Microsoft Teams Assignments Deep Dive - Homework and Online Education Sorted! (Office 365 Education)

[@ninaschwer5524]

Hello! Great job on your videos! I wanted to share with you some insight I have found helpful with students who use an Iphone or Ipad. When you go into the notes app and click create a new note, there is a button that looks like a camera. When you click it, it pulls up an option to scan a document. Much easier for the kids to take a picture of their work and it is easier to read this way.

[@MrTompkins]

Great tip! The camera tool in OneNote or OfficeLens is even better, and allows you to stetch out any paralax effects you get.

[@petercookjones858]

Excellent video, many thanks as I have only 5 days to learn all this before the students are assigned

[@MrTompkins]

You can do a lot in 5 day! Good luck with it Peter - I'd recommend you start using Teams straight away as much as possible with your colleagues. The more you use it amongst yourselves, the easier it will be when you start working with the students!

[@petercookjones858]

@@MrTompkins Thanks, do I need to be invited to join a "team" or can I use my downloaded prog' and login to join their "team"?

[@MrTompkins]

In my school, we automatically create teams for each teaching group, so mostly this is done for us. These are synced every day wit h our IMS so they are always kept up to date. Teachers can also make their own teams, so we've set some up ourselves for departmental teams etc. Your school/college may or may not create teams for you or even give you permission to make your own - these sort of rules are set within each tenancy. If you have never made a team before, and your school allows you to do so, check out this video which goes through it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXTZqGWPgbWcoK8

[@Gavin14774]

Great videos, helped me get up to speed with Teams in minutes rather than hours. Question though, when you have sub-sections created under the General tab, is there a way to hide them from students? I can hide them from me but the students can still see them!

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Gavin - if you make your channels private, then only the members of that channel can see them. In my school for instance we have a team for each year group, and a private channel within that just for the form tutors. The students can’t even see it’s there!

[@dinaprotus7721]

First of all thank you for all the videos and responding to questions so promptly. If I screen shot an assignment and paste it into a word doc and select students can edit, can the student type on doc or is there some setting I need to do to allow that. I will be moving into notebook at some point but we just started school this week I have to do baby steps. Unfortunately we aren’t able to have a “dummy student account” to see what happens. Thanks again.

[@MrTompkins]

Yes that will work. They will each get their own copy of the document to work on and you will be able to go through them easily via Teams

[@delfinaalemanhernandez2518]

Hello very helpful videos. Thank you so much for creating and posting. Question...as I follow along with you and the video my student view of an assignment I created does not show the plus sign with add work option. I have only created one assignment thus far. The assigned work is a word doc. ?????? What am I doing wrong?

[@MrTompkins]

Are you using the “student view” offered to you under your own account, or are you looking at one of your students devices? I’m suspecting the former, and if so not to worry. The add work button doesn’t show up in your student view, but will be there when your students look at their own. When i videoed this, I especially made a student account so I could demonstrate that it is actually there!

[@stang3966]

Thank you for your video, it was super informative and I will also watch your other videos. I noticed you had some self marking worksheets in word. Can I please ask how you created that please? Thank you agian.

[@MrTompkins]

Thanks for the positive feedback, s tang! The self marking sheets were actually made in excel rather than word. You can use formulas to check students answers and respond appropriately, so you could easily set some up on any subject you liked. However these particular ones come from a pre-made set we bought in maybe 15 years ago from a company called Living Worksheets. We’ve not really used them in years, but Teams assignments has given them a whole new lease of life! Really handy!

[@stang3966]

@@MrTompkins Thank you for your prompt reply. one more question if I may, how do you fix say an image, and then enable text next to the image as you wanted your students to do. Currently I can only type below the image as opposed to beside it.

[@MrTompkins]

Is this in word? Couple of ways - firstly, you could add a table, put the image in column 1 and leave column 2 for the text. If you dont want a grid, you can set this to be invisible. Or, you can insert your image and then use layout options to allow text wrapping. If I'm making a worksheet, I'd probably choose a table.

[@Cswarts114]

Thank you for your videos. They are very helpful and well done.

[@MrTompkins]

Glad you like them! I've got a few more in the pipeline, so keep an eye out for those...

[@tammieneeley8480]

thank you for creating this video. I am a class notes rookie so I thought the video was informative as I start to use class notes.

[@MrTompkins]

Glad it was helpful! Did you also find my videos on OneNote Class Notebooks too? Check these out if you havent: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oJ_YqZWPZsl7b6c

[@tammieneeley8480]

@@MrTompkins Yes I have been watching some of your other OneNote Class Notebooks videos. Thanks for sharing.

