Classroom management software is software that helps teachers manage student devices in the classroom. Teachers can see, monitor, and direct students’ online activities on their Chromebooks, laptops, and Mac devices, all from their own computer. With these capabilities, teachers can minimize digital device distractions and keep students on task during class.
Not only advantageous for teachers, classroom management software provides helpful capabilities for busy district and school IT teams, too. Read on to learn more about how both teachers and technology teams benefit from classroom management software.
How Does Classroom Management Software Work?
The teacher is able to see their students’ computer screens from their own computer.
If a student is off-task, the teacher can message the student and redirect them back to class resources.
The teacher also has the option to close the browser tab containing the off-task content.
Classroom management software typically provides additional tools to help teachers communicate with students and keep them focused, including:
- Screen Lock: Freeze all student screens and send a custom message to get students’ attention (e.g., All eyes up front, please).
- Site Lock: Open and lock students to a particular website or set of websites, blocking all others (e.g., During online testing).
- Push URL: Push web pages to individual students or the entire class.
- Screen Share: Share an open tab or the entire desktop with a single student or the entire class.
- Announce: Send a message to all students that they must acknowledge to close (e.g., Important Reminder: Mid-term test tomorrow!).
How Does Classroom Management Software Help Teachers?
Leading class when students have access to Chromebooks, laptops, or iPads introduces new learning opportunities. However, trying to teach students who are hidden behind device screens also poses several challenges for teachers. Classroom management software addresses these challenges by giving teachers the tools and capabilities they need to keep students focused and engaged in class.
Classroom management software also gives teachers tools that facilitate teaching and collaboration. By making it easy to share digital resources with students and communicate with them during class, classroom management software helps teachers be more effective whether teaching in-person or remotely.
The Problem: Teachers Can’t See What Students Are Doing on Their Devices
Digital devices can be a significant source of distraction. With the internet at their fingertips, students may be tempted to watch YouTube videos, play games, message friends, or scroll social media instead of engaging in class.
The only way for teachers to know what students are doing is to walk around and look at each students’ screen or sit in the back of the classroom and commit their attention to monitoring. But they can’t realistically keep watch over students’ screens and teach at the same time.
Without an easier way to know for sure what students are doing on their devices, teachers have little assurance that students are focused on their classwork.
The Solution: Classroom Management Software Lets Teachers See Their Students’ Computer Screens
Classroom management software gives teachers screen monitoring ability. Teachers can see each of their students’ screens from their own computer screen.
By giving teachers a bird’s eye view of their students’ online activities, screen monitoring lets teachers finally see what students are doing behind their device screens. Teachers can quickly identify any off-task behavior during class and redirect students as necessary.
After class is over, teachers can also see students’ browsing history to know what sites they visited during class. This helps them identify students who are frequently off-task so they can proactively address these behaviors.
The Problem: Teachers Can’t Keep All of Their Students On Task and Engaged in Learning
When trying to keep 15, 30, or more students focused during class, knowing what they’re doing on their devices is a great start. But it doesn’t fully address the problem teachers face.
If several students are engaging in off-task behavior, teachers shouldn’t need to visit each one to redirect them back to lesson resources. They can’t teach class and do this at the same time. Furthermore, as soon as they’ve walked away, students could go right back to what they were doing.
Without a way to easily keep students on task while also effectively leading class, teachers are forced to choose one or the other. It’s nearly impossible to do both.
The Solution: Classroom Management Software Lets Teachers Remove Distractions to Keep Students Focused
Beyond providing visibility into student devices, classroom management software gives teachers the ability to control what resources students are accessing. Teachers are able to spot off-task behaviors and then remotely direct the student back to class resources.
For example, let’s say the teacher sees that a student has opened a new tab in Google to play a game. The teacher can either message the student directly or discreetly get the student back on track by closing the browser tab, right from the teacher’s own computer.
Similarly, teachers can open a specific web page on all student devices and block all other websites. This can be done for the whole class, groups of students, or individual students. This capability is particularly helpful during online testing to ensure all students are in the test and unable to access other websites.
