GoGuardian Reviews

Pros

It is always running, both at home and at school. It automatically sends alerts about any potentially harmful internet use. It allows teachers to help kids stay focused in class. It provides another way for teachers to show parents what their child is doing during class time.

Cons

I wish individual students could be put into different "scenes" at the same time, but that is just me wishing for an additional feature.

Pros

One of the big pros of GoGuardian is its integration with Google. With just a few clicks, our staff are set up to monitor and guide students through appropriate device usage. The ability to apply Scenes to regulate how much freedom students have in their browsing really helps class time to be used efficiently. The ability to personalize how many "screens" are visible at once on the dashboard is really helpful as well.

Cons

The biggest complaint I have is how unreliable and limited the software is at times. I understand that, more than ever, people are using the internet and devices, but it is fairly common lately where the service is experiencing issues and cannot be used or is extremely limited. The program is great when it is working smoothly, but it experiences issues often enough to be irritating.

Pros

It does well filtering what you put in if it is worded correctly

Cons

I know everything is a learning curve but this is a tad more difficult. Thank goodness support is very helpful!

Pros

Ease of use - once set up, the information we get about student usage history, the ease of locking down custom filter policies, Smart alerts are a nice feature for tracking and being alerted to students more risky behaviors.

Cons

Sometimes sites would be categorized under a different category than one would expect. There is no "super-admin" access to GoGuardian teacher to oversee teacher classroom setups.

Pros

GoGuardian's teacher end content managment is easy to set up and use. Class rostering is amazing simple with Google Classroom sync. I love the new video chat feature on GoGuardian Suite

Cons

N/A. I am totally satisfied with this product.

Pros

Goguardian is a great resource to keep tabs on students without having to hover over a computer screen or their shoulder. You can set scenes to keep students academically honest and keep the integrity of the lesson while knowing that your student is paying attention to the task at hand.

Cons

There are some glitches, however, their customer support personnel reply within the hour of a request.

Pros

I love everything about GoGuardian. I am able to aggressively monitor student academic growth through GoGuardian. I am also able to manage the websites that students use on a daily basis.

Cons

I do not have any feedback for growth! GoGuardian is an amazing program. You will not regret it!

Pros

GoGuardian is incredibly easy to use as a teacher and it makes monitoring very simple. I can look and check in a couple of seconds what each of my students is doing, if they are on task and, if needed, close their tabs.

Cons

I don't think I would change anything. I love all the features!

Pros

I like that it provides me another way to discreetly interact with my students. I also like how it saves the student activity if it is needed at a later time.

Cons

The scheduling is very linear. We follow many different schedules through the year and it would be nice to have more options for scheduling (which I believe may be in the works as I type!)

Pros

Easy set-up!
An innovative way to keep track of students.

Cons

Wish there was a way to quickly view timelines. Only able to scroll one minute at a time. Takes too long to check a whole day.

Pros

I love being able to see what all my students are working on/doing both in my class and at home. This made virtual learning so much easier this past school year! I love being able to message my students to check in when I know they may not feel like asking a question. It eliminates some pressure. Also, It is great to be able to take screenshots right in the program to document when students do great or are off task. The new annotation and student group features are fantastic additions as well!

I also love being able to schedule classes and automatically start a "scene" that blocks anything I do not want students on during our class session. It helps to prevent students from being off task on their device when you can't observe every screen.

Cons

The only cons I have are:
1. There is a minor delay on what the students are doing and what I see.
2. I cannot see where their mouse if if they are trying to point to something and ask if that is what I am referring to.
3. If they have the chat window open, I cannot see their work page at the same time.
4. It would be nice to be able to turn scenes off for individual students, as a sort of incentive, without totally excluding them from the session and being unable to see anything they are on.

Pros

Over the years of use, many new features/upgrades have been release, at no additional cost to us. The support is great!

Cons

The price was pretty steep, until we negotiated lower pricing through our vendor. There are still some granular Admin permissions that are not yet available. But, I have been part of multiple brief one-on-one discussions or panels with GoGuardian reps, regarding adding these features and more.

