Microsoft Meetings Management

All lectures are given in the main class. Examination rooms are used for tutorials, which include all graded activities of students. To start a meeting immediately a teacher can just press the button "Meeting" at the right top of the window. The interface for the meeting is explained below. The "Meeting entrance" allows one to configure video and audio presence, see Pic. 1. Press "Join" and then "..." You will see a widow with a list of important options, see Pic. 2.  Device settings (option 1) are shown oh Pic.3. The button "Who can present?" in "Meeting options"  allows one to choose the speakers for the meeting, see Pic. 10. The "Meeting details" give to the organizer a possibility to send a link to participants, who missed the invitation and cannot enter the meeting.  The "Gallery" box (see 5 in Pic. 2) turns on one of three available class presentations. The standard shows at most nine icons,  "Large gallery" shows up to 49 students, and "Together mode" distribute them in virtual classes. The last two can be activated only if more than nine students are present in the meeting. The option nine turns on the video recording of the lecture. The recorded video shortly after finish appears in "Recording" directory in the "Files" tab. In "Background settings" you can either click on one of the pictures available and press either "Preview" to see the background, or "Apply and turn on video" to begin the meeting with the background chosen. The recent option "Create Breakpout Rooms" makes rooms for discussions during the meeting. It can be opened by pressing the chat icon to the left of the "Hand up." These groups can be assigned either manually or automatic, see Pic. 7. The chat of the meeting is opened by a mouse click on the chat icon to the left of raised hand. The latter is used for raising questions. The box with the arrow up is used to show teacher's windows or desktop, see Pic. 11. To stop this presentation the teacher clicks it again. A recent update opens the meeting video in a separate window so that the teacher can demonstrate to students the Teams main window. There is the Entrance/Exit icon shown in the video meeting window, see Pic. 11. It allows the teacher to share with students the view of windows on the teacher's desctop and even the whole desktop.

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Teams Calendar and Meetings

Calendar is used in Teams to automate all technical actions. For instance, it is used to schedule all kinds of meetings, including those arranged by Bookings. In Microsoft Teams, teachers use the Calendar for their lectures. The first step is to click the Calendar icon on the left pane of Teams’ interface, see Pic. 1. In the Calendar click on "A new meeting," see Pic. 2. Type the Course name, then press check mark to open the recurrence options and press “Custom.” To choose the Team to be connected to this recurrence meeting click on "Add channel" and chose the required channel from the list, see Pic. 5. For this chose "General" below Algebra 1. It is important to notice that in the standard Microsoft Teams, it is impossible to arrange scheduled meetings in private channels. This is one of the reasons why examination's rooms are necessary. The meetings for exams are scheduled similarly. In this case just leave the field near the check mark as it is, i.e. "Does not repeat." All memebers of the Team, including the teacher, enter the scheduled meeting through the Calendar.

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Microsoft Whiteboard

Two Microsoft Whiteboards can be used in Microsoft Teams. The first one is incorporated in Microsoft Meeting. It can be opened by pressing the Entrance/Exit icon, see Pic. 11 above( the Gallery “How to configure a meeting?”). This Whiteboard can be shared with students, but it has a restrictive functionality. A more advanced whiteboard can be installed to the teacher's PC from Microsoft's Store. It is free. The possibilities of this whiteboard are demonstrated in the Gallery below. This whiteboard is a very advanced replacement of the traditional class board. Teachers can use it to transform their hand-written notes to the whiteboard with the camera and the Magic stick, see Pic. 9-12. You can use a graphic tablet supporting Microsoft Whiteboard. I use WACOM Intuos.  In this case the "Active pen" in settings must be on.