Before the pandemic began to take its hold all over the globe, you might not have even heard of MS Teams. Initially launched in 2017, it has become a popular tool for many companies to use when working with employees both in the office and working from home, offering them a practical way of getting everyone together in the same place for meetings and team catchups.
MS teams has been invaluable when it comes to providing online classes whilst in lockdown or for those classes who have needed to self-isolating due to close contact with a positive case. This is just one of the ways in which schools have been able to use it to their advantage.
Remote teaching
When it became clear that many pupils, and students would not be returning to in person learning at least for a couple of months some schools turned to MS teams as a way of offering online classes so that learning could continue. The ability to set up class teams and remotely log in to teach and engage with the students has not only allowed education to continue but has also allowed teachers to keep an eye on which pupils might be struggling with the new normal – a very valuable addition to the safeguarding arsenal.
Parent teacher consultations
With students and teachers forming bubbles in school, and school administrators taking great care to ensure that these bubbles do not mix it is unwise to allow extra people into school buildings due to the possibility, no matter how small, of spreading the virus. The parent teacher consultation, parents evening, provides a vital link between school and home allowing them to see if there are any issues that might be of concern and allowing parents to see how their children are doing. Using MS teams is a great way of doing this in place of face-to-face consultations and is in many ways better than a simple phone call. For some parents, this new way of doing things has proved simpler than a visit to the school when the need to take younger siblings along or find childcare has long been an issue.
PTA
A vital source of income for the school in terms of providing extra items for the pupils to use in the classroom or even subsidising school trips the ability for PTAs to raise funds has been hampered significantly in the last few months. Summer fairs which can bring in the bulk of the money raised during a year were cancelled and unfortunately Christmas fairs which they might have been hoping to proceed with followed suit. However, for the resourceful PTA the pandemic hasn’t called a halt to all of their fund-raising activities. MS teams has offered them a great opportunity to still run their PTA meeting and find alternative ways of raising money. It has also allowed them to go ahead with things like annual quiz nights, although in a very different format to previous years, which has given them a much-needed boost in funds.
Getting Teams To Work For You
As part of Cloudhappi’s commitment to quality IT provision, we are big supporters of MS Teams, and recognise the benefits it brings to schools. If you’d like to know how Cloudhappi can help your school benefit from Teams and other platforms like it, we’d be only too happy to help. Cloudhappi will help you secure £1,500 from the government for the correct deployment of Teams, arrange free group online training for staff and a library of ‘How to guides’ and YouTube video clips from UK teachers. In addition, we will help drive adoption of the platform with your parents, so they can support their children and the school.
Recent Comments