education Program. She has recently returned from Microsoft Corp in Seattle, where she was the Director of Education in 21^st Century Jobs, Skills, and Employability.

The post 4 tips to make the most of remote learning and deliver an uninterrupted student experience appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Here are a range of ways I have used Microsoft Teams in my secondary school classroom when I have needed to implement remote learning in the past to help guide you on how you can make the most of technology in these challenging times.

1. I’m a Microsoft Teams newbie

If you don’t have much experience with Microsoft Teams and are looking to use it to communicate with your pupils when they are not in school, the ‘Files’ section is a great place to upload documents for the pupils to access.

I use the ‘Files’ section in Teams when I want pupils to complete past exam paper questions by uploading the past paper as a PDF to the class materials folder. Pupils cannot edit files in the class materials folder. I then post a comment in the chat to let them know the file has been uploaded and tell them which questions I want them to complete.

My pupils will complete the work and later that day, I post the file with the answers so pupils can self-assess their work.

Pupils can also upload a picture of their work and ask for help at any point during the day.

Here are some other things you could do:

• • In your class Team click on the ‘Files’ tab and upload files from your computer/OneDrive.
  • In the ‘Chat’ tab at the top, post a comment to tell pupils what file you want them to access and what you want them to do.
  • Pupils can respond by commenting in the chat or uploading a photo of the work in their notebook

2. I’ve mastered the basics

If you have mastered the basics of using Teams and have been sharing files with pupils, you may want to start setting assignments for them using Teams too.

For me, this is an easy way to distribute a file to each pupil in the class and have pupils work on a task with a specific deadline. The file could be a Word document, PowerPoint, Forms quiz,  or even a OneNote page amongst other formats.

My senior pupils recently had to complete a lab report for an experiment they did in class. In the assignments tab in Teams, I inserted a blank Word document, added the headings for each section (aim, method, results, conclusion) and sent this out for pupils to complete within 2 days.

Straight away I could see who has viewed the assignment and who had completed it. I could view each pupil’s work without leaving Teams and was able to give them feedback with next steps. Pupils were then able to make changes and resubmit their work.

By setting assignments in Teams your pupils will be able to easily check when their assignments are due, you’ll be able to see who has viewed and completed their assignments, and you are both able to check on progress and feedback throughout. You will also only have to upload one copy of the file which can then be distributed to all pupils.

Here are some other things you could do:

• • In your class Team click on the ‘Assignments’ tab
  • Select ‘create new assignment’ and add your file
  • Add a date and a time for the assignment to be completed
  • You can view the progress of your students at any time by clicking on that specific assignment
  • Once pupils have submitted you can look at each one and return it to the pupil along with your feedback.

3. I’m an advanced Teams user

Once you have mastered ‘assignments’ in Teams, you may want to host a live lesson for your class. You can use the ‘meet now’ feature or you can schedule a meeting at a particular time. This may seem daunting at first but it is a great way for students to know lessons will carry on, with the expectation of everyone attending in a virtual classroom.

The first time I tried a live lesson, I turned off my camera before joining the live meeting and shared my desktop with the pupils. I was then able to take them through a PowerPoint presentation, work through a biology question in OneNote, and even show the pupils how to create a graph.

Offline, I have used my phone as a visualiser and uploaded the video to the files section in Teams so pupils can watch on demand at a time that suits them. This worked very well when pupils were unable to meet at the specific time. You may even want to record the live lesson so pupils can watch later.

Here are some other things you could do:

• • In the chat section, select ‘meet now’ (the small video camera button at the bottom of the page)
  • To schedule a meeting go to your calendar and select ‘new meeting’ then a specific time.
  • Once in the meeting the toolbar has various option (share desktop, record meeting and blur background, live captions and there is a chat panel for students to type questions)

Whether you are an experienced Teams user or not, there are a variety of options available to you to ensure learning doesn’t stop because you and your students cannot be at school. I have found these tools very beneficial in my science class and pupils have found them easy to use on a computer or on their phone.

I would recommend testing it out with students first if you can.  Have them join the Teams site and download the app to their phone so they can receive notifications. My students us the join code (generated in settings) to access the site initially and I task them with taking a photo of their work on their phone and uploading it to the site so I can check they are comfortable using it.

