Hi, my name is Mike Dobson and I'm a product manager on the
Microsoft Education team and today I'm going to be talking
about Microsoft Teams and Accessibility. I do a lot in my
day job about inclusive classrooms and Accessibility and
making sure all students have access, so I'm excited to talk
about all the capabilities in
teams. Also, I'm very active on Twitter and you can follow the
latest updates there. I've got my Twitter handle and also have
a YouTube channel where I post a lot of how to videos, especially
around inclusive technology. So let's get going now to start
off. Obviously we are. The word unprecedented is used quite a
lot. Unprecedented times for educators, for students, for
parents, all the challenges with remote learning and hybrid
learning and everything inbetween. Now Microsoft really
has a set of capabilities we are trying to help all sorts of
school systems with online learning infrastructures.
Obviously important communication tools which will
talk a lot about today with teams inclusive access, which is
just as important.
And making sure every student can come along as we're doing
remote and hybrid learning and then professional development,
user readiness training all those important aspects to make
sure everyone can learn and know
about our tools. Now Microsoft Teams. If you're not familiar
with IT, teams is the digital hub and it's our education hub
that brings together everything in one place. Content,
assignments, apps, class notebooks, meetings and you can
do all sorts of great things of personalizing assignments you
can have PLC's. You can have staff communication. We won't
cover all those today, but there's lots of great other
talks happening at besty that go deeper into teams will be
talking about the inclusive side now when it comes to remote
learning, this becomes very
important. For Accessibility, so with teams you can schedule
online meetings with your classes and office hours,
creating announcements, assignments, chatting and it's a
good reminder to know that teams is completely free for educators
and students. And there's a lot more at the link on this deck if
you're interested in learning more about the free teams
platform and how your school might use it now at a high
level, we talked about inclusion and Accessibility that is part
of Microsoft's core mission. Our mission in education is to
empower every student. On the planet to achieve more.
That doesn't mean 84% of the students. That doesn't
mean 95.3% of the students. It means 100% of students
and all these capabilities, you're going to see today
are built in mainstream non stigmatising an free.
Now as a high level, just so you understand the entire
Accessibility platform from Microsoft, these are the six
categories our company talks about learning visual, hearing,
mobility, neurodiversity and mental health. I'll talk today a
bit about we have learning dyslexia, hearing deaf and hard
of hearing vision, some ADHD. But if you want to get all of
the details about all the capabilities across the
Microsoft 365 platform, and there are many of them.
And most people aren't aware of many of them. This link right
here, this Accessibility sway is a great link to go through.
Maybe after if the when you're sitting back and looking through
all the materials. That is a great sway to go through and see
the broad swath of things in the inclusive classroom when I refer
to that, that really breaks down categories into reading,
writing, math and communication, and I'll be talking a bit about
communication today with teams as well as a little bit on
reading with the immersive reader. Now Accessibility in
teams. Just for people that aren't aware there's actually
quite a few things in teams and the M365 platform that come in
there. We have everything from immersive reader inline
translation, live captions, focus mode together mode,
Accessibility checker with OneNote built into teams. You
can use all the inclusive math features and transcripts and
I'll be showing a lot of these new capabilities as we move into
this right now, so I'm just going to walk through some of
the current an coming soon. Capabilities first office
together mode that you might some people say oh together mode
is gimmicky. It turns out there's actually a bit of brain
science research behind together mode. Now think about students
with attention issues and ADHD.
Maybe visual impairments could be cerebral palsy. Various
reasons why seeing all those 49 squares and changing and people
moving around the screen like that can be really
discombobulating, and it can be confusing, and according to
science and brain research, it's overloading on the brain. It
overwhelms. Together mode shows that you have the same person in
the same spot. You can focus in the same area and we remove all
the backgrounds and distractions, so there's
actually a bit of brain science that shows together mode is
easier on the brain and that can
be especially helpful. For students, for certain students
in your class that might have challenges with focus and
learning and attention issues, so that's a good one to try out.
Spotlight is something that recently rolled out. This allows
the edgecator to pin either themselves or pin a student in
the class in a certain spotlight video. So I'm going to play this
video so you can see what it looks like now. I'm here in a
teams meeting and I'm going to go pick a certain student named
Chelsea and I'm going to spotlight her for the class so I
zoom in here, I'll choose the dot dot dot and choose Spotlight
and you can see Chelsea is now pinned as a video in the class,
and if I want to unpin her, I can do that. And if I want to
zoom in. And see exactly where that is. You can see the little
Spotlight icon and click the spots top spot lighting up at
the top. So I go click stop spotlighting an I can put that
back and as an educator I could put the spotlight on myself as
well. So Spotlight is really nice for putting attention on
different people. We're going to be expanding that feature into
dynamic views, which I'll talk about in just a little bit.
