Messages are a feature of Word of Life portals, designed to support classroom communication. Messages can be used to send out announcements, assignments, and assessments.
Messages are a broadcast system, meaning teachers and catechists can send messages to everyone in their class, but the class cannot reply. Parents and students see all the messages sent to a class.
Their is no one-to-one communication (teacher-to-student, or student-to-student, or parent-to-teacher). Those communications must happen outside the Word of Life portals.
Messages are only for teachers and catechists to their classrooms. There are no administrator messaging capabilities. If an administrator would like to see and send messages for individual classrooms, they can add themselves as a teacher / catechist to each classroom.
Messages are sent and viewed through the Word of Life portals and not sent via email or text message separately. We recommend notifying parents and students that you will be using the messages feature, for them to get accustomed to using the feature.
Using messages for assessments
To use digital assessments, teachers must send out a link to the assessment to their class. This can be sent using Messages.The fastest way to send a link on the Word of Life Portal is to use the ‘+’ indicator on the particular assessment a teacher wants to send. This will add the assessment to your next message.
Students can then follow the link from the message to take the digital assessment.