Prior to inviting parents into Edsby most schools like to send home an announcement about the adoption of Edsby. By letting parents know what Edsby is and when they'll get their invitation, you'll increase the number of parents who activate their accounts right away. We've included a Parent introductory letter.docx file with this article; this sample announcement may be copied to your letterhead or as a bulk email, and modified as per your preferences. A more in-depth online resource explaining the benefits of Edsby for parents can be found at: https://www.edsby.com/how-edsby-helps/parent/
As an additional resource to help parents activate their accounts, we've provided a Parent getting started guide.docx -- this file may be edited in Word and distributed to your parents. Be sure to update the document to replace YOURURL.edsby.com with the actual URL for your login page.
Similar information about the invitation and account activation process is presented in this short Getting Started video, which you are welcome to share.
Parent invitations
When the time comes, parents can be invited into Edsby by staff members with a role of Senior Admin or School IT. Usually parent invitations are sent only after teachers have been given instruction on how to connect to Edsby and are comfortable working in the system.
To invite parents into Edsby:
- Log into Edsby as Senior Admin or District IT, and open the Parents zoom:
- From the drop-down menu of the Parents list, select Invite to Edsby:
- Click Send Invitations:
Student roll-out
When to enable students accounts (and whether to enable them at all) is determined by each school based on their priorities. Student accounts can be activated for all students, or for just students in particular grade levels, or may be left off completely. For students that will be active in Edsby we recommend sharing this Edsby Student Quick Start Guide.
When inviting students into Edsby, we encourage you to communicate two things:
- Why you are inviting them into Edsby? Specifically, what is it that you expect them to see and do in Edsby? How often do you expect they should check Edsby? In addition to their classes, what groups might they have access to or be expected to participate in?
- What are your expectations for online conduct? For many schools there is already a clearly articulated policy on community conduct. For others, technology use may be covered under a specific technology use agreement. In either case, it is important to remind students that their conduct online will be monitored and needs to comply with school policy.
In Edsby, all student accounts are inactive to start. Most schools take one of four approaches for password assignment:
- Option 1: If you are using Google or O365 authentication for students, your Twine onboarding specialist can designate the student accounts as Active, and they can begin logging in with the Google or O365 button on the login page, so long as they can connect to their Google or O365 account.
- Option 2: Your Twine onboarding specialist can assign unique passwords for all student accounts, which will be provided to your implementation point of contact for distribution.
- Option 3: Your Twine onboarding specialist can assign a universal password for student accounts, which students will be encouraged to change on first login. This approach is easier for teachers than Option 2, but carries a security risk if there are students that don't change their password from the default.
- Option 4: Teachers (and all administrative staff) may assign passwords individually for any student. In some cases, such as situations where not every student in a class is going to be provided Edsby access, it is simplest to allow teachers to assign and give out student passwords.