Audience: Administrators
Messages is Seesaw's safe and flexible messaging tool for the whole school. Messages is designed for use by all Seesaw users - admins, teachers, students, and families. The overview of Messages below shows how Seesaw supports communication and collaboration between teachers, students, and families.
🌟 Learn more about Messages and announcements!
Who you can send a message to depends on your account type:
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Administrators can send messages to other admins, teachers, students, and family members within their school (or any combination of these in a group conversation!).
- If an admin needs to send an announcement to a large group of users, they can do so by tapping ‘Add Classes’ and sending messages to an entire class or multiple classes by “audience” (teachers, students, and/or family members).
- Please note: Only organisation admins can use Messages. District administrators must be added to a school in Seesaw before they can access Messages.
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Teachers can message any student(s) and/or family member(s) from any class at their school, as well as other teachers (including those without their own classes) and admins.
- Teachers can also message any of the classes they teach.
- By default, teachers can send 'class group' messages to families in their classes by selecting from the 'Add Classes' menu. There are currently no settings to allow teachers to select from all class groups in the school (or restrict them to 'no class groups').
- By default, family members can start messages with teachers, admins, and family members connected to the same student, and can message multiple people in the same conversation (e.g. two family members or other co-teachers).
- School admins can restrict family messaging to class teachers only - this can be toggled on by going to the Admin Tools box on their school dashboard > Edit School Settings > Messages Settings.
- Students can ONLY start conversations with the teachers in their classes. Students cannot start messages with any other account type, including other students.
There are two different message types when starting messages to two or more recipients:
Announcements: When starting a message to two or more participants, Administrators and teachers can choose to send a one-way message with no replies. Learn more about sending schoolwide announcements!
New Conversation: When starting a message to two or more participants, Administrators and teachers can choose to send a 1-to-1 or group message with replies.
Users can add multimedia attachments to any message using Seesaw’s Creative Tools!
When composing a message, tap the green +Add button to add an attachment.
The Creative Tools view will appear, and you'll be able to upload a file, attach a photo or video, write a note, share a link, or use the Creative Canvas to draw and annotate a picture!
Please note: Editing is only available for conversation owners — in most cases, the teacher or admin who created the conversation or a teacher/admin if a family member created the conversation.