Over the past two school years, and in the face of the global pandemic, distance education has unfortunately become essential. In one recent blog post, Microsoft Teams would like to thank the teachers and take the opportunity to announce some thirty new features for education.
Among other things, the interface wants to be much more pragmatic and will propose the establishment of working groups, the recording of video and audio conversations as well as calendars “for a better organization of the pupils”, indicates Microsoft.
Teams is also committed to learning to read with “Reading Progress”. This free tool will allow teachers to monitor student progress on an individual basis using a dashboard, “Education Insights”.
AI for learning
Automatic pronunciation detection via artificial intelligence will be able to track student recordings and identify any reading and pronunciation errors. The feature is also designed for learning new languages, the company says.
????? Introducing Reading Progress in #MicrosoftTeams ?????
A built-in tool designed to help students build confidence, independence & fluency while saving time, so you can focus on what you do best: teaching.
Learn how to get started: https://t.co/LrJOHxz2nr #MicrosoftEDU pic.twitter.com/MbYldMQWKW
— Microsoft Education (@MicrosoftEDU) May 4, 2021
Learning can also be done while having fun outside of the classroom. The educational version of Minecraft, designed with teachers, sees its experience enriched with new updates. This educational tool can now be integrated into Teams, and help the youngest to learn mathematics, history or programming. But that’s not all.
Upcoming developments
Microsoft is also at the service of teachers by launching “Reflect”, a free application aimed at promoting communication with students. This will allow you to give feedback on homework, but also to maintain a link with the students to find out how they feel in this particular context. They will be able to share their feelings via emojis for example.
For now, these new features should be fully implemented in the United States by the next semester. In France, it will take a little more patience. However, the service continues to evolve in France, Adobe recently announced the integration of its Document Cloud in Microsoft Teams. This partnership will allow, among other things, to comment and sign PDFs saved in SharePoint, OneDrive or Teams, without leaving the application.
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