7/4: GoGuardian: A Mini-Tutorial

When I learned last summer that my new school's curriculum would be 100% online, I was nervous. Though great for the environment, I didn't know how I would be able to monitor students' screens and keep them on task. I began the year with apprehension and tried my best to get students to "crocodile" their Chromebooks whenever we weren't using them.

But then I was introduced to the most wonderful website in existence. 

Parent App | GoGuardian

GoGuardian is every teacher's best friend. It allows you to set up digital classrooms that line up with your bell schedule so that all of your students' screens appear together in real time. With all of the screens in a mosaic in front of you, it's easy to see which students are off-task. Then, in a glorious act modern-day teachers dream of, you can click on those off-task screens and close the students' tabs for them. (The best part is watching their faces as their YouTube video disappears before their eyes.)

You can also open tabs for students, which I found to be a very useful tool during distance learning. Instead of messaging them individually to tell them which websites I needed them on, I could just open all the tabs for them. 

Another incredibly fabulous feature of this magic website is that teachers can block certain websites (say, Instagram or YouTube) so that students can't access them during class. This is called creating a scene, which only has its power over their screens for the duration of your class period. If I add youtube.com to my scene and a student tries to access that site during our class, they'll see this screen, often followed by a demand that I "stop using GoGuardian already":

Types of GoGuardian Block Pages – GoGuardian Help Center

GoGuardian recently added a chat feature, which was our primary means of communication during distance learning. 

If your school doesn't use this website but has kids on Chromebooks, beg them to invest. It will change your life and save you from many redirections. 

View my mini-tutorial here.

Comentarios

  1. Unknown6 de julio de 2020 a las 21:13

    I do not know what I would have done without GoGuardian during distance learning.

    Christina D'Ambra

    ResponderEliminar
  2. Anónimo7 de julio de 2020 a las 5:50

    Wow this seems like an awesome tool! Thanks for sharing!

    ResponderEliminar
  3. Christina C9 de julio de 2020 a las 17:48

    I used Go Guardian during the last five weeks of distance learning. It was interesting to see exactly what the students were working on in real time and to us, as Mitra puts it, "the grandmother effect" to encourage students with their learning. It was also useful to help students with executive function skills because I could help these students privately using the chat feature whereas before I had to ask them to share their screen on the Zoom to help them through the issue. It's a great tool!

    ResponderEliminar

Publicar un comentario

Entradas populares de este blog

6/29: An Introduction

Imagen
My name is Elyse, and I'm an English teacher at DelSesto Middle School. This past year, I taught ELA and ELD to 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-graders, which was be exhausting, but was ultimately an impetus for professional growth. At DelSesto, I learn at least ten new things a day. Even during distance learning, I find that there are so many newly-manifested ways in which I can become a better educator.  I'm from New Jersey, and I moved here less than a year ago to teach in the district. There is a very special place in my heart for Providence, and I'm excited to be here another year. Even if the bagels aren't as good. Between college and this glamorous job, I lived in Spain . I was there for about two and a half years in total, and I am officially hooked. It's a true testament to my passion for education and my love for our DelSesto community that I left my beloved Spain at all.       Maybe I'll go back someday, but for now, I know I'm much more needed here. Plus, I...
Leer más

7/7: School in a Cloud

Imagen
I really appreciated Sugata Mirta's TED talk about his "school in a cloud." We talk so much about the manifold advantages and disadvantages school districts face, but I don't think we put enough effort, energy, or resources into actually creating change in those underserved communities. What would it mean to distribute Chromebooks to all of our kids? What would it mean to inspire curiosity and forgo the pressures of relentless testing? Mirta's students in India engaged in learning because it was relevant to them. As Wesch reminds us, we must  engage students in that which interests them. Testing does not interest them. We know this. We also know we need data, so how can we balance these two drastically different needs (admin v. students)? It is perhaps an age old question, but what can we do about it? Mirta asks newer questions. Can we level the playing filed? Is it really just a matter of resources? Willing knowing every be obsolete? Are we adapting to a changin...
Leer más

6/30: Wesch and the revitalization of grading policies

Imagen
In Wesch's video "What Baby George Taught Me About Learning," he describes the experience of watching his child repeatedly fall off the bottom step of their staircase. Inspired by his son's persistence and resilience, Wesch has an epiphany: why not restructure our academic grading system in order to accommodate the different strengths and learning styles of our students?  Last year at my school, we used a curriculum whose principal metaphor was a mountain. Posters of mountains decorated the walls of our classroom; some teachers went as far as to create stickers of each of their students and move them up the mountain as they completed assignments. In it of itself, the metaphor is wonderful. As Wesch says, why not encourage success? Why not have successful students help the ones who are struggling?  The problem with putting this metaphor into practice is that is does not serve all students. Students need to see value in climbing the mountain or they aren't going to...
Leer más