When students want to communicate with a teacher but don’t want to post in the class, they can send a private Edsby message to their teacher. Teachers can send private Edsby messages to students and parents.

Be aware: administrators can see students’ inboxes. Messages in Edsby are never deleted because of the security and compliance reasons unique to K-12. Users are unable to erase the Edsby messages they send, by design.

Click the mail icon in the navigation bar to access the inbox and view all past messages.

New messages are created by clicking the compose icon in the inbox.

Search for the name of the recipient(s) you wish to message. 

You can add any number of recipients when creating a conversation, however, this cannot be changed afterwards. Think of Edsby Messages as a chat room rather than a chain of emails.

To help teachers keep a specific conversation focused on its original intent, teachers can close a conversation by clicking the lock icon.

Teachers: avoid creating private messages to all students in a class. It’s more work. Just post a note in the relevant Edsby class instead. It’s quick and easy, and your students will see it because they get notifications of new notes in their classes and have learned the Edsby class is where important information is posted.

Note most schools and districts intentionally disable Edsby messaging between students. Most students cannot send messages, or chats, to their friends in Edsby because their school or district is concerned about what they might exchange. Most Edsby customers encourage student-to-student messages in other official systems if they allow it at all.

Some Edsby sites even disable Edsby messaging between parents and teachers. When they do is, it is because they want to encourage parents to use other official channels or because they don’t want to add to teacher workload.