An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback).
Imagine arriving at school this morning, switching on your computer and discovering that you cannot access your emails, lesson resources or shared documents. Microsoft Teams is not working properly, OneDrive is inaccessible and the resources you spent hours preparing are suddenly out of reach.
For teachers who rely on Microsoft 365 every day, this is more than a minor inconvenience. It can throw an entire day’s teaching into disarray.
Today, 13th November 2026, educators and organisations around the world are being reminded of just how much we depend on technology, as a major Microsoft 365 outage disrupts access to some of the world’s most widely used digital services (Reuters, 2026).
As someone who works in both education and corporate training, I find incidents like this particularly interesting. We spend so much time encouraging schools and businesses to embrace digital transformation, but how often do we stop to consider what happens when the technology stops working?
What Has Happened?
The disruption began yesterday, 12th November, and has continued into today, affecting Microsoft services including Outlook and certain functions within Teams, SharePoint and Copilot.
According to Reuters (2026), more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems were recorded in the United States at the peak of the disruption. These figures represent user-submitted reports rather than a confirmed total of affected users.
Microsoft has identified problems involving servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, placing additional pressure on the remaining infrastructure. The company has been working to restore capacity and redirect traffic, although recovery has proved more complicated than initially anticipated (Microsoft, 2026).
Importantly, the disruption has mainly affected Exchange Online and features that depend on it. Some functions within other Microsoft applications have continued operating normally.
Although recovery efforts are underway, today’s incident highlights something important. Even the world’s largest technology companies experience failures, and when they do, millions of people can potentially be affected.
For schools, where teaching, assessment, administration and communication are increasingly managed online, the consequences can be particularly frustrating.
Australia’s Longreach School of the Air, for example, has reportedly had to suspend live online lessons and digital communications because of the disruption. This is particularly significant for students who depend on remote education because of their geographical circumstances (Henebery, 2026).
Microsoft’s own incident updates have also identified potential problems affecting educational features such as Assignments, Reading Progress and Speaker Progress (Microsoft, 2026).
This is a useful reminder that technology failures do not simply inconvenience teachers. They can interrupt children’s education.
Five Things Schools Should Consider Today
There are several practical lessons we can take from today’s outage.
#1: Keep some teaching resources available offline
Teachers should have access to a small collection of worksheets, activities, physical textbooks, and assessment materials that can be used when online services are unavailable. These do not need to be elaborate. They simply need to be useful.
#2: Have an alternative way to communcate
Schools need reliable backup arrangements for communicating with parents, staff and students, particularly during emergencies. For example, what would happen if the school urgently needed to contact parents but its main email system was unavailable?
The UK Department for Education (2026a) recommends that schools incorporate digital technology into their business continuity and disaster recovery planning, with clearly defined responsibilities and procedures.
Every school should know how essential information will be communicated when its usual systems are not working.
#3: Skill up in, and apply, tried-and-tested old-school teaching techniques
Today’s Microsoft 365 outage is a timely reminder that some of the most effective teaching methods do not require technology at all. Clear explanations, handwritten notes, retrieval practice, questioning and good old-fashioned classroom discussions can keep students engaged and learning, even when digital systems fail. Teachers should regularly refresh these skills through professional development and remember that technology should support great teaching, not replace it. I explored this in more detail in my previous article, Old-School Teaching Techniques Are Back! (Rogers, 2025), which examines the enduring value of traditional classroom methods.
#4: Make adaptability part of teacher training
Teachers are already expected to juggle countless responsibilities. Helping them develop the confidence to adapt lessons when technology fails should be a normal part of professional development.
UNESCO (2023) similarly highlights the importance of preparing teachers to use technology appropriately, rather than merely training them to operate specific applications.
In my experience, some of the most effective classroom activities are also the simplest. The ability to think on your feet, explain a concept clearly and engage students without relying on a screen remains incredibly valuable.
#5: Think carefully about data security
When systems stop working, there can be a temptation to use personal email accounts or unapproved messaging platforms. Although understandable, these workarounds can introduce additional privacy and security risks.
The Department for Education (2026b) emphasises the importance of cybersecurity awareness, secure data management and clearly understood procedures for protecting school systems and information.
Schools must ensure that their contingency arrangements do not create new problems involving data protection or safeguarding.
#6: Review contingency plans regularly
Most schools practise fire drills. Perhaps we should also spend a little time considering what would happen if our main digital platforms were unavailable for an entire day. The Department for Education (2026a) recommends testing disaster recovery arrangements to identify weaknesses before an actual emergency occurs.
A simple exercise in which teachers deliver a lesson without their usual online resources could be surprisingly valuable. After all, preparation is much easier than trying to solve a problem in the middle of a busy school day.
Final thoughts
As Microsoft works to restore its services today, I suspect that most of us are simply hoping everything returns to normal as quickly as possible. Emails will (hopefully) start arriving again, affected functions will resume and colleagues will return to their usual routines.
Within a few days, many people may have forgotten that today’s outage even happened. However, I think it is worth reflecting on what this incident tells us about the way we work.
Digital technology has transformed education for the better in countless ways. We can collaborate across continents, share resources instantly and provide students with access to information that would once have been difficult to obtain. That is something worth celebrating. But we should never lose sight of the human skills that make education work.
A teacher’s subject knowledge, enthusiasm, creativity, adaptability and ability to connect with students are not stored in OneDrive. Nor can they be switched off by a Microsoft outage.
And perhaps that is the most reassuring lesson we can take from today’s events.
When the technology stops working, great teachers can still teach.
The challenge for schools is to make sure we give them the training, resources and confidence to do exactly that.
Richard James Rogers is an award-winning author, international educator, Certified ScrumMaster® and Founder and Chairman of Richard James Rogers Corporate Training.
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Bibliography and references for today’s blog post
Department for Education (2026a) Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges: Digital leadership and governance. UK Government. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/digital-leadership-and-governance-core-standard (Accessed: 13 November 2026).
Department for Education (2026b) Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges: Cyber security. UK Government. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/cyber-security-core-standard (Accessed: 13 November 2026).
Henebery, B. (2026) ‘Schools, universities caught up in global Microsoft outage’, The Educator, 13 November. Available at: https://www.theeducatoronline.com/k12/news/schools-universities-caught-up-in-global-microsoft-outage/289363 (Accessed: 13 November 2026).
Miao, F. and Holmes, W. (2023) Guidance for generative AI in education and research. Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/guidance-generative-ai-education-and-research (Accessed: 13 November 2026).
Microsoft (2026) Users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services. Service health advisory MO1550821, 12 to 13 November. Reproduced by the University of Pennsylvania’s PennO365 service. Available at: https://mailservices.isc.upenn.edu/computing/email/penno365/alerts/ms-incidents.html (Accessed: 13 November 2026).
Reuters (2026) ‘Microsoft outage drags on for hours, disrupting Outlook, Teams for businesses and governments’, Reuters, 12 November. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-365-outlook-down-thousands-us-users-downdetector-shows-2026-11-12/ (Accessed: 13 November 2026).
UNESCO (2023) Global Education Monitoring Report 2023: Technology in education: A tool on whose terms? Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://gem-report-2023.unesco.org/ (Accessed: 13 November 2026).
