Messaging

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Hi, everyone:

Messaging enables you to communicate with students and parents, either by sending announcements or private messages.

Feel free to ask any questions you have about Messaging!

- Mélysa Fréchette, Community Manager, support@classcraft.com 

38 comments
Date Votes

Will we ever have student to student messaging?

 

Hi, Leslie!

We don't have plans for this at the moment. What do you have in mind?

We typically recommend using the Class Content to foster discussion between students.

The teams would like to be able to send between to each other message or reminder so they are not late for an homework for example...to help cooperation between them. Because they are not necessary together in each class...

 

We would love to be able to separate students by group and then allow the group to communicate with each other but not with the rest of the class.  This is useful when planning group presentations which the students might want to keep the ideas secret from other students.  The teacher should be able to monitor all group discussions.

There is a feature like this in Edmodo and it works really well.

A few things...

1) I wish that the messaging feature on the browser updates more quickly.  

2) There seems to be a delay from when a message gets sent there is a delay before it shows up as a notification.  

3) I'm finding the number of clicks to open a message and reply very cumbersome when messaging parents. 1-click on student name 2- click on parent name 3-click on box to type in. 

4) A setting to switch views from student name by alpha order or most recent message would be helpful. I've lost track of who messaged when I read a message but haven't had time to reply yet.

 

Good feedback, thank you!

I'll pass these ideas along to our team.

I used to get some sort of visual when a parent or student messaged me.  I believe there was a red dot or number next to their name under messages.  I am not getting those lately and I have missed a lot of messages, some by several weeks, because I had come to rely on this.  What happened?  Why isn't there some sort of notification anymore when you have a message?

 

Hi, Victoria!

Unfortunately, this is a bug. Our team is currently working on a fix. In the meantime, any additional details that might help us resolve the issue would be super appreciated.

Would also love to have a visual for "any messages" i have 11 groups and it would be great if i didn't have to select everyone of them to see if any messages were written.

Hi Vincent,

That's something we hope to implement. :-)

Also, the messaging bug, where there were no bubble notifications, is fixed!

Would like to message all of my classes (6 of them) at one time.

Hi, Mark!

I'll pass your suggestion on to the team for their consideration.

Can we message just one team at a time?

Hi, Katherine!

It's not possible to message a team or a specific group of students. The only messaging options are a single student or the whole class.

My students would like to contact each other after school through Classcraft to work on homework, so is their a way to enable student to student messaging? It would be very helpful. I also agree with the past comments that we should be able to contact certain teams and groups of students. That would make it much easier to give specific assignments and notes to each student. Thank you!

I was introduced to Class Dojo today.  There is a really cool feature that you can set to automatically email parents when students lose points for certain behaviors, ie not coming to class prepared.  Is there a way to do this in classcraft?  I really like most of Classcraft better but that feature would save me tons of time.

Hi, Julie!

Parents don't receive automatic emails when their child loses points in Classcraft. However, parents can view their child's progress in their parent accounts and activate browser notifications to be notified when:

  • Their child gains XP
  • Their child gains or loses HP
  • Their child levels up
  • Their child receives a sentence
  • They receive a message from their child's teacher

Hope this helps!

How do I disable the notifications to my email? I am getting a ton of students saying gibberish because they think it is fun...

I have the same issue as Sarah.  Also hoping for some way to let the students communicate in a group other than talking out loud.  I like to have them communicate without talking sometimes because I work in a DHH school.  

 

Hi, Sarah and Cody!

To disable notifications for direct messages, access your account profile (game.classcraft.com/profile), then uncheck the "Please send me email notifications when I receive new direct messages" option at the bottom of the page.

You could always remove HP from students messaging you gibberish. :-)

Cody, that's not in the works, but I will share your suggestion with the team.

I like the fact that there is a messaging feature, however I was wondering if there is any plan to incorporate messaging to those students who have mobile phones. I used to use the REMIND app, but this year I have decided not to since I've already got google classroom notifications + classcraft notifications and don't really want to add another notification system in. I would love the see the messaging feature on classcraft be able to send a reminder straight the the students phones.

Hi Kameron,

If students enable push notifications for the Classcraft app on their phone, they'll receive a notification every time they receive a message from their teacher. Therefore, if you use the in-game Messaging to send reminders to students, and they've enabled push notifications, they'll be notified. Hope this helps!

Anne-Marie,

I was more so looking for a way that student don't necessarily have to download the app. It gets a bit chaotic asking 120 students to download the app. That's why I was wondering if like the remind app there is a way to bypass having to download the app and just having notification txt to mobile (for messages only though)

 

Thanks!

Ah, got it!

I like the way that the messaging is currently set up where students can only message the teacher.  I teach 7th grade students, and we have had some problems at my school with students using their gmail accounts to basically chat back and forth with each other during class time (we are 1:1 at my school). If you ever make changes to the messaging so that students can message each other, please include a way for the teacher to turn off this feature. I want to keep messaging only between the teacher and the student.

Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestion Erin, we will keep that in mind!

Why not have it all, as a premium feature? Free accounts allow teacher / student messages, with premium accounts the teacher would have the option to allow team / team messages, or student / student messages. Your personal classroom management would determine if and how you use the system, so if you don't like it don't use it, but for those that do want to use a system like this it would be another selling point for premium. As the message board would be accessible by the teacher, much like the message menu now works, it would allow me to monitor class-related communications which could be very useful. Tie the message system into the analytics to see if more communication has any relation to grades, and potentially reward classroom communities that use the system to better themselves with exp or gp.  

Hi Damon!

I like this idea; adding it to the big list! :)

Can students/parents see when you’ve read their messages? I’d also like the ability to have “quiet hours” (like Class Dojo) when parents/students are informed that you may not see/respond after hours. I’d love for alerts to be silenced during those quiet hours so my family/personal time isn’t disrupted by those alerts/push notifications.

I've also noticed that when I try to reply to student messages on my iPhone, I can’t see the text box as I’m typing. To be able to see what I’m writing I have to go to a computer to respond. Is this a bug? 

Hey, Karen!

Those are great ideas, and we really appreciate the feedback! As it stands, these are already features that have been requested and that are on our list!

For the text box not showing up on the iPhone, the best thing to do would be to get in touch with Classcraft customer support. They'll be able to guide you and get you all set! 

To make things easier, I've gone ahead and created a ticket out of your forum post with you, so someone from our team will be in touch with you very soon. 

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