For teachers who want to connect with their students and share content with their colleagues, look no further than Microsoft Teams and Microsoft OneNote. Teams and OneNote help teachers stay organized and keep students engaged. But it’s important to understand the differences between the two products and how they simplify teacher’s lives.

Microsoft Teams is a chat and online meetings solution that helps improve collaboration and simplifies file-sharing. It’s integrated with Office 365 apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Sharepoint. One benefit for teachers is that when you share a file to Team, it is automatically shared with your colleagues. You can also use it as a way to send short messages via the Chat function.

Microsoft OneNote is a digital notebook that allows you to organize, tag and share items with colleagues. It’s great for teachers who use digital whiteboards to share audio and video files to present to a class, organize files and create a content library. One of the most helpful features is that teachers can share assignments or feedback directly with each student since there is a personal workspace for each student.

One way to look at these two technologies is to remember that OneNote is designed to use in the classroom with the students while Teams is better for planning and organizing with your colleagues. Here are just a few of the ways that teachers benefit from using Teams and OneNote.

Microsoft Teams is known as the “hub for teamwork” because it helps teachers collaborate and communicate with their teammates. Some of the key features of Teams include:

•  Customize your workplace: You can easily integrate apps from Microsoft and third-party partner services to tailor your processes.
  • Connecting devices: Have you ever had trouble trying to connect different devices to use in a presentation? That’s not a problem with Teams.
  • Online meetings: Teachers can host calls and web conferences with people inside and outside of their school.
  • Live broadcasts: Teachers can host webinars and all types of one-to-many presentations.

While Microsoft Teams is very good at connecting teammates, Microsoft OneNote is perfect for busy teachers who want to keep their materials and presentations organized and easy to find. Think of it as a searchable digital notebook with different sections that allows you to put files into folders that you can access and share with colleagues. Some of the more important features of OneNote include:

•  Stay organized: Upload and edit files, highlight specific parts of the file and even make ink annotations.
  • Prioritize materials: Easily highlight content with “tag” features that say Important or To Do.
  • Demonstrate creativity: For those teachers with an artistic flair, you can use a stylus or your finger to draw and make notes.
  • Add new media: Even for those teachers who aren’t used to using new media, OneNote lets you easily record and share audio notes and insert videos into your materials.

Skooler’s Learning Management System for Microsoft Office 365 is designed to simplify planning, sharing and leading a classroom for all K-12 teachers. Our goal is to help teachers use technology to improve how students learn and prepare them for eventually joining the workforce. We are always interested in hearing how teachers are using Skooler so please feel free to share your ideas with us.