There is a wealth of resources available online to help with remote learning and the product teams are always on Twitter to help when needed, check them out using #msftedu and @DominicWillit

Find out more

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

Remote teaching and learning in Office 365 Education 

About the author

The post How to use Microsoft Teams for remote learning: tips for all abilities appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

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.

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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.

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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.

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Whether you are planning to live-stream your lessons online through Microsoft Teams or record your them with the Recorder option in PowerPoint, the environment and location of where you deliver this from is important. When we set up a classroom, we always consider the environment that our pupils are going to be taught in and we strive to ensure that is it conducive to learning with engagement at its core.

Here are some practical tips to help you establish your remote learning area at home:

1. Set up the room

The location that you choose as your remote learning workspace is really important. Ideally, you need a clear environment that will enable you to be productive throughout the day. Try and find a room where doors can be closed to reduce background noise as much as possible. ASD pupils may find it difficult to focus on your voice if there are noise distractions so this is a crucial step to create an inclusive remote learning environment for all your students.

If you are going to be recording learning content, you need to make sure your room is well lit and that you have a good balance between both natural and electrical lighting. Test out different options before you start to record and make sure the video picture is clear for your students.

2. Test audio and video quality

Whilst devices have a mic built into them and it is often sufficient, it can always be improved with the help of an external microphone. From previous experience, I have found a headset microphone is the best at noise cancellation to minimise distractions from your lesson. If you are using a webcam, I’d recommend testing the quality and positioning of it before your lesson. You may need to use the external webcam if the quality of the internal one is poor.

3. Consider how you will deliver the lesson

If you are planning to record lessons via PowerPoint to ensure it can be accessible for your student at any time of the day, try and avoid sitting with your back to a window or wall that is full of distractions. The students need to be focused on you, not the things behind you.

For those of you who would prefer to use Microsoft Teams to live-stream your lessons, make sure you have uploaded all of the files to the Teams site prior to the lesson so you can easily show students where to find the work when you share your screen. I’d recommend trying to keep the video to screen sharing where possible to keep pupils focused on the work but if you do need to be on camera, make sure that background blur is enabled. This will ensure background distractions are minimised and is a reminder to your students on why the connection is taking place.

4. Set some ground rules

Make sure you set expectations with your pupils the same as you would in a classroom environment and familiarise yourself with how to mute pupils if they are interupting the lesson. Encourage students to ask questions through the chat panel. This way even your quieter students will be given a voice and everybody will have a chance to be heard. Just make sure you monitor it throughout the lesson.

On a more practical note, if there are other people at home, make sure they know you are delivering a lesson and ask them not to disturb you during it.

For many teachers this is a real step out of their comfort zone but we have these wonderful tools available to us, and our pupils, that can help us through a difficult time, whilst ensuring that every effort is made to help pupils achieve the best outcomes they can. And remember, there is a wonderful community of teachers available to help and support you during this time.

Find out more

Using PowerPoint recorder for your lessons 

Introduction to Microsoft Teams

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

About the author

Paul ‘Lanny’ Watkins is an IT/Computing Teacher at Ysgol Bae Baglan, a Microsoft Showcase School. He is a Microsoft Innovative Educator Fellow, Master Trainer, Skype Master Teacher and Flipgrid Student Voice Executive Board Member. Recently acknowledged in the 2020 EdTech 50, Paul is also a member of Welsh Government’s National Digital Learning Council.

The post How to set up a remote learning workspace in 4 easy steps appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

I wanted to share a few learnings from the journey we have been on at St. Hele’s School in Plymouth to help settle concerns and ensure that you have everything set up in the right way to get you started with remote learning if and when necessary.

1. Remove distractions

The Head of Science at St. Hele’s School was also worried about the same situation when it came to using Microsoft Teams and the first thing we did was to set up the initial Teams site and customise the settings. One of his concerns was that students would be distracted by the chat facility and that this would open up a world of distractions in the form of GIFs and memes. Once the Teams site was set up, we went into the settings, switched off the chat facilities, and muted all students which removed their ability to post anything and would give us a bit more control when they were added to the Teams site.

2. Test and learn

When the students were added to the Teams site, they were able to easily access the relevant files they needed to revise from and weren’t distracted by anything in the first instance. We did try leaving the chat facilities on with another group of students but within minutes they had completely lit up the Teams site with lots of images and animated GIFs in their excitement. We do plan on bringing these fantastic features back but only once the students are fully familiarised with the Teams interface.

