As we enter the new school year, we are excited to highlight a host of new features in Securly Classroom that are designed to make back-to-school a breeze for teachers and admins alike.
These features are aimed at simplifying classroom management, improving student engagement, and providing a more seamless teaching and learning experience.
Let’s dive in!
1) Manage classes more easily with Student Groups
Our new Student Groups feature allows teachers to group students based on their specific learning needs – perfect for organizing your back-to-school classes. This feature can also be used to manage and monitor students during testing sessions, ensuring a secure and controlled environment.
Simply navigate to the Groups menu at the top of the class view, click Add group, and choose the students you want to include.
Learn more about Student Groups here.
2) Communicate faster with Saved Announcements
Teachers can now save class time by saving announcements for future reuse.
In the Announcement sidebar, you’ll now see two lists: “Recent” shows your 10 most recently sent announcements, while the “Saved” list shows announcements saved for future reuse. Simply click an announcement in either list to paste its contents into the Announcement text field, edit the text if desired, and hit Send.
Learn more about Saved Announcements here.
3) Enhanced support for Windows
We have introduced additional functionality for Windows this back-to-school season, allowing teachers to see a student’s entire desktop without needing a browser extension. This gives teachers more visibility and control over student devices and helps them keep students focused on lessons.
If students use a browser, both Edge and Chrome are fully supported to view tabs, block websites, and push classroom content.
For more information on this feature while it is in beta testing, contact your dedicated customer success manager.
4) Change settings during class
Our latest update allows teachers to modify session settings during an ongoing class session. Teachers can also apply a block list while a class is running, or switch from an active block list to another one without ending the class.
Simply click the new gear icon in the top right corner of the running class session screen to change session settings or apply or switch block lists.
Learn more about changing settings during class here.
5) Improved scheduling capabilities this back-to-school period
Districts now have the flexibility to define unique school hours for individual schools or groups of schools. To start defining schedules, go to Settings, then click School Schedules.
6) Eliminate back-to-school hassles with improvements to Site Lock
And now, a feature you may not even notice! Site Lock has been enhanced to automatically determine which other sites (dependencies) are needed for a particular locked website to function properly. This eliminates the need to identify and add dependencies manually.
If you’ve ever had a specific site that you found challenging to configure to work properly with Site Lock that otherwise would work with Push URL, be sure to try it again now, as it will likely work automatically.
Magic!
7) Temporarily allow sites pushed to students in Securly Filter
For schools using Securly Filter, this new integration ensures that sites pushed to students through Push URL and Site Lock will not be blocked by Filter.
When a site is pushed, Classroom will create a Temporary Allow in Securly Filter for the selected site or sites for the students in the current class.
Let’s make back-to-school a breeze together!
These new Securly Classroom features are designed to make classroom management easier and more efficient for teachers. After all, we want to help you defeat distractions and use your classroom technology to its fullest potential.
We are excited to see how these features will be used in classrooms this school year – and beyond!
To learn more, why not chat with one of our Classroom specialists today?
To see how Securly Classroom has made a meaningful difference for a school just like yours, give our Atlanta Public Schools’ case study a look.