“We not only use Microsoft Teams, but we use Office 365 and Microsoft Forms,” says De Vos.Īssessment is a key part of secondary education. The teachers at Griftland College have found using Microsoft 365 provides a wide range of applications for the modern classroom – whether remote, or in person. Embracing Teams has allowed the school year to nearly seamlessly carry on, despite the huge disruptions to students’ and teachers’ day-to-day lives. “Teaching online is different from teaching offline, at school you can see all the faces, but teaching with Microsoft Teams is the next best thing,” De Vos says. “We teach with devices online, but we also use books because I think it’s very important that they work offline. “It’s a blended way of working,” says teacher Jorinde De Vos. That initial familiarity made all the difference - allowing the teachers and students to make full use of Teams’ potential and quickly and smoothly make the jump to full-time remote learning.
As Versteeg explains: “We were already working with Microsoft Teams for several years.”īefore COVID-19 struck, the school used Teams to share assignments and for students to turn in finished work. He describes the disorientation of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic: “I was sitting in the school and there were no students, there were no teachers, this was the strangest moment for me to be a leader of a school.”īut Griftland College was better placed than many other schools to quickly meet the changed teaching needs of this unusual historical moment.
The secondary school, located in the Dutch town of Soest, was one of the first in the Netherlands to close and start teaching 100% remotely.
“When COVID-19 was on the verge of breaking out, we had to make a choice about how to go further,” says Kees Versteeg, the principle of Griftland College.