Another one is focused mode in full screen mode. These recently
rolled out thinking about students with attention and
learning and attention. Attention deficit disorder.
Maybe I want to get rid of all those videos along the bottom.
If I choose focus right here.
All those videos on the bottom will disappear. In addition, I
can go into full screen mode and make the taskbar right here and
across the top disappear as well, so both full screen and
focus mode have fully rolled out into teams meetings very
recently, so I suggest trying it out with your students.
This next feature just is rolling out right now, right?
During Misty we're rolling out our next generation live
captions so captions is where we put the captioning right along
the bottom of someone is talking. We've rolled out some
new capabilities that include speaker Attribution. That means
showing the captions exactly who is talking and when, and then
also a transcript for the entire meeting and the ability to
download that transcript afterwards. So I'm going to play
in this video. You're going to see? I'll share some content.
And then I'm going to go to the dot dot dot menu and turn on
live captions and you'll see the captions showing right there
with my name next to them. And there's other people talk. It'll
show them now. I can also start recording and transcribing the
meeting as you see here. So now a transcript started. Now if you
go down to the captions, you're going to see as other people
start talking, like Gabby here, you're going to see her name
show up and Abby. So we have
speaker Attribution. If I want to stop recording this meeting,
I can go back to the dot dot dot menu and then end it and the
transcript will get saved automatically. So stop the
recording and save the transcript. I can also go back
and if I want to watch transcripts as the meeting is
happening, you'll see right here. The entire transcript can
be seen on the right hand side.
And when I'm done with this meeting, there's a transcript
that was saved. So the meeting is ended and you see a
transcript. I can download it as a Vt or a document, and this
transcript is pinned into the meeting automatically. So all
the transcript with the speaker Attribution right here? All of
that is automatically put right into the meeting. Follow and you
can also download it for later
as well. Those are a bunch of great capabilities, can help
with deaf and hard of hearing students, but also students that
might just want to see the transcript afterwards or be able
to follow along or share that outwards. As an educator, if
someone else needs that transcript. All of these
capabilities are coming into teams meetings at the end of
November, so right about now.
The other thing I'll mention is breakout rooms. While that is
not necessarily an inclusive and accessible feature specifically,
breakout rooms has fully rolled out. Now in teams. The best part
about that, from the Accessibility standpoint is
every single feature in teams. Meetings also works in breakout
rooms, so if you put breakout rooms with your students, they
can use together mode. They can do live transcriptions and
download. They can do all of the captioning. They can do focus
mode. All of those features.
Apply in the breakout room meetings as well so everything
you see here also works in breakout rooms. Now coming soon.
This is a great one. Dynamic views. This is probably one of
my favorite features that's coming by the end of 2020. You
can see an overlay of a student in this case, kind of like a
weatherman or weatherwoman Anna green screen, but think about
deaf and hard of hearing and sign language interpreters.
You'll be able to pin back on. This is just a gift, it's
rotating. You'll be able to pin different people on that right
hand side. So maybe you have the sign language interpreter up
there. Maybe you put the sign language interpreter over the
screen. You'll be able to customize different types of
views in your teams meetings, so it's fantastic for the ability
to have sign language or different students appear in
different parts overlaying and these dynamic views will also
make, I think, Accessibility really powerful in these meeting
scenarios. Next, we're going to the immersive reader now.
Immersive reader if you've never seen it or heard of it. It isn't
inclusively designed tool where we took the latest science and
research around reading and focused inclusively on dyslexia,
and we said, what if we use these techniques to help all
people with reading and this immersive reader is now. It's in
Word. It's in OneNote, and it's in teams, and it's in
conversations and chats. I'll just play this video with the
voice over so you can see how the immersive reader works on
any message in the posts right here. And I go to the dot dot
dot menu. And I choose immersive reader right here. It launches
the full immersive reader, so I can start reading out loud
oceans discussion. Today I can change the voice speed faster,
slower male or female voices. I can do all the same parts of
immersive reader, so I could change the background color. I
can increase spacing. Maybe I want to blue here. Maybe I'll
put online focus. I can even translate. So if I want to
translate right here, I'm going to Scroll down and change this
into Spanish and now maybe I'll just change the entire document
to Spanish. Choose Rela will study Acasta Viera.