Pros

Instructional videos are easy to follow.
Features are mostly intuitive.
Multiple groups/classes can be monitored at once, allowing for greater flexibility.
Scenes auto-populate tabs, reducing lost time as students figure out where to go.

Cons

Glitches are difficult to troubleshot, but seem to resolve on their own eventually.
Does not prevent students from opening installed apps and getting off-task.

Pros

This software is easy to set up classrooms and the ability to monitor students' web usage. I did not realize you could even monitor web usage when students were virtual until this year. This was a big plus!

Cons

I have not delved too deeply as I just use it for easy monitoring of students. I wish it would not have set times for classes as trying to find individual students when they come in during study hall to work would make it even better!

Pros

It alerts us to inappropriate searches, monitors youtube, and other daily student activities. It has a great teacher interface to monitor their classrooms as well.

Cons

It is pricey for what it does. If they raise the prices one more time, we will drop them. You have to switch between two different user interfaces to get a complete look at student activities. They have a new admin 2.0 panel, but have not merged the full functionality of the old and new panel together yet. Not sure why?

Pros

For the teachers that use GoGaurdian to manage their classroom, it has a very easy and quick learning curve. When used properly, it works very effectively.

Cons

My biggest complaint with GoGaurdian is that as an IT Admin, I wish there was an administrator dashboard where I could edit/alter a teachers sessions. There are too many times that a teacher will have a sub, but will forget to unblock certain sites that their students need while they are away. The only way to get around this is to contact GoGuardian and ask them to edit the session.

Pros

GoGuardian does exactly what it says it will do. It guards our chromebooks superbly and was not hard to get set up. It has many customizable settings that you can tweek to get the notifications you want. The reports are easy to read. Their support is great.

Cons

Sometimes it can be confusing trying to get everything set right. Once I locked everyone out of accessing the internet and had trouble figuring out what I did so I could change it bac.

Pros

I like the ease of use, the opportunity to send alerts, and the learning filter. With a filter that learns and adapts we can be more effective in the protection of students while they are online. This protection occurs while on and off campus with their District issued devices.

Cons

The Theft recovery has been an issue the entire time we have had the software. It is slow and doesn't seem to work as seamlessly as I would like.

Pros

I really love that this software lets our teachers monitor what their kids are doing on their Chromebooks. For teachers to have instant access like that is important with 1:1 devices.

Cons

Some of the features are harder to set up for staff and often times kids screens will time out on the teacher's display for seemingly no reason.

Pros

I love that I can see what each student is doing and open a direct monitored chat with that student when they are having issues or have questions. Very little to no interruptions of service.

Cons

So far, I have no dislikes. Any time I have had questions, the service team has been ready to answer and very helpful!

Pros

When teaching virtual, I am able to see exactly what they are doing and their progress on their assignments.

Cons

There isn't anything that I do not like about it. It is very easy to use.

Pros

- Puts teachers back in control of technology usage
- Allows for administrative involvement immediately when an issue is detected through SmartAlerts
- Easy to digest data

Cons

- Multiple Admin panels (Admin 2.0 and Classic view) that contain different bits of information

Pros

I like that it's easy to see exactly what everyone is doing from an admin end. I like that I can login from anywhere to the admin console to sniff out trouble. From the teacher end, I like the scenes that allow me to guide my classes, whether they are in person or remote!

Cons

It's hard to find some of the settings, and sometimes it is hard to figure out how to track a student's activity. But once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy!

Pros

I love the real-time feedback this program offers while my students are engaging in a technology-based assignment.

Cons

I have not found anything I dislike about this program.

Pros

GoGuardian makes it easy for me to see if my students are engaged and on task. I like that I can close tabs, set scenes, and send them messages through the chat feature - this especially works with shy students who might prefer to ask questions through chat instead of in front of the whole group.

Cons

There are a lot of workarounds where students can still access blocked sites, such as YouTube and gaming websites.