In today’s day and age in the classroom environment, many new digital tools are used, such as chromebooks, projectors, and even scanners. One of the tools used among this topic is GoGuardian which is a monitoring app used by teachers in classrooms to make sure students are remaining on task. GoGuardian plays a crucial role in supporting teachers and students during class time. While the presence of GoGuardian may question security, a closer examination reveals its function in helping classroom safety. GoGuardian serves as a digital teacher, making sure that students remain focused on educational content by restricting access to websites deemed unsuitable for academic purpose or inappropriate content. While this may seem restrictive, its purpose is to keep students on task.
GoGuardian allows teachers to monitor students while they are using devices such as chromebooks. Additionally, GoGuardian gives teachers tools for classroom management, including the ability to redirect students to the activities they are currently working on in class. Teachers are also able to give instructions and maintain a functional classroom. Using these tools is helpful to the classroom to keep all students on task at once. Instead of calling out students one by one, they are able to redirect them all at once.
While arguments regarding privacy make students worried, it is essential to understand that GoGuardian only operates within the school account and school related subjects. Many students have different opinions on this to flat out not caring, to being annoyed about it.
Sophomore, Luis Flores stated, “I never notice the teacher is watching me while I’m doing my work, I never have really felt bothered, I feel like teachers only bother you if you’re doing something you’re not supposed to do.”
Some students seem to have only some bad experiences with GoGuardian, James Razo 10th grade seems to be one of the students who has these issues explaining “It can be annoying sometimes, especially when I’m doing an essay and I go to an article just to find out it’s blocked. It would help if GoGuardian did not completely block out as many things as it did. Other than that I never had an issue with it. I sometimes forget it’s even watching me. The only time I see students get in trouble from it, is when they are doing something they aren’t supposed to.”
While Razo has his complaints, he isn’t the only one.
Students like Freshman Elliot Garcia states “Go Guardian many times just blocks out websites and links that do not make sense at times. It would help a lot if it was fixed. I wouldn’t mind if that one issue would be fixed. But we’ll see where it goes.”
While the presence of GoGuardian may make some students feel watched, controlled, or just annoyed at times, it’s important to understand its true purpose, which is to maintain a classroom.
