Here is a "Getting Started Guide to Teams for School Leaders" document that has some examples of ways to use Teams at your school.

1. Open Microsoft Teams. On the bottom left, click on Create or Join a Team.
2. You can create a Team by naming the team. If you are joining a Team, you can enter the Team code.

Classroom Teachers automatically have a Classes Team. With Microsoft Teams, you can create as many teams as you'd like, so it is important to know the differences between the four types of teams. This document provides detailed information on each type of team.

Here is a guide to help you have a successful start

• Set up Microsoft Teams 

• Re-Use an Existing Team: You can reuse an existing team as a template. When you create a new team, you can use the same set up for channels, apps, and more. Channels and tabs can be copied over but not content. Content and files would need to be manually copied in order to be reused.
    
• Archive and restore a Team: Have a Team that you don't use anymore? You can archive it in read-only mode, so it’s ready for you to reference in a new school year. Click here to see the process in detail. 

There are three options embedded in Teams for collaboration.

Conversations

The Conversation tab in Microsoft Teams appears in the General channel, as well as any additional channels you create. All Team members can view and add to conversations in the General channel. In other channels, use the @Mention to invite certain students or staff to participate in a conversation.
 

• Conversations are different from chats because they are visible to everyone in a channel and not private. Conversations can also be deleted. Documents shared in a conversation automatically become part of the Files tab in that file. Here is a great document detailing Conversations in Teams.
  
  
• Channels are a great way to provide everyone on your Team with information at the same time. Rather than creating and sending out an email to a group, now you can simply post a message in the Conversations and everyone on your Team will receive a notification that there is a message waiting for them. You can attach documents, links, pictures, polls using Microsoft Forms, etc. all in the Conversations tab.
  
  
• When you want to get the attention of a person(s), you use the @[their name] in the Conversation box. This message will NOT be private but will alert the individual(s) that you are speaking to them specifically.
  
  

Chats

This is a great way for you to "instant message" colleagues on your Team. Chats are private between you and the individual you are chatting with.

• Note: If you are chatting with an individual and then decide to add another individual to that chat, the added individual will only see the "chat" from the time they were invited to that chat. They will not see anything prior in the chat section. To loop more people into a private conversation, just click Add people to team button in the top right corner of your screen. Then, type the names of the people you'd like to add, select how much of the chat history to include, and click Add. Note: Currently, you can include chat history only when adding someone to a group chat (not a one-on-one chat).

Click the New Chat icon to start a New Chat. You can privately share files within a chat and even have a video chat that is similar to Skype but within Teams.

Meet Now

Meet Now in Teams can be either Audio meetings or Video meetings. The Meetings in Teams works in conjunction with your Outlook calendar as well. When you open up your Meetings icon, you'll see anything you already have scheduled in Outlook will show up in your Meetings calendar as well. Click the New Meeting icon to schedule a new meeting. You can also have your meetings recorded, transcribed, and time-stamped.

Explore the following resources to understand how Meet Now in Teams can work for you. “Meet Nows” in Meetings and calls (estimated reading time 6 minutes)
 

• Meet now video (1.45 minutes)
  
  
• Scheduled meetings video (1.45 minutes)
  
  
• 9 tips for meeting with Microsoft Teams to learn about the meeting lobby, joining meetings anonymously, and more (estimated reading time 6 minutes)

To start a meeting, do one of the following:

• Select the camera in a new conversation.
• In your video preview, enter the name for the meeting and select Meet now.
• Select the names of the team members you want to invite to the meeting.

• Look for the meetings notification icon in a conversation to find a meeting.
• Select Jump In to participate in a meeting.

• Select the share screen icon.
• Share your screen to the other people in the meeting.

Channels

Each Team has a General channel as a default. This is where all your "whole-team" conversations take place, etc. You can add other channels, however, if you would like to create differentiated groups, separate topics, or keep other things organized.

Tabs

With every new channel, two tabs are provisioned by default, Conversations and Files.

With every private chat, four tabs are provisioned by default, Conversations, Files, Organization, and Activity.