By reviewing students’ browsing history, teachers can also identify the distracting websites that are most problematic. They can then create their own block lists to restrict access to those sites during class, even if those sites are allowed by their school’s web filter.
The Problem: Teachers Can Be Resistant to Technology and Avoid Using It
Technology in the classroom can be a great tool, helping students connect to learning in new and exciting ways. However, when students’ laptop screens literally sit between them and the teacher, technology can feel more like a divide.
Teachers will also understandably be skeptical of technology in the classroom if it feels like students are using it more for entertainment than for learning. If this misuse continues unchecked, teachers will see technology as an annoying distraction that detracts from learning.
Teachers may also resist technology because it feels like another demand on them. Given the many responsibilities they’re juggling, the additional task of learning and implementing new technology can feel like another item on their to-do list.
The Solution: Classroom Management Software Helps Teachers See How They Can Use Technology to Their Greatest Advantage
Technology can and should be viewed as a tool to enhance learning, not detract from it. Classroom management software can help facilitate this shift by giving teachers helpful and easy-to-use tools that help them be even better at what they do best.
Classroom management software makes it easy for teachers to point students to the right resources so they can maximize instructional time. Teachers can push online lesson resources to the entire class to get everyone quickly on task. They can also share their screens to make the learning experience interactive and improve student comprehension.
Teachers can also take advantage of tools that let them communicate in ways that students understand and prefer. Teachers can send chat messages to the entire class, as well as send and receive individual student messages. This capability lets teachers communicate directly with a student about a sensitive issue, for example, and avoid having to call the student out publicly.
Some classroom management software also supports real-time video conferencing, a particularly helpful feature when teaching students remotely. Teachers can start a 1:1 video chat with a student from within the software, making it easy to offer individual instruction and support.
How Does Classroom Management Software Make Technology Management Easier for IT Teams?
Classroom management software can be a game-changer for teachers, but they’re not the only ones who benefit. Classroom management software can also provide IT teams with valuable data tracking and reporting, as well as ease the burden of technology management.
For starters, a classroom management software should give IT administrators visibility into how teachers and students are using the software. This visibility helps with measuring adoption and effectiveness, as well as identifying where teachers may need additional training or support. But the benefits of classroom management software to IT teams don’t stop there.
Keep Track of Student Device Usage
Classroom management software can provide administrators with visibility into device usage. For example, they can quickly get a count of the total number of student devices in use currently, as well as during specific periods of time, as well as what sites are being visited. For district-level IT teams, the ability to sort this information by school provides even more insight into device usage across the entire school district.
Track and Recover Lost Student Devices
Some classroom management software can also track the number of lost devices at any time. After a device is identified as lost, IT admins can use geo tracking information to identify where those devices are and enable tracking to log IP addresses and other information to facilitate quicker recovery.
Share Roles & Responsibilities with Teachers
Time-consuming and tedious tasks like password resets are the bane of an IT admin’s existence. Classroom management software that lets you give teachers the ability to reset passwords can be a significant time saver. A similar task is responding to teacher requests for custom website blocking. Classroom management software that lets teachers create their own block lists—or integrates directly with their school web filter—takes the burden off of busy IT teams.
Help Teachers Get More Comfortable with Technology
Edtech adoption can be a major hurdle for IT teams. The benefits of technology may be obvious to them, but teachers may not be as convinced. At the same time, many schools have made significant investments in edtech tools, but for those investments to pay off, the tools need to be used. Classroom management software can help with this, too. By making technology usage less intimidating for teachers, classroom management software can pave the way for greater adoption and use of edtech investments across your district or school.
Make Technology Management Easier for Teachers and IT Administrators
Classroom management software gives teachers the ability to see, monitor, and control students’ device usage during class. Securly Classroom is easy-to-use classroom management software that puts even more helpful features at teachers’ fingertips to ease technology management in the classroom. Providing an administrative dashboard and features designed specifically for the needs of IT, Securly Classroom makes technology management simpler for busy IT teams, too.
Curious to learn more about Securly Classroom? Here are some helpful resources:
