Discord is an app designed to connect users with communities over voice, video, and text chat, via Discord servers, a gaming and game industry oriented app for growing communities around video games and allowing developers to communicate with their customer base; the app may yet also be used for business communications of other kinds.
$4.99
per month
Google Classroom
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$0
per month
Pricing
Discord
Google Classroom
Editions & Modules
Discord Nitro
$0
Discord Nitro Classic
$0
Education Fundamentals
$0
per license/per month
Google Workspace for Education Standard
$3
per student/per year
Teaching and Learning Upgrade
$4
per license/per month
Google Workspace for Education Plus
$5
per student/per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Discord
Google Classroom
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Education Fundamentals Version - 30-day free trial for qualifying institutions.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Discord
Google Classroom
Considered Both Products
Discord
No answer on this topic
Google Classroom
Verified User
Program Manager
Chose Google Classroom
Google Classroom is more intuitive but with fewer options than Canvas.
Discord works phenomenally if you want a chat platform that is free, quick to set up, and very flexible in the ways you can start using it. It doesn't require a complex set of logins for different servers and confusion about adding new members, or tough pricing right out of the gate. If you prefer to view full conversations all in one place without them "splintering" off into branches that are missed, Discord works great for this. All in all, Discord is great for startup companies or lean working companies, but it does not lend itself as well for larger, traditional "corporate" enterprises.
Google Classroom allows teachers to post for daily lessons and assignments. It also allows teachers to be able to communicate with students easily outside of class. Students are able to stay connected and know where to find all information and resources easily in a streamlined manner for all of their classes.
One to many Communications to ensure that we can quickly get messages out when we have to.
Quick polling of questions and issues
The ability to gate channels so we can focus on folks that we know are stakeholders gives them an added feeling of belonging and that they have a say in the direction of projects.
Student-teacher communication - I love using Classroom for this because my students can always go back and check what was on Classroom by looking through the stream. This way they don't have to go dig through emails to find what they're looking for.
Posting to multiple classes - I can post the same announcement or assignment to multiple classes at once without having to repeat the process or send separate emails.
Streamlining grading - when students turn work in on Classroom, it all goes to one place and then when I'm grading I can open their documents directly from Classroom or my Drive folder. This way, I'm not looking through emails and Google Doc shared files for their assignment.
Better volume balancing between members on a call.
More customizability of the notification sound for each server. It would be nice to set each of my important servers with a different notification sound.
More expansive note section when you view another user's profile. I'd like to be able to contain more information there in a more organized way.
Testing is particularly important in online learning, and Google Classroom falls far short of other learning management systems in this regard. Security is also a concern: while account control is reasonable for the account used with Google Classroom, the person controlling a particular account is often able to, for example, forward or download proprietary materials.
It just works, and works well. Very rarely does anything go wrong, and I can't remember the last outage (sure there's been some but very rare and not something I even think about or worry about). Desktop clients, web access, mobile clients - the lot. Very happy with our easy it is to use.
Simple design and seamless integration with Google tools and drive, but missing some key features. However, since it is limited in overall functions and ability to truly personalize / customize, it is quite user friendly and easy to set up and get going, other than sending out the code to your course or dropping students in via their gmail account. Users of Google Forms and sites will find the layout similar in design.
There is plenty of online documentation and knowledge base articles. As well as having an open API to be able to tie it into other products makes it a really viable solution for any business. I have never had to contact support, any questions which I have need answered can be found in the documentation,
Since this platform is provided by Google, the technical support is better than any others, and we are not required to bother about the space constraints for adding the contents. If we have a good uninterrupted internet facility we can access Google Classroom without any delay or lag. They have app support in both Android and iPhone.
It was relatively easy to implement due to the simplicity of the platform. Even our more technology challenged teachers found it easy to get started with Google Classroom.
I like Slack for more professional settings, but Discord is excellent for casual groups, especially when a few people do not have iPhones. They're very similar, but I think there are a lot of Discord features I don't take advantage of, mainly because there seems to be so much in the sidebar that overwhelms me a bit.
I haven't tested or evaluated another digital classroom website or application. I feel like Google Classroom is convenient for many reasons such as compatibility to Google docs, slides, etc. I also love the ability to link to YouTube and other sites. I don't know if there would be a site that is easier to maneuver.
