Due to Covid - 19, Online Classes is the way to go and our college UPG has
planned for us to go with the best of the online applications that is MS Teams.
As many are new to the software, here is a rundown on its usage.
After logging in with the Email and Password provided by the college. This shall
be in it:
The first tab on the side, the Activity tab houses everything that has occurred,
all your calls, chats and files that have been uploaded across all your teams. At
the top you can filter how you view all your activity.
Next up is the Chat tab this has all the different individual conversations you
have going on in all your different teams. You can pin chats in order of your
priorities but you also have your other recent chats underneath. You can
upload an Excel document or a PowerPoint deck and you can easily start
collaborating with your teammates.
On this platform, you have the ability to have that 24/7 collaboration, in
addition to their video conferencing side.
Your Calendar tab is where you can see your schedule and it's linked to your
Outlook account so it's very easy to know your schedule. You can also enter
your class from the calendar, as the schedule of your classes are made over
there.
These last tabs are a record of all your Calls and the Files, in their respective
tabs, that have been posted across all your teams it's just all located in one
easy place.
Microsoft Teams has a complete meeting solution that supports sharing, video
and audio conferencing and this now can hold up to 10,000 participants and
they can participate in real-time.
With Teams, if a lot of people have joined into the call, and say you're a bit
late to the meeting, maybe, there's five different people already on, it will
mute your microphone by default.
So, when you are ready for your class, you can just click Join. You can decide if
you want your Video and Mic on or off to start with.
In the meeting you will see a toolbar at the bottom of the screen, the first two
buttons allow you to turn your Camera and Mic on and off. There is a “more
options” button that has some different settings for you to take a look at
during your call, some of the useful features here are the turn on live captions
and turn off incoming video live captions are a useful tool for those students
that you know aren't able to have their audio turned on while they tune into
class. And just to help make things clearer in general you can turn off incoming
video if you don't want distractions when you’re concentrating in the class.
Being able to communicate with your teachers while you're studying online is a
necessity,
You can also raise your hand during the class; The chat feature makes this
possible for you to ask or answer any questions that you might have so this
helps bridge that gap from what would be happening in the classroom to
what's now happening in these online classes.
In the Class, you can share your screen if needed. For example, you can share
with PowerPoint online to actually present that file and if you want, you can
allow people to even fast forward through that content. It's really an efficient
way to do remote presentations. In additional features, you can also blur your
background and remove distractions behind you so that everyone can stay
focused in on the meeting.
So, you can really think about it as a four-in-one solution. You have your
messaging; your online meetings, where you can always stay connected; as
well as, your calling capabilities and all of these experiences are built for the
web browser as well as in your apps.
Teachers will have a participant report so that teachers can see who is in their
meeting and when they joined or left the call.
helpful