[@evangelinapena7052]

Great video, thank you! I do have a follow up question. I would like the students to do homework as assignments. Could you put those assignments in the homework section of Class Notebook? I am trying to streamline as much as possible. Thank you!

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Evangelina - yes, absolutely! This is also my preferred way of setting homework assignments for my students. Teams and OneNote work really well together. You would need to create the assignment task in OneNote first, either in the content library or your "teacher only" section. Next, set up your assigment in Teams, and select the onenote page as the linked resource. Once you're done, Teams will distribute the page to each of the students own area in OneNote. I actually go through this in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGmkk5-we52shLc

[@evangelinapena7052]

@@MrTompkins Awesome! Will definitely check it out, thanks so much!

[@NellyHouston]

Hello there! I am using OneNote and Teams this school year. I teach 6 sections of the same course over two days. For distributing tasks and grading assignments and quizzes, would you recommend one Team with 6 groups or 6 different Teams? I'm trying to figure out how to best manage both communicating through Teams as well as managing work. Thank you.

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Nelly - If your 6 sections are being taught to the same group of students, then one team would be best. You can then create 6 sections within your OneNote class notebook to keep your resources organised. If you have 6 parallel groups then it would be better to create 6 teams. You can then create one class notebook for one of the teams, and then use this as a template to create the other 5 groups.

[@NellyHouston]

@@MrTompkins Thank you. I am teaching the same course material to 6 class periods, all while giving students the option for synchronous or asynchronous learning. I was trying to avoid having to copy announcements, quizzes, tests, etc over and over to each team and class notebook. Is there any way to give assignments to certain channels? I think it's a mute point though, class periods are a thing of the past for me...

[@MrTompkins]

Yes, you can do that too. You can create one super-group with everyone in it, and create 6 channels where you add your subsets. You can then target meeting/assignments at the general channel, which will include everyone or one of the smaller channels

[@NellyHouston]

@@MrTompkins Thank you so much! You're great help!

[@debbiechandler4305]

Thanks so much, once again, for your videos. I am in South Africa - week 7 of lockdown and schools should be opening for our Gr 7s and Gr 12s on 1 June. I finally have all my Gr 7s on board with Teams. They had an assignment but really struggled with submitting it. They had to write a book review. I actually attached a blank Word doc for them, which might have confused them, as many of them just keep submitting but there is no info on the page. Have you perhaps got a video for the students on how to submit an Assignment? Just the basics :)

[@MrTompkins]

I don't but that's a really good idea. I'll have a think about making one! They do find it a bit confusing at first. In the meantime, maybe get one of your more savvy students who did submit it properly to video what they did and share with the others?

[@debbiechandler4305]

@@MrTompkins That's a good idea! Thanks. Will have a go 😁

[@mrpc9695]

Great videos - I'm just starting my onenote journey but you make a reference to "Getting your students working in onenote" at 19.45. You make reference to this video elsewhere, but I can't seem to find it. If you could post a link here that would be great

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Mr P C - I must confess this video is not yet made. I like to cross-reference my videos, but sadly you cant go back and put a new link in an older video!. It's high up on my list of videos to make, so expect it soon. If you subscribe and hit the bell, you should get notified when I upload it.

[@mrpc9695]

@@MrTompkins Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I saw two references to it and so many positive comments, I thought that I can't be the only one looking for this. I look forward to seeing it loaded up.

[@garnersmath8691]

Another outstanding instruction. Lots of great ideas I can use and pass on. The 0-1-2 is a good way to track progress and prep them for the next term transitions of more traditional grade ranges. ... How are the students without internet getting work turned in and distributed to you?

[@MrTompkins]

We arent - we have now provided them with workbooks to work their way through. It's not ideal, but it became a far too complicated logistical exercise setting alternative tasks and distributing these across the city. Most of our students do at least have their own device, thanks to a 1-to-1 iPad scheme we have been running at school. Thanks for the positive feedback. Really appreciated!

[@garnersmath8691]

@@MrTompkins We shut down completely having no plans to engage in virtual learning before cancelling classes. We had lessons available, I submitted a hyperlinked lesson plan that moved students in and out of websites and the docs each day - all voluntary - no takers. Other teachers had a few of their students in advanced classes meet via the Teams video exchange a few times. Teachers are planning and training to roll out virtual classes, but no one is answering questions on how we train students to engage with the new technology.

