Due to the pandemic, educators rely heavily on video chatting applications such as zoom or Microsoft teams. Students have the opportunity to talk with the professor or peers in a chat while on a call. This could be extremely helpful for educational purposes.

Sometimes the conversation is more of a distraction than a tool. The students will start talking about a topic unrelated to the task at hand. The teacher has no way to stop the conversation due to the meeting already in progress. Microsoft heard the complaints that chat is unable to be turned off while in the cal so they changed it. Now while in a team meeting, the host is able to turn off the chat when needed. This will help create more efficient collaborations. The teacher can share what the task is then the students can talk when it is appropriate.

This video shows how to use this useful tool!