I want to go back to the original. I click on top. This
is also enabled in chat, so if I go to the chat and appear in the
upper left, here's a message that I have and I can just hover
in the same way and click the dot dot dot and drop it down and
choose immersive reader in the
chat. And I can get the exact same type of message play.
So all of that is built right into conversations and chat in
teams. In addition, it's also built into immersive reader in
assignment, so assignments. Maybe your students have a large
description or instructions in the assignments. Immersive
reader is built right into assignment, so let's see how
that works. So, First off, here's an assignment. And let's
say I'm a student. I'm going to open this oceans assignment and
in the upper right there's a little immersive reader button,
and when I click it, I get the full immersive reader for my
instructions. So I'm going to go here. Click play
instructions for this assignment. I'd like you to 1st
go through the attack so I get the full immersive reader right
here in assignment so I can change the background color
increase spacing. I can translate picture dictionary.
All of those things I can go full screen as well right here
in the upper right right for the assignment, so that's very
inclusive.
It was a nice quick demo of how immersive Reader works in
assignments. All of those are built right into teams today and
you can use them today in the web or the desktop or the Mac
with the immersive reader aspects. We also have things
like math in OneNote which you can have built into teams. All
of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. We have speech to
text built into those apps so you can use speech to text right
inside of teams with Word and PowerPoint and OneNote, and also
things like Accessibility
checker in Word. Accessibility checker in PowerPoint.
The last one I'll show is translation of posts and
chats. OK will be showing how to translate a message in
teams. And just to note your IT administrator has to enable
this first. So I'm going to click on my photo up top and
I'm going to go to settings.
Now, let's say I'm a student that speaks Spanish at home
and primarily read Spanish. I can Scroll down here and
change my language.
Now select Spanish. There we go and now I save and restart.
So now I'm back in and I still have the message from my
teacher here. But now I'm going to go to the dot dot dot menu
and I'm going to click on translate here and watch what
happens.
That message is now translated into Spanish, so I can read this
full message at home.
This also works for chat, so if I go to chat in the upper left.
Here's a message right here in my chat window. I go to
the dot dot dot menu and I click translate.
And it translates that message right into Spanish. So really
great for students that might not be able to read the native
language quite as well. It can also be useful for their parents
if their parents are engaging.
So that's a roundup of all the inclusive and accessible
features in teams. Also, though I want to make sure you know
about the great resources we have for educators training and
videos and tips and tricks. First off, I have a YouTube
channel where I have an enormous number of inclusive and
accessible quick tip videos for teams for Accessibility features
inclusive reading and writing math an are inclusive
communication, so check out that You Tube channel right here and
subscribe to it. I also have a
meeting. Quick tips playlist. So teams meetings in many of those
new features that are just starting to roll out. These are
short and sweet 234 minute videos where you can learn
exactly how to use these and then show them in your schools
with their classrooms. And then I also have an inclusive
classroom and Accessibility quick tips playlist and the
links for these the playlist on the channel. The links are also
in this deck which is available at the end here. I'll have a QR
code where you can get a copy of this deck if you'd like.
We also have an incredible Accessibility site. This site
here is on my favorite sites in the world. It's something that
allows you to see the entire spectrum of Microsoft
Accessibility technologies. It's broken down into categories of
like mobility speech, executive functioning, reading, writing
and math. Non native speakers. All sorts of things and you can
go as deep or as broad as you want on this site. So I really
encourage you check this mech Accessibility site out.
And bookmark that one.
And wrapping up, we have short and sweet interactive guides, so
if you want an interactive click through for our different
categories of capabilities, these aren't necessarily teams
specific, but their Office 365 specific for inclusive reading,
writing math and communication. Check out these guides there
really, really great you can share them with parents. You can
share them with other administrators. You can try them
out yourself if you want a copy of today's presentation, here is
the link right here. I also have a QR code.
Reach out to me an email I put my email address right here.
Send me a Mail, ask me questions, share feedback with
me and also follow me on Twitter and I put out lots of tweets,
asked me on Twitter, tweet me some stuff I'm pretty active on
Twitter, so thank you very much and I hope you have a great
besty and will see ya.