[west1737]

I definitely agree with the risks, but I also have a couple friends (mid 20s) that are high school teachers that have many of their students numbers stored in their phones cause they encourage the kids to text them if they have a question or a problem. This has rarely led to some inappropriate texts from students- which could certainly be a risk.

Having an intermediary certainly won't eliminate risk, but it might mitigate some of it. I don't think it's a tool that all teachers will use- it's going to depend a lot of teaching style. My gut instinct says enough will use it to make it an interesting tool, and anything that adds to a teacher's box of tools sounds good to me.

[kabuks]

Exactly. The main point it to mitigate the risk. How can we make this clearer?

[west1737]

I'd emphasize more that you can use the service without teachers giving the students their personal numbers- I can see it on the first page, but it doesn't jump out at you.

Another idea (and you may already be doing this) would be to log all communications, and maybe even make them visible to everyone in the "class" via a web login. People are less likely to say something stupid if they know it's being recorded, and it gives teachers an easy resource to fall back on if a "he said/she said" scenario comes up with a student.

That being said, I think it's a great way to mitigate risk for the teacher, but I wouldn't let that overshadow the main benefit, which is ease of use.