Owners and team members can add more tabs to a channel or chat by clicking Add a tab + at the top of the channel or chat

• Watch this video to see more about Adding Tabs in Teams (2.53 minutes)
• This video discusses how to include both Office 365 programs like Word and PowerPoint in your Team as well as outside content such as PDFs, Flipgrid, etc.
• Episode 3: Embedding External Content and the MEC (2 minutes)

Files

With every Team there is a Files tab. This is a great place to store any documents you would like your Team to access without having to email documents to your Team members.

If you have created a PLC or Staff Members team, your Team will have an embedded OneNote notebook. 

Setting up a OneNote Notebook in your PLC Team 

A PLC Team includes a shared OneNote Notebook. Members do not have their own individual notebook with the creation of this Team. 

OneNote Shared Notebooks are a great tool to enable Professional Learning Communities (PLC) in schools. By using a PLC Notebook, groups can quickly get going with a notebook in which people can collaborate quickly and efficiently. Because OneNote comes on all platforms and all devices, it's easier than ever to learn and collaborate anytime, anywhere, on any device. 

The PLC Notebook is pre-organized into several sections which you can customize/change at any time for your needs.

Use this team if you are collaborating with other team members or administration on projects. This type of team also includes a shared OneNote Notebook as well as an individual OneNote Notebook for each member of the Team.

View the resources below regarding Staff Notebooks:
 

• Staff Notebooks - save time, be more organized and collaborate more effectively 
• OneNote for School Administrators and Faculty 

Each OneNote Staff Notebook is organized into three parts:

• Collaboration Space -- a space for everyone in your group to share, organize, and collaborate. 
• Content Library -- a read-only space where staff leaders can share information with staff members. 
• Private Notebooks -- a private notebook shared between the staff leader and each individual staff member. Staff leaders can access every staff member notebook, while staff members can only see their own.
  
  
  

  You'll need to decide what should be in each staff member's personal Notebook. This would be a great place to include a section/page for Evaluations, Artifacts, SLOs, etc. Staff members can also add sections/content to their own notebooks as well.
  
  

  
  

Select the ellipses next to a staff team's name, then View team. Select Settings and scroll down to the Staff Notebook settings. Staff leaders can edit notebook sections or copy a link here.  

Staff Notebook Training Resources  

• Getting Started with OneNote Staff Notebook -- Ideas for how to use Staff Notebook in your school or district   
• OneNote for Administrators -- 5-10 minute interactive training sessions 
• OneNote Staff Notebook FAQ

• Staff meeting notes - keep all of your meeting notes in one place and track meeting attendance and review minutes at a glance.  Staff Meeting, Committee, Grade Level, Departmental, or Professional Learning Communities (PLC's).  OneNote has tight integration with Outlook and Office, along with rich search capabilities so you'll never lose track of follow-ups.
   
• When staff meeting notes are put into the Collaboration space, all staff can quickly find and access the most critical information, whether at your desktop, or on your phone, tablet or browser. With OneNote's tight Outlook integration, pulling in a meeting from Outlook is as easy as 1 click (details below).  Sending an email from Outlook into OneNote also takes just 1 click.   

We've put some examples of how some schools and institutions are using Staff Meeting notes  

Staff Meeting notes examples 

• Weekly staff meeting 
• All School Open House  
• In-service Day 
• School Board Minutes 
• Student Achievement 
• Rubrics  
• Assessments - State Requirements 

• Initiatives - plan out school initiatives collaboratively and keep things organized such as School Improvement, and Fund Raisers. 

• Tide chart for student highs and lows - some schools have used this innovative and collaborative way to track student highs and lows during school over time.

• Cross-grade lesson plan development - some schools set up a Staff notebook for a particular grade and do school-wide lesson plan and curriculum development.  For example, 9th grade math lesson plan across 10 teachers to develop and share. 

In OneNote, first create a new page in the Staff Meeting Notes section.  Then go to the Home tab and on the far right, drop down the Meeting Details button.  This will read directly from your Outlook calendar.  By choosing a meeting, OneNote will pull in all of the meeting details, including time/date, attendees, attachments and any other relevant information.

  

In Outlook, select an important e-mail message and send it to OneNote.