[@MrTompkins]

I totally get that - it's difficult to get this sort of thing up and running while everyone is coccooned! I find the students are very quick to pick these sorts of things up - they are digital natives and take to it like ducks to water. It's the staff who struggle. They are often suspicious or scared or both. I'm having problems in my own school getting the leadership team to allow live video lessons. It's as if meeting your students online is somehow sinister and more dangerous than meeting them face to face, which schools managed to cope with pretty well on most days before this all began!

[@garnersmath8691]

@@MrTompkins Here, parents are worried about privacy. Teachers about attendance. But if students have bad attendance and work habits, distance learning is something few are volunteering to do. ... Probably a switch that hides names, disables video would be helpful. The abuse of social media by teens and adults is rightly driving this. And the exploitation of children is often chilling. Perhaps a flipped classroom with traditional block scheduling with limited in school appearances are in order. I'll stick that in my B-107 for now. Great insights as usual.

[@MrTompkins]

Check out this document for what can be turned on/off in teams meetings. There are other policies that govern other parts of Teams, but it is entirely possibile to customise the toolset to meet most schools needs. You can for example disallow students from turning on their cameras at all, so staff can be seen and share their screen but students cant. docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/meeting-policies-in-teams. You can also turn off all the chat features if you want to.

[@yazhaspar]

Thank you for this video!! Are way aware if there is a way of attaching a file in response to a student's work? My plan is to mark a student's work using the apple pencil but I am unable to use it through Teams directly, and also I am unable to attach a file as 'feedback' to a student's work.

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Parsa - what are you getting your students to write/type on when doing homework? You might like to look at using OneNote, which works great with Teams and would give you some flexibility in providing feedback. Check this video out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGmkk5-we52shLc

[@mstalley6391]

Another great video! Thank you so much from the states. :)

[@MrTompkins]

Thanks for watching Ms Talley. Really glad to be getting so many viewers Stateside!

[@eoinoslatarra2544]

Great set of videos. Have recently started using onenote and have found your videos the most practical ones to follow. One issue I had was trying to upload a link to my PowerPoints on my one drive. Can do this using onenote 2016 but not onenote for Windows 10. Seems the files are too big. Very annoying as want to use the latest onenote. Keep uploading the videos.

[@MrTompkins]

Thanks for the positive feedback - I'm really glad teachers are finding these useful. With your powerpoints, have you tried using "Insert->File" and then choosing "Upload to OneDrive and insert link" option? This embeds the powerpoint into the page, including forward/back navigation so you can even flick through it like a normal powerpoint presentation. Pretty cool! As its not actually stored in the OneNote itself, you shouldnt get issues with size.

[@raorehan84]

@@MrTompkins aa

[@msmcintoshmaths2324]

Thanks again for a great video. Attaching Onenote pages is a great thing to be able to do. I have tried this and seem to have run into a problem I can't figure out. I have created an assignment, chosen to attach a onenote page. I can choose the page from the section in the Content Library, click Attach but when the message comes up to choose a section in the student notebook, no choices appear and I can't complete the assignment. I do have sections in the student notebooks. No idea what's gone wrong... any ideas gratefully received.

[@MrTompkins]

Hey June - I'm not sure why they are not showing for you, but have you tried creating the students sections via teams? You can do this by going to the class notebook tab in teams, click on the "class notebook" tab in the menu at the top of the embedded notebook, theb choose "manage notebook". You should now be in the page where you can create the teacher only section and turn on/off the collaboration space. Here you can also create student sections, so try making one here and see if this new section turns up when you try adding your page in the assignment tool.

[@msmcintoshmaths2324]

@@MrTompkins I had created 2 new notebooks for my senior classes and it is this ones that I am having the problem with. My old ones are OK. When I created one of the new notebooks, I made a typing error in the title and changed it after it was created. When I was opening the notebook in teams it was the one with the spelling mistake that was opening and I continued working in that one. When I went to create an assignment I noticed it was the notebook with the correct spelling that was in the list which has all my pages in the content library but does not have any pupil sections. I'm not sure what I've done and how to fix it. I don't want to lose all the pupil work that is in the notebook with the misspelled title.

[@MrTompkins]

Did you create the notebooks using the tool in Teams, or did you use the old stand-alone classnotebook tool? I'm guessing you used the standalone tool as you dont get to name the books when you make them via teams. I'd recommend just using the one via Teams from now, if you want to work with both OneNote and Teams. I'd suggest you move your own work and also the students work to the one created via Teams. It will be a bit of a faff, but it should work better for everyone once it's done. I had a similar issue when they first introduced the new notebook creation tool in Teams, as I already had books I'd made the other way.

