The GoGuardian App

I am a student that is one of the top of the class AND STILL SUFFER BECAUSE OF THIS APP. I once opened “Renaissance” which is a very trustable reading app to find books and test on them. Ever since I was introduced to this app, I kept it as a tab to go in quicker. One day, I opened the tab, logged in, and found “THIS APP HAS BEEN BLOCKED”. I now have to go to something something in order to go in to Renaissance. ITS ANNOYING. After school, I searched “Learning Games”, blocked. I put it in other words, BLOCKED! I also search something for example, “Wild animals that team up together to get food”, it gets blocked. Lots of times I put what shows up in the suggestions because I’m sometimes lazy or what I’m searching is too long! When I click a suggestion I needed, BLOCKED. I have to type it myself! I hate this app.

I’m a student, and I’m a beginner in Italian. My Italian teacher recommended the class to use ‘WordRefrence’ so we did, 3 days later it was blocked. Mind you, this website is used for LOOKING UP words in a language YOU DON’T KNOW, it’s meant to be a replacement for translate/google translate. Not to mention, the over blocking, this hasn’t happened once with WordRefrence, but I was in the middle of a coding app (I am speaking about Scratch) and in the middle of it, it was blocked by gogaurdian. I got a 0 on the assignment, despite me telling the principal, he said ‘well it isn’t educational!!’ well my bad, since when was coding for TECHNOLOGY isn’t educational. Also, the constant watching. The teachers can see your screen 24/7 all day, all night. Even during BREAKS. Mind you, not all people have home computers and want to keep their privacy, but they can’t. Due to the 24/7 watching.

I'm a student, and I hate this stupid tool that my school uses. They block everything with it, the school or a teacher can just shut down my browsing until they feel like turning it back on. I've even had google docs and slides blocked multiple times, causing me to lose most my progress on assignments, some of them were even big projects that hugely affected my grade. GoGuardian also acts as a spyware. I was told by my band teacher a few years ago in 6th grade that if a teacher or admin really wanted to, they could just go on GoGuardian and spy on kids why they're at home. This isn't just students not liking having games blocked. It's active based on the chromebook, not even the internet, so if someone connects to their home internet while out of the school they can still be watched. This app is just Spyware wearing a thin veil of student protection. Stop spying on minors and find a better way to moderate.