Yesterday we reported on changes to the API of Class Notebook, and it seems like those were only the beginning of the new tools that educators are being given. Today Microsoft announced ClassPolicy, “a classroom management solution that empowers teachers to facilitate learning in the classroom.” The new program adds a new layer of depth for plugged-in classrooms to dive into, and lets teachers have more control over their class than they did before.
ClassPolicy is a tool for teachers to split up classes into groups, offering each group different permissions and access to different materials. The tool makes the lives of teachers much easier by helping them to not only keep their classes separated and managed but to engage the students directly with several digital tools.
Here’s a list of features, as presented by Microsoft’s blog post:
- Easily divide a class into any number of groups with any number of members in those groups.
- Automatically create a section for each group created in the step above inside the Class Notebook Collaboration Space—with a click of a button.
- Automatically set permissions to view and edit all Collaboration Space sections for the groups.
- Automatically set student permissions so that the student can only view and edit the Collaboration Space section that is assigned for that student’s group.
- Dynamically set restrictions on each group to just the resources that the teacher wants that group to have to work on their project at that moment in time. For example, Group 1 may only have access to OneNote, a calculator and a graphing app; Group 2 may only have access to OneNote and a web browser limited to certain websites, etc.
Teachers who already have a Class Notebook can quite easily associate it with ClassPolicy. If a teacher is coming into ClassPolicy without any experience with Class Notebook, they can start up a Notebook from scratch. If you have any input about ClassPolicy, you’re encouraged to send it to the team at [email protected]
