Blog 1 – Technology

GoGuardian

One of my favorite tools that has been provided by our school district this year is GoGuardian. This program allows our district to filter and monitor any device provided by the school, as well as allowing teachers to manage online classes and student activity online. These classroom management capabilities have been so helpful for me and my colleagues, both with online students and our in-person classes. However, we did not receive any training before the year began with how to use this program, so everything I have learned has been through trial and error.

This past week I tried a new skill which was setting a scene within a scene. In GoGuardian, a teacher can manage which websites students are able to access through applying what is called a “scene”. A scene is set up ahead of time, and can either allow only certain sites to open, or can block any sites you do not want students to access. At the beginning of the year, I simply watched what websites my students opened that were off-task or distracting, and created a scene that is applied for every session which will exclude those sites. However, I currently have a student (in-person) who is autistic but high functioning, and he will go anywhere and everywhere on his computer if he is able. When I speak with him personally and ask him to put away his device, or simply remain in Google Classroom, he will become agitated, angry, and start swearing which is so disruptive for myself and other students. I studied suggestions shared online about GoGuardian and found that I can create a secondary scene for this student only, because I don’t wish for all of my students to have this much restriction. I was able to set his computer to only open one tab during my class period, so that he is much less likely to find distractions online. I have also set up a message through GoGuardian so that if he tries to open another tab, he sees a gentle reminder to close his Chromebook and pay attention to what we are doing in class, until the computer is needed.

The result of this has been simply a quiet acceptance from my student, rather than arguing or swearing. I believe seeing the message on his computer feels less confrontational for him, and gives him some time to self-regulate while accepting this redirection. For this student and others, I believe it possibly feels less like an admonition from a teacher when the GoGuardian program redirects them. I know there are many capabilities of this program that I have not yet explored, so I look forward to becoming more proficient with it.