Engage every student with collaborative tools An educator’s guide to transforming your classroom

Table of ContentsBuild collaborative classrooms 3

Microsoft Teams 7

OneNote 9

Flipgrid 11

Putting it all together 13

Join the Microsoft Educator Community 14

Technology is changing the way teachers manage classrooms, communicate with students, and collaborate with peers. With tools for planning, assignments, and communication, Office 365 can help you save time in your classroom and provide a more personalized environment for better learning outcomes.

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Classrooms are incredibly complex and diverse. Up to 70 percent of classrooms have students with reading levels that span four or more grades—and 50 percent of instructional time can be lost managing students’ varying needs.

Between planning lessons, grading assignments, adhering to IEPs and 504s, and attending staff meetings and parent conferences, teachers at every grade level are stretched thin.

As an educator, your goal is to prepare students with the skills they need to thrive in a constantly changing world. Learning in the classroom is more than checking boxes and earning grades. It’s about empowering students to grow as individuals and members of the community, and helping them develop their own perspectives on the world.

Build collaborative classrooms

Microsoft technologies have made collaboration, work, and access to that work much easier to handle ... I feel more connected with my students because they are able to contact me at any point and I am able to return work with comments much more quickly.

Justine Alberts 4th Grade Teacher Kessler Elementary School

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Transform classroom timeMicrosoft Education helps you streamline workflow and reduce busywork while giving students tools to develop the hard and soft skills they need to succeed.

Save time with tools designed for educators in Teams. Organize files, assign homework, make tests and quizzes, create reusable grading rubrics, and share everything with colleagues and students.

Share, learn, and grow professionally in Professional Learning Communities with PLC Notebooks built into Teams. Save files, share resources, and meet from anywhere.

Enable students to work from anywhere with OneNote Class Notebook, so you can assign more group projects and help them develop teamwork and digital citizenship skills.

Get the support and resources you need from your colleagues, while increasing transparency across your school with OneNote Staff Notebooks.

Teachers get up to 30% more time back in the classroom with the right technology.1

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1 The class of 2030 and life-ready learning: The technology imperative

“PLCs have given us that common space that we all can go to. The shared calendar has really helped our team be more cohesive and in sync. The PLC has been integral in helping our teachers dive in to look at the data and be more data driven.

Melissa Cleaver Instructional Technology Trainer, Omaha Public Schools

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Get more out of your Professional Learning Communities with Teams

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are most effective when there is an organized way to meet, learn, and grow professionally.

The OneNote PLC Notebook, built into Teams, comes pre-loaded with templates for professional inquiry and development to streamline your PLC time.

Designed for PLCs:

• Keep all of your PLC resources in one place

• Collaborate in conversation streams

• Communicate with chat, audio, or video calls

• Organize meetings and small groups

• Share and organize content

Learn more about PLCs in Teams.

Spotlight: Microsoft Teams The hub for teamwork in Office 365 Education

Microsoft Teams is a hub for interacting with students and colleagues. It’s a workspace where you can communicate, share files, and even meet online.

Communicate with your students Keep everything in one place Use OneNote Class Notebooks to share notes and files and give feedback to individual students. Store learning resources, useful URLs, and videos in each Team so students can access content whenever they need it.

Master your curriculum workflow Create assignments, grade student work, and provide real-time feedback to individual students, small groups, or the entire classroom. Repeatable Teams and Classrooms let you breeze through setup and management to get everyone on the same page.

Bring in your favorite apps Apps you already know and love are integrated within Microsoft Teams. Office 365 apps you already use, such as Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, as well as education apps like Kahoot!, Nearpod, Quizlet, and Flipgrid can all be accessed within Teams.

Communicate with your colleaguesConnect with everyone With the Conversations feature in Teams, you can quickly communicate with team members. Each channel has a conversation thread that everyone on the team can see. You can also create a private chat with one person or a small group.

Streamline internal collaboration Create spaces for teams and working groups, reach administrators, participate in group chats, and join meetings remotely—all from the Teams application. Use OneNote Staff Notebooks to collect and curate resources, collaborate and develop new documents, and share professional development materials.

Come together in PLCs Use the built-in PLC Teams channel for small-group meetings, announcements, and resource planning. Form PLC teams around interest areas, grade levels, or across subjects, add new members, and reach the Team from anywhere.

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Create a library of reusable, custom grading rubrics to make it easier and faster to evaluate student work.

Find out how: Create and manage grading rubrics in Microsoft Teams.

Use Teams in your classroom

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Use Teams for free with your Office 365 subscription.

Microsoft Teams is available through your Office 365 subscription.

