In an era of online education, there are several platforms for Learning Management Systems (LMS). One of these is Microsoft 365. With Microsoft 365 as an LMS, schools will surely be utilizing Microsoft Teams. In a previous article, we highlighted its basic functionalities. This article will highlight some features on what makes Teams unique.
PowerPoint Live
PowerPoint presentations are an essential part of an online class. It is one of the best ways for teachers to show a visual presentation. That alone though might make the class a little bit less engaging for both the teacher and their students.
PowerPoint Live is different from the usual “share screen”. This unique Microsoft Teams feature improves the presenter and attendee experience with their unique views. For presenters, they can review notes, engage in chat, and see their audience in one panel view.
Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/introducing-powerpoint-live-in-microsoft-teams/ba-p/2140980
PowerPoint Live also has different Presenter modes to have an enhanced production level for presenters. The Standout mode shows presenters’ video feed as a silhouette in front of the shared content. Reporter mode shows the presenter and the shared content like a news story format. Lastly, the Side-by-side displays the presenter’s video feed next to the content.
Pre-created breakout rooms
During face-to-face classes, it is normal for teachers to split the class to different groups for more focused discussions among classmates. The equivalent to this in an online class is breakout rooms. However, creating these rooms is not as fast as we would hope. Creating breakout rooms during the class itself might waste some time. As a solution, Teams has now allowed for meeting organizers to create the breakout rooms before the actual session, complete with assigning the participants and setting a time limit.
Reading Progress
Microsoft’s own tool for tracking reading fluency. Reading Progress allows students to independently practice their reading skills with the proper guidance and feedback from their teachers. Students can practice by recording themselves, watch, and listen first to their performance before submitting their work to the teacher (teachers can set how many reading attempts can be done by the students). Upon submission, teachers then will have access to the recording and by turning on the auto-detect feature, will be able to instantly view errors such as mispronunciations, omissions, self-corrections, insertions, and repetitions. All of these will be counted to give an accuracy rate for the students, along with the correct words per minute count. Teachers will also be able to set the pronunciation sensitivity. Having a less sensitive setting for pronunciation is especially helpful to accommodate all accents. To learn more about Reading Progress, click here.
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