Get to know Discord

Why is discord a good tool for education

Discord is a free online all-purpose voice, video, and text chat app that is used by tens of millions of people from ages 13 and up to talk and hang out with their friends and various communities

Table of Content

    1. Seamless Communication

    2. Servers

        a. Server features

    3. Accessibility

    4. Basic Structures of Discord

        a. Discord Tags

        a. Discord Profile and Statuses

        a. Friends

        a. Nitro

‍

Seamless Communication

• Bring back hallway interactions with Discord and its seamless communication where students can hang back or shoot you a question in text channels after synchronous lectures in voice and video call
• The online setting provides various ways for students to react, express themselves, and engage with learning and Discord allows for that

Servers

• Manage all your classes in a single space!
• Pinned messages: important messages are easily saved for convenient access
• Organization: Easily organize your classes into separate categories with their own text channels for specific uses such as booking consultations or answering questions
• Events: Remind your students of an important occasion such as tests, synchronous lectures, and more
• Search bar: Looking for something specific? A student who said something particular or sent a particular picture or link? Discord offers a search function so that you may find that specific message you’d like to revisit.
• Roles: With roles, students stay in their respective classes and don’t interrupt or are privy to the happenings of classes not their own. 
• Bots: Don’t want to manage the server 24/7 all on your own? Discord has bots that got you covered! These configurable AIs are here to help you manage and keep the peace of your virtual classroom.

Accessibility

• Available on various platforms: iOS, Android, PC, Mac, Linus, and Browsers
• Low data usage: 5MB-200MB~ over a 24 hr period, so even professors and students relying on data plans don’t have to pay more than they have to

‍

Basic structure of Discord

Discord Tags

When becoming a registered user, Discord generates a "Discord Tag" which serves as a unique identifier along with your chosen username. Your username or display name serves as the first part and the latter portion with the hashtag is your randomly generated number tag.

These will serve as the code you will be using in sending friend requests to a specific person or what you will be giving others for them to do the same. It is also a great way to verify a person’s identity as even with the same username they will have different number tags.

‍

Discord profile and status

Discord profiles offer a short overview of a user, it includes user info, mutual servers, mutual friends, as well as any social media platforms they’ve connected to the app and if they’ve configured for it to display.

Server profiles are essentially the same as discord profiles but allows users to easily edit their nicknames on the server to be easily recognizable

Discord statuses informs you and everyone else of your online availability

This means that you or another user is currently active and will receive most, if not all, discord notifications unless you or they have specifically configured notification settings that don’t for specific people, servers, or channels.

‍

This means that you or the user has the discord app open but has not interacted with or looked at it in quite some time. This is usually automatically set if the status was previously set to online. This can also be manually set, in this case, the status will not change to online even if you or another user is actively using the app.

‍

This means that you or another user is currently not receiving any and all notifications. Discord will still inform you if someone had @ you or if you’ve received any DMs when you check the app.

‍

This means that you or another user has currently decided not to disclose their online availability and will appear as offline even if they are not. You can only know that they are online if they participate in chat or in voice call. Those who have manually set still have access to all of discord and still received most, if not all, notifications.

‍

These are custom set statuses that do not affect the previous four, they serve as a quirky, cosmetic, or personal statement that you or another users would like to inform others of.

‍

Friends

This can be found in the Home dashboard where you can also see all your direct messages. Discord allows you to see which of your friends are online and what specifically they are up to in the ‘Active Now’ section on the right. 

• In the Active Now section, you can see if your friends are using Spotify and what song are they playing, as well as what game unless they have manually configured these not to show

In the Home dashboard, you may also form group direct messages. Which is much more similar to your typical messaging apps such as FB messenger and doesn’t include the features that are found in servers such as multiple text channels and voice chats. It’s generally meant for a small group of friends (limited to 10 users).

Nitro

Nitro is the paid subscription or membership service that Discord offers for users who want premium perks and more out of the app. It offers the ability to further customize and personalize your profile, to have bigger uploads, HD video streaming, longer messages, join more servers, and support servers with server boosts.