How are K-12 environments handling the inbox feature?

[lauren_fox]

I would like to hear about how K-12 is handling the conversations/inbox and chat features. I realize that digital citizenship is a critical component of instructional practice as we move into blended learning environments with opportunities for students to communicate and collaborate. Modeling, access and structured guidance to strategies for identifying and implementing positive digital citizenship will help reduce but not completely halt all inappropriate behavior. The inbox feature that allows students to communicate between one another when turned on, cannot currently be easily monitored. For this reason, we have recently decided to turn the student-to-student function and chat function off. How are you handling the communication features K-12?

[ysmalls]

Hi  @lauren_fox , 

We also have that option turned off!  If the teacher or admin is not able to moderate then these will stay off, that control is needed at the k-12 environment.  The bad thing is that students can still email each other if they are in the same class.  We had an incident happen and I had to recover emails from the test/beta instance since the emails were deleted in the live environment.

Hope this helps. 

[steeletm]

Ours is currently active and I believe students are sending attachments as a way to cheat. I discussed this with our admin and he said that they can also do that using google drive, so I guess I will be stuck looking at files more closely. It's difficult to tell because I teach html and most of the adobe products and I haven't found a way to be able to see if another person has used the same actual file. I can only tell if they make the same mistakes.