Setting up — structuring — use
*This article corresponds to a discussion with Jan-Martin Klinge, the author of the part-time blogs. This is just the summary of the conversation, which I’ve summarized as a brief explanation of how to go about naming teams in Microsoft Teams for the Twitter classroom. Therefore, this article has only been superficially edited in terms of scope and form.*
Naming scheme
I’ll rear the horse from behind and address some issues with course naming and administration:
If you take a course e.g. E.g. for a 5-person history course, then of course it runs without any problems in the first year. You could easily rename the course in the second year, e.g. e.g.:
Year 1: 18/19-5a — History
Year 2: 18/19-6a — History
So you would have the same team every year and always the right name at first glance. The class notebook also remains.
But there are a few problems here that you have to be aware of: You still have all the old channels open, including all the news. You would then have to delete them manually. In addition, all channels may have tabs to external pages or documents that make things confusing in the new year. You also have all the old content in the notebook. This can be useful under certain circumstances, but is often confusing.
Another problem then appears in the background. Because teams are actually just a branched SharePoint-Structure (group, OneDrive, Messenger etc.), this needs a unique ID. This is created when the team is created and cannot be changed later. Even if you change the name of the team manually, the old ID will remain in the admin area. This quickly becomes very confusing in the school-wide administration.
Example:
In 2019 you create the team “History 6b” then it receives the z. e.g. the ID”[email protected]”
If you then change the team name to “History 6b” in 2020, the ID will remain the same. Create the team “Story 6b” anew, e.g. B. the following ID formed “[email protected]”. If it goes on like this for a few years, you won’t find the right team so quickly. Because at the latest when the 5b from 2019 is in the 10th grade, you may no longer know that it has an ID from the 5th grade.
So it makes sense to create a new team for a course every year. Especially when you switch to a course system at some point, i.e. to E and G courses or at the latest in the upper grades. That would mean that one is best one team per class, subject and year creates. You can set the name individually. It is important, however, that a uniform naming scheme must be decided for the school. This also raises the question of whether it is up to each course teacher to create their teams, or whether the whole thing is done centrally at the beginning of the school year.
Year — — — Class — — — Subject or Year — — — Subject — — — Class
2019–5a—Mathe 2019—Mathematik—5a
I think that this creates a homogeneous view in the team list for the students:
2019–5a—Mathe
2019–5a — Social Studies
2019-5a — German
Even if a student is demoted, there will be no issues with the label as there will not be a second team with the same name in the admin. Because a student cannot be on a team with the same name twice.
2019–5a—Mathe
2020–6a — Mathe
2021–7a — Math
2022–8a — Mathe
2023–9a—Mathe
2024–9a—Mathe
2025–10a — Mathe
This is also the quickest way for teachers to see through:
2019–6a — Mathe
2019–6b — Technik
2019–7c — Mathe
2019–8b — Physics
Archiving teams and using legacy instances
The only question that remains is what happens to the teams and the course notebooks when the school year is over.
There are several interesting options here:
- You want to create a team for the same course but for the next school year.
- You want to create a team again for a 5-person math course for the new SJ.
- You want to reuse the content and structure of Class Notebook.
method:
At the end of the school year, teams have to clean up. Especially in the example shown above, since a large number of teams are created every year. It would be fatal to delete all teams. So you would not only lose the structure of a tried and tested team — e.g. B. the sequence of topics that is reflected in the channels or the materials and links found in the tabs etc. — but also the members of the individual teams if you need them in the new course.
Nevertheless, it makes sense to create a new team/course every year, since Teams gives you the option of archiving teams that are no longer needed. The “actual state” of the team is frozen, so to speak.
The team disappears from the list of active teams, but remains accessible and its structure and content are retained. However, nothing can be changed.
To archive a team, first go to the administration menu from Microsoft Teams. There you will find an overview of all teams. Then select the option “Tarchive eam” out of
The course will appear under the “Archived” tab. If you want to activate the course again, you can also select this in the submenu.
The advantage of an archived team is that you can use it as a template for new courses.
So if I want to create a math course with the students from last year again in the new school year, I just have to click “create teams” and can then choose at the bottom that I want to create it from an existing team. Then you select the course that should serve as a template.
You can then name the course, e.g. B. “2020–6a — Math”. Here you also have the option of selecting what you want to copy. In our case, then the members of the team.
However, if you want to create a team for a 5-person math course again, but not create everything from scratch, you can now easily use the course from the previous year as a template and adopt all channels, tabs, etc. Then all you have to do is add the members.
With the next updates it will eventually be possible to import the content from an old course notebook into a new one. You can find more information here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Education-Blog/30-summer-updates-for-OneNote-and-Class-Notebooks/ba-p/679711
At the moment you have to copy everything manually. However, an archived team’s notebooks can be accessed at any time.