“Will GoGuardian go?” That is the question that many students are asking after the Montgomery County Board of Education (BOE) received the 2024-25 proposed operating budget from MCPS. In an unexpected twist, the proposal excluded the software that allows teachers to monitor students’ online activity during class. While it is not finalized, the potential $230k budget cut has escalated the controversial discussion about technology in the classroom.
“You can do so much with it,” WCHS science teacher Mary McGehee said. “I have never really done this but you can send chats to kids, exit their tabs for them and catch them when they are playing games, so it is actually really helpful.”
In the BOE meeting, it was confirmed that there would no longer be a license for GoGuardian. However, no further information was provided as to whether or not teachers would have access to a similar tool. Especially amid the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), when it is more unclear than ever how the technology might find its way into the classroom, voluntarily giving up the only existing control over it seems to be a head-scratching decision.
“I think with the real burgeoning of AI, we are in uncharted waters,” WCHS English teacher Adina Loeb said. “We need to figure out how to embrace it and use it rather than just be afraid, but I think we’re still very much in just figuring out how to navigate.”
GoGuardian is not the only tool related to the internet that has been cut in recent years. At the end of the 2021-22 school year, MCPS decided they would no longer partner with “Turnitin.com,” a software company that is used to check the work that students turn in online to make sure that it is original and free of AI influences. Since losing these products makes it harder to guarantee academic dishonesty is not taking place on computer-based assignments, it is more unclear than ever what the future holds for online work.
“I am not totally comfortable with it, unfortunately,” Loeb said. “Especially since we do not have Turnitin anymore, which is a shame because that was helpful for monitoring academic dishonesty. That is why a lot of the English classes have currently been totally analog.”
In the BOE meeting, MCPS Chief of Strategic Initiatives Stephanie Sheron stated that approximately 6,000 teachers out of 15,000 had used GoGuardian at least once in the past year, and 3,000 had used it in the past month. Though that is less than half of MCPS teachers, it was also noted that a majority of those users came from middle and high schools. This means that those numbers are consistent with teachers using it for big assignments, since elementary school students are usually not taking tests online.
“It has been very effective for those situations,” McGehee said. “I have caught two kids cheating and I have also watched kids progress through things and been like ‘Wait, she is stuck, so let me go check with her and make sure that she is okay.’ So, it has been good for supporting students and just ensuring academic dishonesty is not taking place.”
