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August 28, 2020

GoGuardian Product Updates for the 2020-2021 School Year

GoGuardian Team
GoGuardian Product Updates for 2020-2021 School Year with image of stacked graph screenshots

What a year it’s been already! A few weeks have felt like months, and these past several months have felt like years.

Just like so many of you, GoGuardian took no breaks. We knew there was much prep to be done for this unusual school year. We spent the summer ramping up to bring you new products, features, and enhancements for 2020-2021. We’ve even optimized our products to bring you the best remote or hybrid Learning experience for this school year so that you’re prepared for whatever the situation brings.

Here’s what happened at GoGuardian over the summer.

GoGuardian Teacher

The latest updates to the GoGuardian Teacher™ product include a major pivot to support remote Learning for both asynchronous and synchronous virtual classrooms.

Recent updates:

  • Video Conferencing* features: Communication is key during remote instruction, so we built a video calling feature set to help teachers and students stay connected. You can now deliver instruction in a variety of ways with group audio and video conferencing, screen-sharing, 1:1 audio and video calling, lesson recording, and a one-way lecture/presentation feature.
  • Calendar view: With the new Calendar view in GoGuardian Teacher, you can easily schedule sessions or cancel scheduled sessions. Click “Calendar” on the left navigation menu to view your scheduled sessions.
  • Chat updates: Communication with students can now happen quickly and efficiently with enhancements to Chat. These updates include: desktop notifications, audio notifications, using emojis, turning on Chat for individual students, badges for unread messages, and more!
  • Scenes enhancements: It’s easy to block or unblock websites during a live session to update your Scene in real-time! When a Scene is applied, you’ll see the option to block websites that students are visiting or unblock websites that have been blocked by your Scene.

Coming soon:

  • Integrate Chat into Call window: While using GoGuardian Teacher, you will be able to access your Chat window from within the audio or video call window.
  • Attendance summary for calls: As a teacher, you will receive a summary after your conference calls indicating which students were present and which were absent.
  • “Raise Hand” option: Non-verbal communication for students during calls means that you’ll be able to easily identify when students need help or have questions, without disrupting the rest of the class.

Take a look at GoGuardian Teacher!

*Please note that 1:1 audio calling and the lecture/presentation feature are included with GoGuardian Teacher at no additional cost. The other features are included at no additional cost with GoGuardian Suite OR available with GoGuardian Teacher as an add-on.

GoGuardian Admin

The GoGuardian Admin™ team has been working hard to integrate the newest filtering and user experience advancements into our Admin product. These updates mean more value for you!

Recent updates:

  • Student reports: We’ve designed an improved user experience, along with new data points added, such as Device Usage and Teacher’s Commands.
  • Audit Log: GoGuardian Admin updates also include improved user experience and more detailed actions displayed. As a user, you can easily open up the student report by hovering over a student’s name.
  • GoGuardian Parent App: This exciting new app gives parents direct access to reports on their student’s device activity, as well as additional out-of-school filtering controls at home.
  • Automatic login: Our new Transparent Authentication feature for the Admin gateway deployment allows users to eliminate the need for your students, primarily younger ones, to enter their credentials on school-issued devices for authentication.
  • Beacon Starter now included with GoGuardian Admin: Now you get a powerful suicide prevention tool that allows administrators to identify students who are most at risk as part of your Admin subscription.

Coming soon:

  • Native Agents deployment: As we strive for complete device agnosticism for GoGuardian, we will be releasing Native Agents deployment, starting with GoGuardian Admin.
  • Student engagement updates: We will be adding more detailed time-series-related data points to find trends in student engagement and browsing behavior.
  • Dashboard exports: Soon you’ll be able to export all of your favorite data directly from the main dashboard, making it easy to share information and saving you time.
  • UI improvements: Our design team is working hard to give you a new look and feel for the Admin dashboard and data reports.

Check out GoGuardian Admin!

GoGuardian Beacon

GoGuardian Beacon™ is a suicide prevention service designed to help identify students who are silently suffering, alert those who can help, and quickly activate your school's custom response plan.¹

Recent updates:

  • New Beacon 24/7: We added the option for a dedicated team of safety specialists to review and escalate active planning alerts 24 hours a day. These specialists operate within the U.S. and are specially trained to evaluate alerts.

Go to GoGuardian Beacon!

¹ GoGuardian Beacon serves as one data point of a school's overall suicide prevention program.

GoGuardian Fleet

With GoGuardian Fleet™, the leading education technology management tool, you can confidently track, assign, and report on your school or district’s devices with ease.

Recent updates:

  • Brand new interface! Fleet’s new hassle-free, clean, and organized interface makes device assignment straightforward, repair inventory easy to track, and data analytics reports simple to export.
  • Dedicated repair/damage tracking system: Your Fleet dashboard has detailed device repair ticketing information, including loaner device replacement status.
  • Quick Assign & Unassign of devices: Fleet’s streamlined, automated device assignment enables you to fast-track your Chromebook deployment process.
  • Bulk edit capabilities: You’ll save time by effortlessly importing existing device and student data, as well as editing in bulk with ease.
  • Know full device status: Fleet makes all of your device information from GAC readily accessible, allowing several tasks to be accomplished in one location with ease.

Coming soon:

  • Windows support: Soon you’ll be able to keep track of your Windows devices in Fleet!

Dive into GoGuardian Fleet!

GoGuardian Org Management

Administrators of GoGuardian accounts can manage, edit, and grant product access to users across your organization within Org Management.

Recent updates:

  • Active Sessions indicator: The new student-facing feature changes the GoGuardian extension to green when a student is in an active GoGuardian Teacher session.
  • Archive Users: This updated feature allows users to have a cleaner, concise table of active users that are most relevant to them.
  • Intune deployment: This new process enables customers to deploy GoGuardian using Intune, Microsoft's cloud-based MDM tool, on both Chrome and Edge browsers.
  • GoGuardian Ideas Forum: With this forum behind our familiar GoGuardian SSO login page, it's now even easier to give feedback, and users won't have to juggle another account.
  • Transparency around Clever data: The data that comes into GoGuardian is labeled, giving users a better understanding and insight into what is synced from a Clever integration.
  • Sync parent/guardians through Classlink: You can now sync parent/guardian contact info into GoGuardian directly from Classlink.
  • GoGuardian Teacher usage analytics: This feature audits end users who use GoGuardian Teacher, helping to identify instructional time gained using the product and highlight return of investment. It can also give guidance on which teachers may need help or training with the product.

Coming soon:

  • Scheduling settings: The Scheduling, School Hours, and School IP Range configurations, which usually live in the GoGuardian Admin product, are being migrated to Org Management to centralize settings common throughout our products.

Questions about any updates or the GoGuardian Suite’s bundle of products? Reach out to your GoGuardian representative, or contact us!

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