GoGuardian, headquartered in Los Angeles, offers GoGuardian Teacher, a classroom management and digital learning environment application featuring activity timeline, screen viewer, and other features.
N/A
ReadyTalk (Discontinued)
Score 4.0 out of 10
N/A
From PGi, ReadyTalk is a web conferencing solution that has been discontinued. PGi's new web conferencing solution is called GlobalMeet Collaboration.
GoGuardian Teacher is great for a teacher who needs a way to monitor student activities and work time on a laptop. It is easy to set up, simple to use and helps to keep students accountable when online in class. It integrates with Google Classroom which is a big help. It is more powerful for teachers experienced in using tech in the classroom. The archiving ability is great but the UX needs to improve.
Think about your needs as an organization and whether you will be using primarily audio only or audio plus web. If audio only then ReadyTalk will certainly meet your need. If web, then shop around for functionality, support, and price. I am fairly "neutral" on ReadyTalk - neither a huge cheerleader nor a huge detractor.
Screen share/conference calling: They make it quick and easy to join a meeting for your guests. They don't need to download anything; all they need to do is click on the link and enter the access code.
Mobile App: The app has been great for our team as they can now easily start a meeting with a click of a button from the app.
Recordings: It is very easy to record a webinar or conference call which you can then download.
If ReadyTalk provided an easier way to set up the initial call through a different platform aside from email, it may make things a bit simpler.
ReadyTalk's monitor-specific screensharing process is a bit clunky and could be a bit better in identifying which monitor has been selected for sharing.
ReadyTalk's admin dashboard could use a UI update.
For a technology-heavy school, it is a necessary and good tool for managing classroom use of laptops. It is easy to set up and use. Helps track time on task and internet usage. Another source of data when speaking to parents about student work and activity. Can help plan and manage work time when you have limited devices.
ReadyTalk is easy to use, but I did find the initial integration to Outlook a bit cumbersome. I couldn't tell you how to do it now - someone else had to walk me through it when I started at the company. We also have a lot of issues with people trying to use their computers for audio; often, it stops working entirely mid-meeting
The support is great. On the rare occasion that I've had to reach out to support they have been very quick to respond and extremely helpful. I've also had teachers reach out directly to support themselves. Most of the time I don't even know that a teacher has reached out to support until after the fact. They always seem satisfied.
I have used Hapara in a previous school district. GoGuardian is more user-friendly and easier to setup. I do think GoGuardian has some room on improving the ease of finding some areas of the program, but once you know the path to get there it is quick.
Other regions in our organization have implemented WebEx. We have experienced poor audio and lack of customer service in our region. For quick interoffice communication and screen share, we use Skype for Business. Many people who have had the choice between WebEx and ReadyTalk will, more times than not, request a ReadyTalk account to be created. They feel the interface is much simpler to adapt. WebEx is not super friendly, especially on the backend of the tool.
We have been able to identify inappropriate websites that students have discovered. For example anonymous proxies, movie streaming, etc. Through this software, we have been able to identify the students and in turn block the websites.
We have been able to identify which students have been using other user's accounts. This was an unintended side effect of the software. If a teacher knows that a student is using a Chromebook but the student is not showing up in the software, we are easily able to deduce that the user must be using another student's account.
Positive impact. Able to fluidly demonstrate our software over conference call at the drop of a dime
Positively impacts clients onboarding process due to ability to screen share with a high amount of people at the same time
Higher ROI due to ability to show clients our new platform before their purchase in order to show the value of our product in real time via Readytalk conference