[@msmcintoshmaths2324]

@@MrTompkins I think I'm sorted now, thanks for your replies. What think happened was that I did create the notebooks in Teams. In teams from the Notebook tab I choose to distribute section groups to create sections in the puipl notebooks. Assignments doesn't seem to recognise them. When I went into the Manage Notebook options as you suggested to create sections, they were then recognised by assignments. It was a bit of a faff as you said as I have to copy pages over and then delete the old sections. Hopefully that's me ready to go for Monday now. Thank you again for your help.

[@MrTompkins]

Oh, great to hear you are all sorted June - bset of luck for Monday!

[@callalily3994]

If I'm going to be teaching the same class next semester that I'm teaching this semester, and I want to re-use most of the same assignments, what would you say is the best way to set that up?

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Hillary - you can use a previously set assignment as a template for a later assignment with a new group. "Create" the assignment, select "from existing", and choose your previous class. You can then pick from all the assignments you set that class and create a new assignment for your new class from it.

[@callalily3994]

@@MrTompkins Thank you! I'm teaching entirely online this semester and next, and trying to figure out the best way to make use of the tools that the university has provided. Your videos have helped me a whole lot in learning what I can do with Teams and OneNote.

[@MrTompkins]

Great to hear Hillary! They work really well together - and once you have them nailed they're hopefully going to make life a little bit easier!

[@mrnnambi3583]

Thank you so much..very useful and effective...is there any possibility for the tr to evaluate the students work just like we evaluate their papers....in teams?? Thank you sir

[@MrTompkins]

Yes - if you have a stylus for your device you could mark it using digital ink in either Word or OneNote pages. Or you can use the "comments" tool in Word to add typed feedback to an essay.

[@mrnnambi3583]

@@MrTompkins thankyou so much sir

[@michaelhearne2021]

Is it possible to share assignments with other teachers? Not sure how to collaborate for an assignment to set up once then all use same assignment.

[@MrTompkins]

You can use previously made assignments as a cookie cutter to make new assignments, which can be drawn from any group you are an owner of. So if you had 3 parallel year 8 groups, you could create the task in one team and use this to create the other two. A teacher with another year 8 group would not be able to do this though, unless they were a co-owner of one of your 3 groups. Nothing stopping you adding each other to your groups though!

[@MrTompkins]

You could also perhaps have a head of department added to all groups, who creates one assignment and assigns it to all groups. Our English department does this.

[@michaelhearne2021]

@@MrTompkins Thanks for your pointers. I'll speak to my colleagues. Have a lovely weekend.

[@laurelvisser3763]

How do you get the highlighted circle around your mouse on a Dell PC???

[@MrTompkins]

Hi Laurel - I do this in my videos with my video editing software - its not how my mouse normally appears! you can make your mouse a bit bigger and change its colour to something brighter in Windows 10 settings. Type "mouse settings" in the search box, and open this. Next tap on "Adjust mouse cursor and size" and you can play around with how it looks.

[@neilconstant7892]

Thank you for your video on 23 minutes and 56 seconds our students do not receive that date preview they have to click on each individual class which is annoying, can you confirm yours is like that and did you have to do anything to enable?

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Neil - They changed the format since I took this screenshot. Currently you need to drill down, which I also dont like and I hope it gets changed back again soon!

[@delfinaalemanhernandez2518]

When I add resources when creating assignments I notice your video shows a word doc that we can make editable by clicking on the elipses and unchecking the default. My question is does that only work for word docs? I tried adding a jpg, a pdf, and a doc....only the doc gave me the option to allow students to edit.

[@MrTompkins]

You can only make certain docs editable. PDFs are generally not editable anyway, as they are essentially an electronic print-out. If you want to give students their own copy of a jpg to edit, they would either have to i) download it, edit it and attach their edited file to the assignment task once they are done, or ii) you could embed the jpg into a word doc and attach that as an editable doc to your task,

[@danessapoiron5222]

Is it possible to add in a google slides document and have the kids interact with the material? For example, play videos, flip through the slides, write on it, move tiles, etc.?

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Danessa - Office 365 and GSuite are not going to play very nicely I'm afraid. I dont really recommend mixing them - much better to stick with one or the other. So if you are using Teams, its going to be PowerPoint and Word and OneNote...You can share a google slides file, but the students will need to download it, edit it and re-upload it to Teams.

