Enhance Classroom Management with Securly Classroom

In a 1:1 environment, students are on their computers for a good portion of the day. As much as we want them to be actively engaged throughout each and every period of the day, we know that it is easy to get distracted by YouTube or games or other websites. Teachers can certainly walk around the classroom to ensure students are on task, but now there is an easier way!

Securly Classroom is a classroom management tool designed to help teachers keep the focus on student learning. It allows teachers to monitor their students' devices, share their screen directly to student devices, and block specific websites during class time.

Teachers simply login with their Google account and Securly Classroom automatically connects to Google Classroom. Choose the class you are currently in and click the "Start" button. Make sure to uncheck any students who may be absent from class that day or outside of your room for any other reason. There are a few options for the session on the left side if you are interested, and then you click the "Start Session" button.

At that point, you will be able to monitor your students' devices live. You don't need to do anything else from there if you don't want to and it will track which sites your students visit during your class time and then send you a summary afterwards, so it is not necessary for you to watch the dashboard the whole time - you can still hold students accountable later.

If you want to dive more deeply into the features, when you are monitoring you have a toolbar at the top with a few options - all of which can be applied to anywhere from one to all students:

• Screen Lock prevents students from using their device at all.

• Site Lock allows the teacher to lock students to a single website or a group of sites.

• Push URL will automatically open a new tab with your selected website on student devices.

• Share Your Screen allows you to push your own screen to student devices for demonstration purposes.

• Announce sends a message to student devices.

• Release unlocks anything you may have previously locked (either site or screen)

Some other options you have within Securly Classroom are to:

• Send chat messages to individual students (perhaps to tell them to close their current tab and get back to work) and allow students to send messages to you (perhaps requesting help)

• Allow students to virtually raise their hand

• Close specific tabs on student devices

• Take screenshots of student screens

• Block specific sites

• Only allow access to specific sites

• Set up "Observation Groups" to allow case managers or administrators to view specific students at any point during the school day - this is for observation only, there are no controls.

To end a class before the scheduled time or add time to the session, click the "Class ends:" button in the top right corner and select either "Add 5 min" or "Stop Class".

I will be working on creating my own tutorial videos, but until then, Securly has their own collection. Just be sure you are looking at the "Classroom" videos!

A few caveats for teachers to remember...

• You should only be starting a session during the actual class period time.

• Make sure to end the session before the end of class.

• Never start a session for anything other than an actual classroom (don't launch a session for a club, organization, or sport).

• Be aware that teacher usage of Securly Classroom is also tracked.

• Classes can only be started Monday-Friday between 7am-3pm.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns or need help getting set up, you can always reach out to me via email, schedule time to meet with me, or schedule time for me to come into your classroom to walk you through it during class.