DiscordED: Discord + Secondary Education

Adonnen Kinslayer
  • Edited

Hey, I'm a high school student and moderate gamer who has used discord outside of school for a variety of gaming communities. I have found the channel notification separation , extensive management options, simple usage, group oriented voice chat, abundance of free features, and amazing web, mobile, and desktop support really useful, but there are some caveats:

1. The school district (or their block service goguardian) block discord as a p*rnography website (due to not understanding what user-generated content is). VPNs are unreliable and don't function at all on school Chromebooks, as well.

Minor issues:
2. Aesthetic is default dark and gamer focused, off-putting to some of our non-gamer friends
3. Nicknaming and verification can be arduous, and if you don't do it and establish firm rules, cyberharrassment

I doubt I am the only one who has these concerns but wants to be able to use it. Slack and Microsoft teams are also options, but they are both either bad and limited or paid.

I think if discord made an edition, with separate web client (or at least url), for secondary education, equipped with a school email requirement for login and the disabling of some features like NSFW channels, along with optional school administrator registration and usage and default light theme and icon changes.

Compared to the productivity first services like slack and teams, discord is inexpensive, intuitive, and familiar to many students. Even if discord didn't do a ton to differentiate it, making it palatable enough so at the least, schools wouldn't block it at least, and students could use it more freely.

I'm helping to create a newspaper club at my school, and we need discord as a forum for discussion and collaboration, as we will need to edit, write, plan, and educate outside of class. That said, I know that if an idea like this gains steam, it will probably take a while to develop, so I'm also asking for short term recommendations to bypass the protections for my use case.
Thank y'all for reading!

Edit: I also don't necessarily mean it would need to contend with teams and slack. I just think it should make itself palatable enough to be considered a 'school-friendly' resource for cross student and possible school-student communication. Integrations and other intensive features will obviously make slack and teams the best options for some students and schools, but without the paid subscriptions and or need for integrations, it would be a good fit for many schools and student organizations.

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Comments

9 comments

Date Votes
  • mrmac

    I would also like this. I teach at the college level and use GroupMe, but the organization is horrible with multiple classes.

    1
  • Zepp
    • Edited

    I am using it in a college environment...but agree with the points listed above.  It's better than other options for what I'm doing, and I really like the idea of online study halls and tutorial sessions with video (where I find it to be better than alternatives like Teams and Big Blue Button), but the aforementioned issues are also there for me.

    2
  • box bitch no dont ask

    I'm looking to create a Discord server for my school and servers dedicated to education uses would be incredibly useful.

    I hope the team at Discord considers this!

     
    1
  • MusicSounds
    • Edited

    This is a great idea, especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic when schools may be suspended and online lectures/teaching are/is required. I think this could be implemented under the current Partner program (or a similar DiscordEd program separately), where Go Live feature viewer limits are removed for online lectures and set at 1080p30 for optimal performance.

    Discord servers are easy and painless to set up for administrators, and easy to use even for less tech-savvy students/teachers. I would be pleased to see this happen (WebEx and Zoom don't have Dark Mode, automatically making them bad).

    1
  • Adonnen Kinslayer

    You're right about the epidemic. Microsoft has made their teams free, but tbh, I'd still rather use discord.

    0
  • Mr. E

    Discord needs to do this. This is an open market that has endless business opportunities and can benefit our classrooms so much. I would have done it but Discord already has the platform necessary.

    This could be the start of a revolutionary e-learning platform if done right.

    My main suggestion for Discord is to get ministry approved in provinces and territories in Canada, and do similar with with other jurisdictions in other countries. You have to market the platform and show how it will be successful in being used with education.

    Next, discord has to work directly with google classroom. Google is by far the largest tool for teachers from a 3rd party platform (aside from school platforms) for promoting the e-learning classroom. There are also several other platforms used in post secondary such as moodle, ect...
    However teaming up with google will allow discord access to those e-classrooms.
    This will benefit everyone for the following reason:
    Each Google classroom has its own distinctive code. Teachers are effectively the administrators of that classroom and they are able to add or remove students in that classroom. Students are only allowed to join that classroom if logged in through their student e-mails which are managed by the school board. This way, the user is verified as a student of that particular board, and the name and information of that student are presented with accuracy (legal name, student ID, ect). Furthermore, it simplifies the sign up process because it's already done for the students and discord has access go that. If partnered appropriately, Discord and Google can create a way where that specific classroom code is also applicable to that discord platform and student can join that class through being logged in via student emails.
    Eg: Mr. Ogunsanya has 25 students in his period one class. He creates a Google classroom and shares the following code with them "GH6Y7J8". The students must be logged in through their student emails when entering the code in order for them to join his classroom. He also shares the discord with the students and asks them to join with the same code. In an ideal world if students join the google classroom, they will also be automatically added to that classroom's discord. If lets say 2 weeks from a student drops his course and Mr. Ogunsanya removes them from the period 1 e-classroom, it will also be ideal if that student was automatically through the discord as well.

    This will be extremely beneficial because it gives students the opportunity to from home, but also takes away nickname privileges and other role based privileges that students don't need access to.

    I also have hopes that not only will we be able to use discord as a seperated app from Google classroom, but if there was a discord option in those actual e-learning classrooms that would be ideal. But I'll take what I can get.

    If you like my idea give it a thumbs up!

    Ps: this suggestion was a free one. I have a lot more big ideas but the next ones will cost you! ;)

    2
  • denti antonella

    impossibile!!! rumori e fischi di sottofondo.

    io sento chi parla mentre le altre persone non mi sentono !

    per favore ditemi che devo fare! situazione insostenibile

    grazie antonella denti

     

    0
  • COD- Warzone

    I forget my email from discord and password how to fix it

    0
  • Thibault

    Moi je veux que vous venez dans mon serveur svp

    0

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