[@nikkisanger1414]

Thanks again for this. These videos have been a Godsend to me! Do you have any tips on how to add comments to their documents? I'm having trouble on my laptop giving feedback - I can use the feedback box but I would like to add comments to specific questions. I'm also having trouble downloading the actual correct version of teams, mine downloads in your link but I still don't get the version with 'background' and allowing students to edit their work.

[@MrTompkins]

Once you download it, have you run the file and signed in? What sort of document are you distributing to the student? WIth word docs or OneNote pages, you should be able to click in the page within the assignment tool in Teams and add comments. With word docs, you'll need to first click "edit document" at the top. If you then pick "edit in browser", it should let you edit the file right there in Teams. You can just type in the page or use the "Insert->New Comment" feature. With OneNote pages, it's even easier - just tap in the page and start typing! Once you've written your comment, you can use the "tag" tool to make it an actionable "to do" task, complete with tickbox!

[@nikkisanger1414]

@@MrTompkins thank you 😁

[@yazhaspar]

Hi, thank you very much for this detailed and really interesting video! I have noticed that the 'insert equations' function does not appear on Word Online. I know that we can input equations on OneNote, but was wondering if you know how to include the 'insert equations' function on Word Online? (Since a lot of worksheets are available in Word format)

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Parsa - as you have seen, the equation tool is not included in the webapps. Is there a reason why you are using these and not the desktop apps? You may be able to install full office - check this video for details: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqLTl4uuaLZqnaM

[@yazhaspar]

@@MrTompkins Thanks for the reply! To be honest, more out of convenience + wanted to see if there is a way. Thanks for the video re installing Office. Will definitely share this!

[@DebiMWood]

That was so good, thanks for providing us with useful material that I can see the point of utilising. Clean hands!

[@MrTompkins]

Really glad you liked it Debi. It is a really useful tool right now - actually makes me feel organised on vaguely on top of things!

[@DebiMWood]

@@MrTompkins 🤣😋 trying to get my college students to use it, treated like Marmite at the moment!!

[@MrTompkins]

@@DebiMWood I love marmite! Correlation?

[@DebiMWood]

@@MrTompkins my students either love using it or refuse to engage with it. I'm in your camp, Marmite lover not a hater 😋😁

[@katsan88]

Thank you!!!!!!!!!

[@MrTompkins]

You're welcome!

[@shipkiss3887]

Please can you tell me where to find the weekly digest app as a search didn't locate it within Teams. I realise that this has to be set up by the organisation is that why I can't see it? Thank you

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Samantha - yes, this option needs two steps 1) the parental contact details need to be uploaded via School Data Sync ( SDS), and 2) the parental email digest feature turned on in the teams admin panel. So not something you will normally have sight of as a teacher. I’ve been hearing rumours that linked parent office 365 accounts are being fast tracked now. This is something we have been asking for for a long time and will be heaps better than the email digest!

[@petercookjones858]

Thank you

[@MrTompkins]

You're most welcome!

[@katsan88]

Can students write over a pdf if i attach it?

[@MrTompkins]

No - this isnt possible. If you wanted to do this, you could first insert the pdf into a OneNote page (to make it even easier for students, right-click on it and "set as background") and attach the OneNote page instead. Check this video for more details: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGmkk5-we52shLc

[@AceHardy]

✍️

[@MrTompkins]

😀👍

[@knturel]

i very new to teams and find your videos helpful. however, my teams app does not have the assignment tab at all. do you think that's a different temas app? pls help. thank you.

[@MrTompkins]

Hey Knturel - did you set your groups up yourself? You only get the assignments tab if you set the group up as a class group when you create the team. Watch this video here for more info: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXTZqGWPgbWcoK8

[@elizabethaj]

How do I prevent students from copying other student's work when they use Class Notebook to do their homework assignments? Thank you.

[@MrTompkins]

Students cant directly see each others work via class notebook or Teams, so they shouldnt be able to copy form each other. Only the teacher and the individual student can see their own work.

[@elizabethaj]

@@MrTompkins Some students got answers from their friends through email. They copy and paste it to their class notebook.

[@MrTompkins]

Hmm, well this is going to be a potential issue with any electronic work. There are some anti-plagiarism tools you can add into Teams if this is a big issue for your school/college, which will automatiaclly check submissions. But normally, calling students out on it when you spot it is usually enough to keep them honest!

[@elizabethaj]

@@MrTompkins Thank you.

[@meenasingh8267]

Its too good.

[@MrTompkins]

High praise! Thanks!