Create a new class

- [Narrator] In this video, let's take a look at how easy it is to create a new class inside of Microsoft Teams. So right now, I'm in an account created by an educator, Mr. Asher. We took a look at the different teams that he has created or joined in this account. But what if he wants to create a new team for a class that he's going to be teaching? Well, in order to do this, I first need to make sure that I'm on the Teams tab over on the left. Then, at the bottom, you'll see an area where it says Join or create a team. I'm going to click on that.

And it gives us two options. First of all, if you want to join a team that someone has already created, you can get that team code from them, enter it in here, and then join that team, but you can also create a team, and in this case, that's what I want to do. So I'm going to go ahead here and click on Create Team. Now when you do this, you'll get four different options. You can create a class, you can create a PLC, or Professional Learning Community, you can create one for staff members, or you can create one for anyone, students, school employees, interest groups, clubs and more.

In this case, I'm going to click on Classes because I want to create one for a 21st century Communications class. I'll click there. It asks me to name it. I'll title it. I can also leave a description here if I'd like. And then when I'm done, I can click on Next. Now if I do want to use an existing team that I have as a template, I can also do that by clicking here, but in this case, I want to create a new one. I'll click Next. And it's now asking if I want to add in any students. So right here is where I can go ahead and start typing in names and adding in students to this class.

And here, they're populating because they're already part of my organization. So in here, as you can see, I'm just putting in some on those. Now I can also click here and add teachers if I wanted. So if I had a co-teacher, I could add them to this team as well. So here I've added four people. I'm just going to click on Add and then I'll close that up. Now, over here on the left, here is our 21st Century Communications Team that we just created. Now when you create it, there will naturally be one channel that is automatically inside it by default, and that is the General channel.

So here, if I click on General, that's the channel that I'm in. You can see it over here. Now if I want to add a channel, I can. So here I could go Add Channel. It'll ask me to title it. And let's say, for instance, I'm doing a group project in here, and I'm going to put Group 1, Add, and then I want to add another channel. I'll call this Group 2. And that'll do it for now. But as you can see, so within this team here, I can click now on Group 1 and Group 2 and it will show those channels over here.

Now inside of this new team that I just created, I want to go to the General channel, and notice a few things up at the top. Up here, these are called tabs, and there are some that appear here by default. The first one is Conversations, and right inside here is where students can communicate with one another, students can communicate with the instructor and vice versa. So this is a great place to create discussions, to ask questions, and more. The Files tab is where I can curate any files that I want and then share them with students.

Also, I have Class Notebooks. So if you remember from the chapter before, we talked about Microsoft OneNote class notebooks, which I believe are a very powerful tool. Well, any time that you create a team inside of Microsoft Teams, it will automatically add a class notebook, that is, if you're using an Office 365 for Education account. Now, finally, I can click on Assignments, and here is where we can add assignments to this class. Now we also have the ability to add more tabs.

If, for instance, I wanted to click on Add a Tab, you'll see here that I can add a plethora of different things. I could add an Excel spreadsheet, forms, stream, and many other tools. If I scroll down here, you'll see that there is a lot that you can add, and you can include them as tabs up at the top. So why is this important? Well, if a student now, in this 21st Century Communications Course, goes into the team and into the General tab, they will have access to the conversations, these files, the class notebook, as well as assignments, and any other tabs that I add.

So this is the layout of Microsoft Teams, and this is what makes it such a powerful communication and collaboration tool.