Check out the resources and support available from the Microsoft Educator Community and Microsoft Teams training courses to help you get started.

Use your favorite education apps without leaving the Teams platform.

Get everything in one place: See available apps.

Assign and collect work quickly and give personal attention to every student in your classroom.

Assess online training: Manage class workflow with Teams.

Spotlight: OneNote Get organized with OneNote

OneNote is a digital platform that lets you share and assign materials, access student work, and enable seamless student collaboration at school and at home.

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Collaborate with your students Organize your course content Gather web content and embed existing lessons in your OneNote Class Notebook to create custom lesson plans. Include audio and video recordings to create rich interactive lessons for students.

Connect with your students digitally Each student has a personal notebook that is accessible only by you and that student. Give feedback, answer questions, and check in on students who might be struggling.

No more printed handouts Store reference information and class documents, like course outlines and schedules, in the content library to give students easy access to the information they need in a read-only folder.

Collaborate with your colleagues A personal workspace for every teacher Use OneNote Staff Notebook to work together on notes, tasks, and plans in one notebook, and access it all with OneNote’s powerful search.

Share information with everyone Use the content library in Staff Notebook to publish policies, procedures, deadlines, and the school calendar. Permissions in the content library allow the staff leader to edit and publish information, but others can only view and copy the content.

Develop yourself and your work Work privately in a personal notebook, customized to your needs and only shared with the staff leader. Use this notebook for professional development, classroom observations, and parent communications.

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Gather web content and embed existing lessons in your class notebook to create custom lesson plans.

Online training: Create interactive lessons with OneNote.

Use OneNote in your classroom

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Use OneNote for free with your Office 365 subscription.

Find online training and resources to help you get started with OneNote in the Microsoft Educator Community.

Students can use drawing tools to highlight text, annotate slides, sketch diagrams, and take handwritten notes.

See how it works: Check out OneNote Class Notebooks.

Keep important information, like saved emails, school policies, policy documents, and calendars, in one place.

Stay organized: Explore OneNote Staff Notebooks.

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Spotlight: Flipgrid This free social learning tool is now available in Microsoft Teams

Flipgrid is a free video platform that uses short, simple video discussions to help students build collaborative and emotional skills while they learn and share ideas.

Teachers inspire conversations with questions and prompts, while students share book reviews, create presentations, and respond to peers through short videos.

Through Flipgrid, our community of learners has gained a stronger sense of who they are as learners, and learners have embraced taking ownership of their learning. This has led to more meaningful conversations and a much deeper level of problem solving in the classroom.

Lucretia Anton, teacher Arcadia Unified School District

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Use Flipgrid in Teams Create Grids for each group you want to create—class, school, or staff team—and add the topics you want discussed. With the Flipgrid integration for Microsoft Teams, your Grids, Topics, and Responses in Flipgrid appear as tabs in any of your Teams channels, so your discussions appear right alongside all other group resources.

Get started for free with Flipgrid

Create your free account to use Flipgrid in Microsoft Teams. Visit info.flipgrid.com/signup.

Already have a Flipgrid account? Get Flipgrid in Teams today.

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Putting it all together What can you do with Teams and OneNote?

Personalize learning, in and out of the classroom

Give students one-on-one feedback and answer questions in individual student folders, and easily check in on students who might be struggling.

Drive student-led learning and build collaboration skills

Using personal and shared file folders, students can work independently and share their progress when they’re ready.

Help every student find their voice and develop social-emotional skills

School-sponsored tools like Teams keep academic conversations off third-party social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, so teachers can monitor conversations and encourage positive interactions.

Streamline communication across the school

Create spaces for teams and working groups, reach administrators, participate in group chats, and even join meetings remotely—all in the Teams app.

Develop your skills and share resources with built-in PLC notebooks

Use the built-in PLC Teams channel for small-group meetings, announcements, and resource planning.

Join the Microsoft Educator Community to enrich your knowledge

Become a Microsoft Innovative Educator

Microsoft Innovative Educators (MIE) use Microsoft tools in the classroom and have learned the fundamentals

of applying technology in education. This is the first step on an exciting journey of joining a professional network of enthusiastic educators who come together to learn, share, and grow. Learn how you can earn points to become an MIE.

Get the tools and knowledge you need to master collaboration and organization in your classroom with free, on-demand courses through the Microsoft Educator Community.

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Track your progress, bookmark where you left off, and earn points toward a Microsoft Innovative Educator certification. Whether you want to stay current on the latest tech tools and trends in education, get more out of Office 365 applications, or explore new lesson ideas for every grade level and subject, the Educator Community can help.

Visit: education.microsoft.com.

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