Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is available for you to use for video conferencing with your students. Your classes are already set up and rostered for you, based on your Aeries rosters. You won't have to share a link with your students, but you can still send a link to parents or others outside of your class.

To get started, find the "Microsoft Teams" tile in Saddleport and open Teams. Alternatively, you can go directly to teams.microsoft.com.

On the left side of the screen, click on the "Teams" icon. You will see a team for each of your classes. Open the one you want to use.


Then, in the upper right of the screen, you will see a camera icon. Click on that to start a video meeting with your team.

You can preview your settings before joining the meeting. Once you are ready, click "Join Now".

Once the meeting has started, your students will see a box like this on their Teams screen. They just need to click "Join" to enter the meeting. You do not need to send them a link.

If you want to invite parents or others outside your class, you can copy the meeting link and send it to them.

Within the meeting, your controls are on the toolbar in the upper right.

The "Options" menu has several items you might want to use.

  1. You can start or stop recording the meeting.

  2. You can apply background effects like "blur" or a photo background for your camera.

  3. You can arrange the participants tiles using "Gallery", "Large gallery", or "Together mode". (These options are dependent on how many people are in your meeting, and the graphics capabilities of the device you are using. Not all options will always be available.)

  4. Most importantly, you can open the "Meeting Options" panel. This is where you can enforce the "lobby" (waiting room), and allow students to present, unmute, or enable their cameras.

Sharing your screen in Teams is very much like sharing in any other video conferencing program. You can select a particular screen, or just a single window.

  1. If you need to share the sound from your computer, make sure you enable this option.

  2. Some neat tools are under "Presenter mode":

    • "Standout" - your image is placed in the corner, in front of your shared screen, which fills the entire window;

    • "Side-by-Side" - your image and your shared content are in separate smaller screen next to each other;

    • "Reporter" - your shared content is in a smaller window over your shoulder, similar to news broadcasts.

While you are sharing your screen, you have a toolbar and a floating box to control your camera, microphone, and sharing mode, and also to stop screen sharing.

Note 1: You may have to move your mouse to the top of the shared screen for the toolbar to appear. You can "pin" the toolbar with the button on the far right.

Note 2: In the box shown here on the right, you literally click on the words ("Call is in progress. Click here to go back to the call screen.") to see your main screen again. It seems like it ought to be a button, but it's not.

Once you end the meeting, you can download an attendance report from within your Team's channel.

Recommendation:

You already have a team created and rostered for each of your Aeries classes. You might want to create a "practice" team for yourself and maybe a colleague or two, so you can play with the video call settings and features in private. You can do this with the "Join or create team" on the Teams screen. You can also create a quick video call from any chat screen.

Anticipation:

Technology Services is working on enabling the calendar feature, which will allow you to create a meeting for a specific date and time in the future, so you can send the link to colleagues or parents ahead of time.

Integration:

You can create a video call in Teams directly from your Canvas class. Here are instructions for using that integration.