GoGuardian was co-founded in 2014 by Advait Shinde, R. Todd Mackey, and Aza Steel. The program allows teachers to monitor student activities, filter content, communicate with students, share links, and more.
According to Ryan Bowman, the Educational Technology and Operations Director for the Twin Falls School District, the curriculum department purchased GoGuardian for all schools after some individual schools purchased it in 2020 when COVID-19 began.
“GoGuardian is no longer used at every school in the district…There were a couple of years when the curriculum department purchased it, and they cut that particular purchase out of their budget towards the end of last year”, said Bowman. Now it is up to TFSD schools to decide whether they will purchase GoGuardian for their school or not.
According to Mr. Scott Thompson, interim principal at Canyon Ridge High School, Canyon Ridge purchased GoGuardian using Esser funds, Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, from Covid. GoGuardian costs CRHS roughly $5 per student each year.
“We don’t mandate [GoGuardian], but I don’t know why [teachers] wouldn’t want to use it, just because it’s another tool for them to use to make sure that there’s honesty in everything that the students are doing,” explained Mr. Thompson.
Mrs. Angie Smith, a mathematics teacher at CRHS, said, “I think [GoGuardian] is worthwhile. I do think there are definitely times that it’s not effective, and it doesn’t do exactly what I want it to. But it’s been the best I’ve found for what’s available to teachers. I like it better than Classwise.”
Classwise, developed in 2022 by Jon Reifschneider, is similar to GoGuardian and allows teachers to monitor their students’ screens while they work.
“Classwise is not quite as robust as GoGuardian, so some of our schools have purchased GoGuardian and continue to use it today, but some of them use a product called Classwise,” said Bowman.
Mr. Chris Waitley, a mathematics teacher at CRHS, uses GoGuardian to monitor his student’s work and ensure they are staying on task. “It was after COVID that we purchased our Reveal and Aleks curriculum that is completely online, and that’s when I, as a teacher, started to use GoGuardian quite often.”
Mr. Waitley also expressed that “if a student knows they can’t get to their gaming website…because I have it blocked, then my hope is that they will spend more time on whatever task they’ve been given.”
Mr. Sam Franklin, a science teacher at CRHS, chooses not to use GoGuardian in his classroom because it doesn’t always work on student’s personal devices. When asked if he could see himself using GoGuardian in the future, Mr. Franklin said, “I might be able to use it, especially if I knew it would work on all the [devices] and not just the school [devices].”
“I use it to ensure that students are being honest with their assignments and assessments.” Explained Mr. David Palmer, a social studies teacher at CRHS, “I can also have an individual chat with a student…Some students tend to be more introverted and shy than others, and it’s a fairly low interaction, low impact way to carry on a conversation with a student so that they are not singled out for not understanding.”
Mr. Palmer also mentioned, “We as teachers were trained in physical classroom management, but most of us weren’t trained in digital classroom management, so it provides another safeguard for us to use to help make sure students are making quality choices.”
