Introduction
Over 100 millions students are now using Microsoft Teams as the hub for their online classroom. Uptake surged due to the pandemic, but the growth isn’t slowing down now that we’re at the tail-end of it.
Microsoft Teams, like any good hub, has got spokes and by spokes I mean integrations:
See, Microsoft Teams first day was designed to facilitate business communications and activity falling under that umbrella, like online meetings, instant messaging and document sharing. It was not built from the start with teachers and students in mind, meaning it lacks some of the pedagogical frameworks that are designed into many of the popular educational technology tools (EdTech), listed below.
Here is where Microsoft Teams integrations come in. An integration is a software that you can use within the Microsoft Teams ‘hub’, that extends the functionality you have within the hub.
Example: you’re a teacher that likes using flashcards with your students, great the Quizlet Microsoft Teams integration will let your students create, interact with, edit and swap flashcards while they use Microsoft Teams as part of your class.
Quizlet is just one integration teachers and students can use that has it’s foundations based in pedagogy, there are many others. So in this list let’s check them out, but first below is a quick video that shows how you can add integrations.
Okay so know that you know how easy it is to add integrations to Microsoft Teams, let's go through the list of what we like to use:
- Flipgrid
Flipgrids Integration has exploded in popularity recently. It lets teachers ask questions to the class via video within Microsoft Teams and students can respond with video answers, students can also respond to other students' answers leading to more classroom discussion and peer learning. If you haven’t used it already, it’s definitely worth a try.
- Wakelet
For years now the seemingly endless supply of stellar learning material on the web is becoming seamlessly endlesser 🤯 What’s challenging as a teacher is gathering informative snippets from different sources on the web and collating them for your students in a visually engaging way. ENTER Wakelet.
Wakelet gives you a canvas where you can bookmark anything, from individual tweets, articles or videos and share them with the class all within Microsoft Teams and on one visual canvas. As you find more useful information on a topic you can continue to build the canvas so that it performs better for you and your students. Here’s a look at Wakelet.
- Nearpod
Nearpod lets teachers make their slideshows interactive. As a teacher you can create interactive presentations that can contain quiz’s, videos, polls and boards that students can collaborate on.
- Draw.io
This is a personal favourite of mine. It’s a simple to use mind mapping tool that can be used for making simple and visual mind maps all the way to really complex and granular diagrams. I actually didn’t realise it worked within Microsoft Teams until writing this blog piece! It had to feature in this list for me.
- Kahoot
Kahoot is a hoot and a half, we recently just used it in Nurture during one of our social events for staff and had great fun with it. It’s a game-based learning platform, used as educational technology in schools and other educational institutions. The learning games, "kahoots", are user-generated multiple-choice quizzes that can be accessed via a web browser or the Kahoot app. As a teacher you can create a cool looking ‘Kahoot’ (quiz) all while in Microsoft Teams. Students can follow a website link that is generated by the teacher and answer the questions. It can be done synchronously or asynchronously. Take a look at TeachBlend who shows how to set it up.
- Nurture
Nurture is the Microsoft Teams integration helping teachers close the feedback loop. Nurture is helping teachers gather student confidence and student reflections while also saving them time delivering personalised feedback.
Nurture like others in the list is a Microsoft education partner. Partners work with Microsoft to have their EdTech integrations work seamlessly in the Microsoft Teams environment.
- Quizlet
Quizlet, as we mentioned up top, is a flashcard creation tool. Create a batch of flashcards and that’s your ‘study set’, and study sets can be shared. Quizlet can be added to Microsoft Teams super easily, you can see a real teacher go through what that set up is like here.
Well that’s it, 7 of our favourite Microsoft Teams Integrations for teachers. Helping the online classroom to be as effective for students and teachers as it can be.
Interested in what Nurture can do for your school? Book a 1-1 demo below:
