Microsoft Teams gets a boost for the classroom

Microsoft Teams, the company’s communication tool for teams, can now be used in classrooms. Microsoft initially announced its plans to expand Teams to the classroom last month at its Microsoft Education event in New York City. The company recently started testing the new education-focused features in Microsoft Teams with a group of users, and now it’s now available for all Office 365 Education subscribers.

To make Microsoft Teams an appropriate tool for classrooms, Microsoft has incorporated several education-focused features. For one, there’s a School Data Sync feature which is able to update all the student details and populate classes with students by connecting to the school’s database. Every class also gets its own OneNote Notebook, where teachers can share different content and even organize lessons.

But what really makes Microsoft Teams suitable for classrooms is the built-in assignment management system which allows teachers to distribute assignments right from Teams. From there, they can provide feedback to students once they submit the assignments on Teams and the teachers will also be able to grade their work right from Microsoft Teams.

A core part of Microsoft Teams is, of course, the chat, which is why Microsoft is focusing on improving the chat specifically for the classroom. To achieve that, Microsoft Teams also allows teachers to set different themes for their classes, and the use of emojis, stickers, and GIFs should also make communicating with students in Teams a lot more fun.

Microsoft Teams coming to the classroom is something no one really expected Microsoft to do. Microsoft Teams, after all, was supposed to be a communication tool for teams in companies rather than classrooms. Whether this actually works remains to be seen, but don’t be too surprised if it doesn’t take off.