Email Chat Invites
As the IS and IT teams continue developing and improving a variety of two-way communication options between staff and students, we've been focusing on safely enabling chat messaging through the email chat feature on Chromebooks (email chat is not available on iPads). One safety feature for our student domain is that people from outside of the @stu.janesville.k12.wi.us domain cannot invite students to chat. That includes staff members from the @janesville.k12.wi.us domain.
Teacher Invite to Student
Currently, staff members can invite students to chat via this loophole in the Google chat features. This option only allows you to invite one student at a time. While it's helpful for reaching out to individuals or small groups of students, we recognize that it is not an efficient solution for secondary teachers to invite all of their students. NOTE - This is likely a temporary workaround as Google is great at catching their own loopholes. Still, Google is quickly working to develop a better chat platform so this issue may be resolved very soon.
Student Invite to Teacher
Students can invite a staff member. This is a tutorial that you can share if you wish. It's already posted on the Chromebooks support page of SDJ Online Learning Portal for parents and students. You are welcome to share this via your classroom platform as well.