More than a year into the pandemic, student engagement and progress during these trying times became the primary concern of educators. By its very nature, teaching demands interaction and engagement. Minus the physical classroom, how can they ensure effective learning delivery? How can they stay connected?
Though it has disrupted our way of life, the pandemic unarguably has led to accelerated innovation and adoption of technologies and tools that enabled society to thrive in the new now. At the height of the outbreak, even though billions of students across the world were forced out of the classroom because of school closures, Microsoft helped ease the transition of schools, students, and educators from the physical to remote learning setup by introducing Microsoft Teams.
Teams is a cloud-based collaboration app featured in Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suite. Microsoft Teams for Education provides students and teachers the platform to help ease their shift to inclusive online or hybrid learning, gave them access to remote learning tools, and sustained their engagement through the collaborative learning approach.
Switch to synchronous classes
As learning institutions move to a virtual learning environment, Microsoft Teams provides an online classroom that allows instant communication through messaging, calls, video meetings, and file sharing, and is available for access on any device.
Yet, apart from ensuring that technology is integrated into the online classroom, expert educators advise that students should be provided with opportunities to foster individual learning by actively engaging with the learning material, making lessons more interesting and enjoyable, and by offering numerous ways for students to collaborate.
Access to Microsoft Education Center
In addition to Teams, Microsoft provides support and training through the Microsoft Education Center. This platform allows educators to explore self-paced courses and learning paths about Microsoft products and classroom resources and best practices, thereby allowing them to earn professional development hours and acquire badges and certificates. There is also an opportunity to connect and learn from inspiring educators and school leaders through webinars and online events.
Student Engagement
To drive student engagement and focused learning outside the confines of the classroom, educators can also make use of Microsoft’s Flipgrid for Education, a free and simple, social learning video platform that takes teaching and learning on a higher level with shorts, screen recording, and the discovery library. Minecraft: Education Edition, on the other hand, advances students’ creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving skills by learning basic building to coding with blocks, JavaScript, and Python through its game-based learning platform. With Skype in the Classroom, teachers can enrich the remote learning setup by finding classes and guest speakers from around the world to collaborate and learn with.
In sum, there are as many opportunities as there are challenges to remote learning, but successful educators see things with fresh eyes and stay level-headed. With the right mindset and attitude, they can navigate the new work arrangement with the same level of productivity and zest, and help students cope with the changes by maximizing the use of these online learning tools and platforms.
If you are an educator itching to transition to Microsoft products, visit https://onprem2cloud.co/ and see how we can best serve your needs.