Teams and Channels build community

  • 5 minutes

Productivity platforms offer programs with similar functions, such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Apple Pages for word processing. Other examples include presentation software PowerPoint, Slides, and Keynote, and spreadsheet apps Excel, Sheets, and Numbers.

However, Microsoft Teams stands alone. A program similar to Teams doesn't exist.

Teams is very comprehensive. It includes all the functionality of Google Meet, Google Classroom, Google Drive, Keep, Docs, Sheets and Slides, plus so much more. Teams has features that don't exist anywhere in Google Workspace or in Apple Classroom.

As a comprehensive, diverse, and feature-rich product, Teams consists of many different and connected applications that empower, engage, and organize educators and learners.

The far-left side of Teams is known as the Me Space. Everything in the Me Space is specific to the user logged into Teams such as:

  • Activity
  • Chat
  • Calendar
  • Files

We Space, the section of Teams to the right of the Me Space, holds information for all members of the Team. This space is meant for collaboration.

  • Posts
  • Channels
  • Files
  • Assignments
  • Apps

All new Teams, when created, open to the Posts tab in the General Channel. The Posts tab is similar to the Streams tab in Google Classroom with one major difference. Google Classrooms only has one Stream for all conversations in the Classroom. But Teams includes a Posts tab for each Channel of every Team, and Teams' Posts include far more options for formatting and what can be posted, compared to posts in Google Classrooms' Stream.

Each Team starts with a single channel called the General channel. Because Teams is such a robust product, educators aren't limited to one channel. They can personalize the workspace by creating as many channels as necessary to divide different aspects of the Team into categories or to organize learning by topic.

Using Teams in schools and classrooms helps learners collaborate and practice organization skills that will help them gain confidence in their learning and will prepare them for a real-world future.