Here’s how a group of math teachers spent the summer productively using Office 365

School may be out, but that doesn’t mean that teachers get to rest. Microsoft joined a group of math teachers over the summer at PCMI (Park City Mathematics Institute), a three-week experience that’s meant to help teachers better do their jobs, helping them stay sharp and privy to new ideas in education. Microsoft and the Office team came down to help teachers better use their peers as resources, getting them to come together and work on education resources together.

Getting a bunch of teachers coming from all different backgrounds to work together on one thing can be tough. The team here was about as varied as they could be, coming from elementary school, middle school, and high school – not to mention the fact that they hail from all over the world. In the blog post detailing this project, it was made clear that there was a whole lot of work that went into getting everyone organized using OneNote.

Despite all of the differences the team of teachers had, they were able to work together without much issue when they got the hang of OneNote and OneDrive, which let them easily share their ideas and files with one another through the cloud. Once everybody got over the hurdle of “Why can’t we use Google Docs?” everything went smoothly. Even though some people didn’t have the Office suite installed on their computer, the online tools worked just fine and were able to get people to work without making them go out and install anything.

Tons of effective learning resources arose as a result of this project and all of them are available online now. These projects stand as effective proof that, with the right tools, it’s possible for anyone with a common goal to come together and create something helpful.