Microsoft Classroom is ending!

[saintoctopus]

I'm stunned...

 

"On July 31, 2017, we’ll discontinue support for the Microsoft Classroom Preview, as we work to unify our classroom experiences in Microsoft Teams in Office 365 for Education.

 

Since the Microsoft Classroom Preview released, we’ve been very thankful for schools’ feedback from around the world; which has helped us improve benefits and features of the service. Ultimately, we learned to keep it simple and put classroom resources all in one place. We listened and we’re bringing the best of the classroom features (e.g., Assignments and OneNote Class Notebook) to Microsoft Teams in Office 365 for Education."

[alfatec]

WTF just spent months getting this all up and sorted. Was looking at it replacing our VLE!!!!

[alfatec]

BTW where did you find the information??

[saintoctopus]

BTW where did you find the information??

 

It's announced on the Office 365 Admin Centre

 

[Browncoat]

Some info on the teams page that they are doing instead:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VSh61vUhSA

Microsoft Teams Brings Collaboration to the Classroom and Beyond

 

I was likewise in the process of setting it all up to use. We even spent a lesson this morning with the year 9's using it for the first time.

 

*sigh*

[Bob_the_Goon]

I've spent the best part of this morning putting together a whole host of resources for MS Classroom with a view to me setting this up for our school. I guess that I've just wasted my time then. Does anyone know where I might find technical information on setting up Teams for Education? I've had a quick Google for this but I can't find any.

[mikkydoos]

...and I was just about to start setting this up

[rpwillis]

It looks like the functionality is being rolled into Microsoft Teams. And both will run off School Data Sync, so any time you have invested in getting that up and running will not be wasted.

 

We've yet to see what the assignment functionality is like, but my guess is that the Assignments tab will be very similar to Classroom, because it's likely to be the same back end. One of the advantages of Teams is that the tabs are configurable and extendable, so anyone can develop new functionality in a tab so it should have just been a case of putting the assignments functionality in a new UI container.

[xlandhenry]

This is truly stunning, I'm glad I didn't roll it out this year.

[bigjb]

This is truly stunning, I'm glad I didn't roll it out this year.

To be fair it was only ever in preview.

 

This link may help people with Teams.

 

http://teams.microsoft.com/edustart

[nikaso]

If there was a way this could be easily provisioned for parents as well it would be a great SMHW replacement.

[2ilent8cho]

We learned the hard way years ago with Microsoft Class Server (which was a really good product), just don't invest time in Microsofts Education aimed products, you will get screwed in the end.

[alfatec]

I'm also utterly stunned. At the Bett show the whole Microsoft showcase was demonstrating how easy Microsoft Classroom was to use. They had 30 positions with Surface Tablets all using Microsoft Classroom. Imagine all those schools who participated going back and

thinking we will transfer to Classroom. Think Microsoft are losing the plot at the moment, even with Windows 10 they keep changing key things without any quality control.

[PotNoodleTech]

Microsoft have a long history of flitting from "thing to thing" with no regard for end users or how much time and effort they had to put in to implementing the "thing". Once some big wig in some office behind some fancy desk decides some"thing" is not worth bothering with any more, then that's the end of it, no if's or but's.

[mikkydoos]

Looking at Microsoft Teams... it doesn't look a patch on Google for Schools/Classroom

[Homer]

FFS I just saw this in admin center and it's wound me up as we've been making a start with it as I didn't want to run GAFE alongside Office365 now it looks like we're doing it regardless! Teams doesn't hold a candle to GAFE.

[mikkydoos]

That'll be why Google are doing their UK tour at the moment then. Shame. MS Classroom looked like a viable alternative.

 

Teams just looks far too 'businessy' in its function and it terminology. Schools just don't go for that corporate thang imo.

[robyholmes]

This is a shame, again after spending a lot of time setting up DataSync for Classroom to be used it'll be a shame if nothing is made of it. A couple of our staff are starting to use it here and we had hopped to use it a lot more next year. I hope they migrate it in to Teams keeping a lot of the functions.

[Sylv3r]

I've had a quick look at Microsoft Teams today, it doesn't even appear to be a similar product. It's like comparing Word with Excel !

[Primus]

Is it wrong those of us on G Suite feel even more smug about our choice at the moment?!

[ozydave]

Is it wrong those of us on G Suite feel even more smug about our choice at the moment?!

 

Sumg as long as your gmail wasn't effected today [emoji3][emoji3]

 

Just glad we use 365 mail [emoji106][emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]

[Primus]

Sumg as long as your gmail wasn't effected today [emoji3][emoji3]

 

Just glad we use 365 mail [emoji106][emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]

 

Was there an outage? We weren't affected if there was!

 

If you're referring to the phishing stuff then we haven't been affected by that either!

[ozydave]

Was there an outage? We weren't affected if there was!

 

If you're referring to the phishing stuff then we haven't been affected by that either!

 

No outage just the phishing

Glad you wasn't hit by it

[emoji106]

[free780]

In other words we can develop teams for business and education and save.money.

[snagrat]

MS have said that they will move Classroom stuff into Teams.

At the moment you can't compare the two but I would expect Teams to become something much better rather quickly