Edsby September 2025 update

Edsby has added many new features in recent months. Our September 2025 focus brings important updates across key product areas: Activities, Artboards, Edsby Capture and Teacher AI Assistant.

Not all new features are available to users immediately. It’s often up to individual schools or districts/regions when or if they choose to introduce specific new Edsby capabilities.

To help you explore these changes in more detail, we’ve created new documents and videos with step-by-step explanations. You can find them in the help section of our public website—choose your role to see the resources tailored for you.

Please keep sharing your feedback and suggestions; they help us continue to make Edsby the best school management system for K-12 teachers, students, parents, and administrators worldwide. Teachers and admins can share their ideas by clicking the question mark on the navigation bar when logged into Edsby on a browser.

Edsby support and other designated roles at customer sites can access the full list of September 2025 enhancements in a document available in the Release Notes section of the Edsby support portal.

New Features and Enhancements for Teachers, Students & Parents

Introducing Activities: A powerful new way to guide student learning

Activities combine structure and creativity, giving teachers a smarter way to engage students and capture learning.

• Streamlined submissions. Activities guide students as they submit evidence of their learning, making expectations clear and easy to follow.
• Personalized learning. Assign Activities to the whole class or tailor them for individual students to support differentiated instruction.
• Curriculum-ready. Every Activity can be linked to the curriculum and pre-tagged. Student submissions automatically retain these connections—saving time and keeping everything organized.
• Flexible formats. An Activity can be as simple as a written or recorded instruction, or as dynamic as an interactive worksheet using the new Artboard (see below). With Artboards, students can draw, label, and create—unlocking new ways to demonstrate their understanding.

Activities bring structure and creativity together, giving teachers a smarter way to engage students and capture learning.

Teachers create Activities within Evidence through the New Activity button. For the students, the Activities appear in the Learning Story, in the new Activities panel.

To complete an activity, a student:

• Navigates to the Learning Story.
• Selects an activity from the Activities panel and follows the teacher’s instructions.
• The student can complete and submit the activity or save it as a draft for later submission.

Activity Examples

In this illustration, the teacher has created an activity for every student in the class. The teacher has provided the students with instructions on how to complete the activity. The teacher has also added a tag and linked relevant expectations/outcomes. All submitted Activities will retain the tag and linked expectations.

When a student opens the activity, the student sees the title and instructions but not the tags. The student can submit photos, PDFs, or use an Artboard. The work can be saved as a draft until it is ready for submission.

In this example, the activity is shared with selected students, and the teacher has elected to create an Artboard for the students.

When a student selects the Artboard, the student can edit their copy of the Artboard. The student selects the Draw tool to complete the worksheet.

The submitted Activities appear in the All Evidence feed. When the submission is opened by the teacher, the teacher can add observations and select a performance level. The evidence has a thumbnail of the Artboard. Clicking on the Artboard opens it in full size. Note that the tag and expectations/outcomes are automatically included.

In the All Evidence feed, the teacher can Return for Resubmission with feedback. The student can resubmit the work.

Organize can be used to select multiple items and return them all by clicking Return for Resubmission. All submissions can be viewed by selecting All Students and the name of the Activity.

Edsby Capture and Activities

A new version of Edsby Capture will be released soon. This update will support both Activities and Artboard submissions.

After scanning the QR code, students will be able to:

• Submit media (photos and videos), as they did before, or
• Create and submit an Artboard.

Students can only submit media or Artboards in classes where the teacher has enabled the Allow Students and Parents to Capture Evidence option. At least one class must have this option enabled for students to use Capture.

Activities can be created in any class, and teachers do not need to enable Allow Students and Parents to Capture Evidence option in all the classes.

For example, if a teacher enables the Allow Students and Parents to Capture Evidence option in Art Class, students can submit media or an Artboard to the Art class. However, students can complete an Activity from any class.

Note: Teachers enable the Allow Students and Parents to Capture Evidence by navigating to Evidence and clicking QR Code.

About the Artboard media type

Artboards are ideal for younger students, providing a new file type of a virtual 2D space and a simple set of tools on that work seamlessly on desktops, phones, and tablets. Click or tap the new Artboard icon anywhere media can be attached in Edsby.

Artboard Tools

The Media tool supports photos, videos, audio and files. Video and audio media can be used to provide instructions for pre-readers. If you upload image files of worksheets, students can then use the Draw tool to complete worksheets.

The Draw tool creates free-hand marks, just like a pencil. The line color and line weight can be changed.

The Shape tool has options for creating circles, polygons, and rectangles. The line and fill color and line weight can be changed. For the polygons, the Sides selector enables the creation of triangles, pentagons, hexagons, and more, up to 16-sided shapes.

The Text tool creates a text box. Large, medium, and small text can be created with a choice of colors.

The Select tool focuses on a single element. Each element includes a drag handle (six dots), Send to Back, Bring to Front, and Copy options. After an element is copied, the toolbar displays a Paste tool. Keyboard shortcuts are supported, and hovering over a tool shows its shortcut.

In addition to Activities, the Artboard media type is available to teachers in the Class feed. Within groups, anyone with permission to post can use the Artboard media type.

Teacher AI Assistant

The Edsby Teacher AI Assistant is a set of tools to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of educators in their daily tasks. These tools are available exclusively to staff; students and parents do not have access. The development of this set of tools has been guided by a strong commitment to security and privacy, prioritizing the protection of user data. This feature is an add-on service at an additional cost. The feature has been enabled in Edsby customer Sandbox systems for you to explore.

Make Question Sheet helps teachers create question sheets based on content they have created in units, lessons, pages. Question sheets can also be generated by selecting standards.

Critique Writing is available within the Grader for PDFs. It provides a general critique including feedback on writing level and advice for improvement. Critique also has a prompt to provide a summary of grammar and spelling errors.

The Text Composer helps teachers author or rewrite Class and Group content. It provides tools to:

• Identify and fix grammatical errors
• Expand, shorten, or rewrite text by choosing from the prompts
• Translate text into another language

Summarize Thread helps teachers save time by distilling essential information without having to read entire conversations, reducing cognitive overload from long discussions. It is available in classes and groups.

The Comment Assistant is available in comment fields within a report card sheet. The comment assistant can be used in a variety of ways:

• Writing a paragraph based on point-form
• Creating a more detailed comment based on the existing comment
• Creating asset-based comments
• Shortening a comment to meet character limits
• Changing tone
• Fixing grammar and spelling errors

In this illustration, the teacher has added three statements about the student. One of the statements has a typo (builing) and an incorrect word (texting). In the Comment Assistant, the teacher has selected the Professional prompt. The suggested comment is in paragraph form and both the typo and incorrect word have been fixed.

In this example, the teacher has added points that lists ways in which a student is struggling. Selecting the Asset based prompt translates the points into a comment that emphasizes learning and growth.

New Features and Enhancements for School Administrators (Senior Admin and Office Head)

School Page Staff

The Staff Panel’s Roster uses enhanced roster options. Print a staff list to use as a ready-made sign-in sheet for workshops, meeting attendees, inclement weather lists, or a quick reference for new staff members.

Information Panel

While most names and addresses in Edsby are managed in the Student Information System, occasionally the information needs to be augmented. For example, some SISes don’t handle hyphenated names (Cameron-Chen) or compound names (Cameron Chen) well.

When the Senior Admin or Office Head changes anything on the Information Panel, it overrides the information from the SIS. The Information panel will display an exclamation point to indicate a deviation from the SIS.

This public document is an abstract of September 2025 Edsby platform enhancements. More complete details are available for Edsby site administrators in the Edsby customer support portal.