The News Feed menu in the Student Portal shows students the school's news feed — the same feed teachers see on their dashboard — so notices, updates and media posts reach students directly. Schools can go a step further and switch on Student Voice, which lets students create their own news feed posts and submit them for staff approval before they are published.
The News Feed menu in the Student Portal shows students the school's news feed — the same feed teachers see on their dashboard — so notices, updates and media posts reach students directly. Schools can go a step further and switch on Student Voice, which lets students create their own news feed posts and submit them for staff approval before they are published.
Reading the news feed
Selecting News Feed from the portal menu opens the school's feed. Posts can include text, images, files to download and videos, and post tags let students search the feed for topics of interest.
Screenshot: student portal news feed showing school posts
Student Voice
Student Voice is a school setting — enabling it allows students to create News Feed posts in the Student Portal. When it is on, the student's news feed page gains two buttons: Create Post and Manage My Posts. A school can also revoke an individual student's Student Voice access, in which case the student sees a notice that their access has been removed instead of the buttons.
Creating a post
- Select Create Post on the news feed page.
- Set the Display Start Date and Display End Date — the post appears on the news feed between these dates only.
- Enter a Post Title and optional Tags (comma-separated keywords that help others find the post in the feed).
- Choose a Post Type:
- Text — a rich-text message
- Image Gallery — up to 5 images (jpg, jpeg, gif, png)
- File — downloadable files (docx, xlsx, pdf, txt, csv) up to 25MB in total
- Video (Cloud) — a link to a video hosted on YouTube or Google Drive
- Video (Upload) — an uploaded MP4 video up to 30MB
- Write the post content in the editor. Media cannot be embedded in the text itself — it goes in the media boxes above. Files and images can also be imported from Google Drive.
- Optionally Tag Students who feature in the post.
- Select Preview Post to see how it will look, then Submit For Approval.
Screenshot: Create Post form with post type, dates, title and content fields
Approval and managing posts
Student posts are not published straight away — they go through a verification step by the school. From Manage My Posts a student can:
- Choose a created-between date range and select Retrieve Posts.
- See each post's title and current status.
- Open a post to view its Verification Status, Verified By, Verification Date and any reviewer Comment, and to update the post details.
Only verified posts appear on the news feed, and each post displays only between its start and end dates.