DiscordED/DiscordEDU/Discord for Education (Everything we need)

DiscordED (Or Discord Education)

I believe that Discord should have a Discord for Education application, as a separate app to the regular Discord.

Many students, like myself, are familiar with Discord, and this would benefit students and our teachers greatly. Discord is already a great tool for education, but not good enough to make schools make the switch they so desperately need, honestly.

You could include:

- Activity (Inbox, but make it more noticeable with notifications).
- Assignments
- Calendar
- Files

(A lot like MS Teams).

It doesn't have to be different from other applications, like MS Teams who have already made their app free. Things I would add:

- Inbox could be renamed to "Activity" instead, and be made more visible.

- Educators able to start and end classes, so students don't all have to leave or kick inactive students out, etc.

- Notifications in the bottom left or top right for when the teachers set an assignment, a class is about to start, or a class VC starts, maybe like: "(Teacher) has started a class.", "You now have (subject)." "Discord Assignments/Assignment mentioned you in..." or "(Teacher) has set a new assignment: (assignment name)." and the Assignments tab, which then goes to our Inbox with a ping and a notification on the side or the top which slowly fades or an X button to close it.

- Be able to have scheduled VC times of when a class starts, which link to a voice channel, maybe add that in the normal Discord too! If we click on the scheduled time maybe in a channel, it brings us into the VC and waits until the teacher joins to the start meeting, but to prevent abuse, maybe not do it, how Teams does it? Maybe not let students join early, on second thought, but that could be a new permission!

- Classes can tell us how long the class has been going for since the teacher started the class, and if scheduled, the teacher can set an end time of when the meeting/class is going to automatically end, but it's not required to schedule classes.

- There could be an icon on when the teacher joins and starts the meeting when a class is in progress.
- Our teachers could make private invites, and with screening this could include our teachers would have to accept us in case other random people try to raid classes. This could be an "Accept all" and "Decline all", or: Our accounts could be made by our school by syncing school registering software, and we can be given login information, and we should have a lock on what servers we can join, along with being unable to change our email, and only let our schools be able to add us to classes and make us accounts.
- Servers can be renamed to "Classes."
- Set channels to assignments, or have an assignments channel, so the teachers can set assignments, and we can submit work. Like MS Teams, we can add work after and click "Hand In" which the teachers can grade and return to us, which we can then "Hand In" again if we need to.
- Complimenting this: Grades, which our assignments go to and our teachers can mark, which return here. This shouldn't include if the teacher returns the work, until we hand in again.
- Make the Go Live feature separate into two different permissions, "Go Live" and "Video"/"Camera" as many teachers want out cameras on for a well-being check, but don't want to let us have access to sharing our screens too.
- Files our teachers can share with the class.
- Class Notebook for our teachers to write notes in, or attach notes with every "meeting" or "class" to write comments in about how we did, stuff to remember for next lesson, etc.
- Unrelated, but I think you should also be able to hide your servers, so you can focus on the particular class server.
- VCs you should be able to "focus on" so we just see that, a lot like a group DM, but more focused to give us a classroom-like environment, but still being able to see the chat with either a pop-out or chat bubble icon near the VC.
- A "hands up" :hand_splayed: feature in VCS or "Class DMS" I'd like to call them, would be cool too, so we can ask questions, and these would hopefully be less delayed than MS Teams.
- A "help" guide at the bottom of the app in case students or educators need help with using and/or navigating the app.

- A screen reader to read out assignments would be cool too for accessibility options, along with being able to change the chat layout.

- Going onto our settings and then our account will tell us what school were registered to through the registry software I mentioned, this could just be a box under our name to say our account belongs to that organisation, maybe even multiple. You could expand to even business too.

- Increased frame rate and video quality to 1080p, 60FPS for schools to be able to give clearer screen share for students.

- Teachers can ring us when classes start if we're not in the class.

This can all be done in a template, by the way! With all this, I think Discord can become an amazing tool, especially for education during the COVID-19 epidemic, but it could be even better in a separate application. If I have anymore I'll edit this post.

- We should be able to request to "Take Control" or view different slides if it's a PPT, or DOCX from our teacher, but I'm not sure if that's possible on Discord, since MS Teams owns Office 365 apps.

Discord is way more organised than MS Teams, thank you for reading, and I hope you consider my feedback as a secondary student.

Thank you, Discord!