Microsoft’s Slack competitor is designed to hook students with emoji, stickers, and GIFs - The Verge

Office 365 for Education with Microsoft Teams is also free for teachers and students; see this Microsoft post for details

"Microsoft Teams started life competing with Slack in the workplace, but now Microsoft plans to bring its chat and collaboration app to another environment: schools.

During a presentation today, Microsoft showed a new version of Teams designed for education. It allows teachers to set up a dashboard for their students, with access to activities, tests, and lesson materials. Students will be able to comment on items and start discussions — naturally, there’ll be support for emoji, stickers, and GIFs, too.

Teams is meant to make teachers’ lives easier, too. Educators will be able to chat with one another through the app. And Microsoft says the app will be able to automatically update student rosters at the beginning of each year — though, clearly some sort of administrator will have to enter the information somewhere along the line."

Microsoft’s Slack competitor is designed to hook students with emoji, stickers, and GIFs - The Verge