Microsoft announces new features for Teams for Education

Microsoft Education updates with new features that cover the five core strategic areas dedicated to learning

Microsoft Education today announced new tools and updates in the five strategic areas – personalization, skills, social learning, security and scalability – for a hybrid and inclusive teaching, where physical and digital integrate effectively.

During the health emergency, teachers around the world have indeed experienced different ways to integrate technology in the classroom and developed new strategies for engaging students. According to a YouGov survey commissioned by Microsoft, 82% of teachers agrees that the pandemic has accelerated the pace at which new technologies have contributed to innovation in teaching and learning.

Microsoft and educational improvements during the health emergency

Microsoft to support teachers to enhance face-to-face learning by leveraging digital, capitalizing on the experience of the last year, introduces new features within Teams for Education. The innovations that will be available starting next school year and have been designed with feedback and insights from teachers, educators and students include:

• Reading Progress: a new free tool for Teams for Education (currently available in English) that allows teachers to create reading practice assignments for the entire class or for individual students to complete independently, saving them time. Reading Progress offers teachers the possibility to assign assignments to improve the fluency of reading for the entire class or customized on the individual student and through Education Insights they can have a holistic view trends and data, for example in terms of precision in reading and correct pronunciation. This data provides teachers with valuable information for working with individual students and the entire class. Whether it’s learning a new language or learning to read, In this way students can practice and complete the tasks in Reading Progress at their own pace, making progress without too much pressure and allowing them to focus more on improvement and growth.

• New tools for collaboration on Teams for Education: new tools that enable digital experiences capable of enhancing face-to-face learning and that will make it easier for teachers to optimize group work, integrating for example video and audio recordings within assigned assignments, creating work groups for certain homework assignments and helping students to see the delivery dates of research and projects more easily through integrations within the Calendar.
• New Security Features on Teams for Education: Microsoft introduces Supervised Chat that is a chat managed by the teacher himself, which cannot be removed and has the task of monitoring the conversations in progress between the children in terms of safety.
• Updates for Minecraft: Education Edition: Minecraft: Education Edition is now integrated with Teams and Flipgrip and is enriched with Minecraft for Camps and Clubs, which allows students to use Minecraft even outside of traditional classroom learning environments. Starting this summer, education and education organizations and associations can purchase licenses for Minecraft: Education Edition to help kids develop critical thinking, collaboration, and learning through play.

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