I can echo the frustrations expressed about social media becoming a necessity as it becomes the primary channel for communication by an institution. Both my university and student dorm use exclusively Discord to communicate events, exams, and general announcements. I don't run Discord on my phone and due to this I have come close to missing several important things, if not for a friend letting me know. I'm not sure what if anything could be done to change this...
The school could switch to a K12 comms provider that actually meets the needs of the school's end users (you). There are good options out there that enable easy multi-channel (email, SMS, voice, Twitter, etc) messaging through like two button clicks.
Run a matrix bridge, sure you still have to have an account but at least the malware client doesn't get installed.
This is a good option for most of it, as the bridges seem quite solid. Sadly it won't make up for calls (some courses have extra content in the form of "Discord Stages" which is like a big video call).
Same boat, I just use the Discord website on my phone. The account I created with designated e-mail address for this.
Unfortunately, e-mail notifications are kinda random. It can be like 1 day late before I receive notification that someone tagged me or whatever. They could just use regular mail at this point.
I can echo the frustrations expressed about social media becoming a necessity as it becomes the primary channel for communication by an institution. Both my university and student dorm use exclusively Discord to communicate events, exams, and general announcements. I don't run Discord on my phone and due to this I have come close to missing several important things, if not for a friend letting me know. I'm not sure what if anything could be done to change this...
The school could switch to a K12 comms provider that actually meets the needs of the school's end users (you). There are good options out there that enable easy multi-channel (email, SMS, voice, Twitter, etc) messaging through like two button clicks.
Run a matrix bridge, sure you still have to have an account but at least the malware client doesn't get installed.
This is a good option for most of it, as the bridges seem quite solid. Sadly it won't make up for calls (some courses have extra content in the form of "Discord Stages" which is like a big video call).
Same boat, I just use the Discord website on my phone. The account I created with designated e-mail address for this.
Unfortunately, e-mail notifications are kinda random. It can be like 1 day late before I receive notification that someone tagged me or whatever. They could just use regular mail at this point.