Mary Cooch

How about creating a new role, assigning to the system context (see Creating custom roles ) and just allowing them the capability http://docs.moodle.org/en/Capabilities/moodle/course:view  ?

Hello there. I'm not sure how to get this working because it doesn't actually relate to the student but to the teacher (and so is even less to do with a parent ) When a teacher writes a personal 'note' the student cannot see it; it is a note just for the teacher himself. In the course context, other teachers in the course could see the note but again the student would not be able to see it.  I presume you have seen Notes?  Even if you could get the capabilities correct, I am not sure your parent would be able to see notes written in the personal context by the teacher about their child. But I'm not an expert on notes- let's see which suggestions others have

Good point As with TinyMCE it's not one of the default plugins although it can be enabled. For reference: http://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Text_editor  But then we can add our own -smileys anyway so not an issue

Moodle for Dummies is an older version of Moodle and you might have a more recent version. I second the suggestion about reading the docs docs.moodle.org and also the Moodle HQ youtube channel has around 30 beginner videos of using Moodle as a teacher (not administrator) which might be helpful to you. (Start here and follow the series)

Dawn - you can already do this in Moodle, either by teachers within the same course or by using the Question sharer role.