3. Customise channels and folders

The next stage was to set up the channels that we wanted to use within the Teams site. We decided to set these as private so that we could invite individual students to the right channel based on their year group. For example, only year 9 students were able to access the year 9 section. This made it easier for students to access the content that was relevant to them and their specific learning journey.

The most important thing to consider when setting this up the first-time round is to make sure that you have the folder structure that you wish to use that is ready to go. Teams has a fantastic feature that allows you to drag and drop your file structure into the files tab that you should be able to see in each of your channels. Any files you wish to be available for every student to see can be added to the files tab in the general channel.

Hopefully it has been useful to see how we’ve approached getting started with Microsoft Teams to help you with your own remote learning plans.

Find out more

Introduction to Microsoft Teams

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

About the author

The post 3 tips to get started with Microsoft Teams for remote learning appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

This impacts the skills students need to succeed in classrooms today and in the workplaces of the future. Schools, colleges, and universities need to evolve in order to deliver the best learning outcomes for students.

As educators, you’re tasked with the critical role of equipping students with the skills they need for the future digital workplace and to be the next generation of leaders. Not only does everyone needs to learn the skills required to live and work in a world that is increasingly digital, but we need more computer science, data science, and cybersecurity skills to build future products and services.

This can seem like an impossible task at times with an increased pressure around funding and student numbers, but we see many great examples of how colleges and universities are finding smarter ways of working, enabling students to take control of their learning whilst freeing up teachers to spend more time helping them overcome challenges.

The future of work and skills

The workplace of today and the future is more collaborative, productive, and diverse. It empowers employees to work how they see best, wherever they are. Technology is an integral part of the workplace today, and as technologies like IoT and AI grow, the role of technology will also expand.

It’s important we build up student’s soft and digital skills to ensure they can walk into these roles with confidence. The World Economic Forum listed analytical thinking, innovation, active learning, creativity, problem solving, and collaboration as some of the most important emerging skills of 2022. Students will also need to be committed to lifelong learning, to ensure they re- and upskill as we make new technology gains and jobs and industries evolve and need new skills.

Empowering educators with digital skills

For students to reach their full potential, they need educators at their full potential. Teachers who develop digital skills are empowered to use technology to improve their wellbeing and work better.

Office 365 gives educators access to time-saving tools that simplify marking and makes collaboration between students and peers easy. Predictive analytics can be used to predict student performance, improve learning outcomes, and provide customised support to students who need it.

Only 38 percent of teachers feel their training has equipped them with the skills they need. Microsoft Educator Community is a hub for educators to learn and explore resources to build those skills.

Equipping educators with the tools and skills to leverage technology in the classroom will ultimately help students develop vital digital skills that will help them succeed in the future. It will also empower educators to use technology to amplify their own work to improve their wellbeing.

Technology in the classroom

49 percent of teachers surveyed by us said that technology made a positive impact on student-teacher collaboration. One of these tools – Microsoft Teams is helping schools increase both peer-to-peer and student-teacher collaboration.

At City of Westminster College, the use of Teams empowered students to take responsibility for their own learning and encouraged collaboration amongst learners. Learning extends beyond the classroom, with teachers posting resources that students can view at any time – whether in class or studying at home. It’s also helped eliminate communication barriers faced by students with hearing impairments.

I’m incredibly proud of the work our customers are doing with our technology to support a learning environment that is both accessible and inclusive.

Over the next three years we have committed to train 30,000 teachers on how technology can help build an inclusive classroom, with our free built-in and non-stigmatising learning tools. Immersive reader, for example, helps students with dyslexia by reading out text, breaking words into syllables and increasing spacing between lines and letters.

Stronger together

As an education community, we all have a huge opportunity and responsibility to prepare students for a digital future and continued change. Join in on our sessions at Digifest or pop by our stand to discover how we’re helping other educators use technology to transform student and teacher outcomes.

Find out more

Help your students prepare for their careers

Discover more education blogs from Microsoft

About the author

Chris is the Director of Education at Microsoft UK.  He and his team work with education customers helping them make the most of technology to save time and increase the impact of teaching and learning.

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