GoGuardian, headquartered in Los Angeles, offers GoGuardian Teacher, a classroom management and digital learning environment application featuring activity timeline, screen viewer, and other features.
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Zoom
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Zoom is a unified communications platform primarily known for its use as a web conferencing tool. It features HD video and audio, collaboration tools, chat functionality, and an enterprise cloud phone system.
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.
In the new area of pandemic-era meetings online, I really like the opportunity that Zoom provides to have a meeting space. The audio and video quality is typically good, with problems usually being blamed on the bandwidth of the service provider. The recordings are great to be able to use once they have been processed. In fact, if there was one thing I would improve about recordings, it would be the amount of time it takes to render the video ready for output and sharing.
You need an app to make the calls and meetings, but it would be perfect if it had a web-based option.
Sometimes when internet speed drops, the audio quality also drops; I would understand the video quality dropping, but the audio doesn't consume much bandwidth, so it would be nice to have a consistent audio even on low internet speeds.
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.
We're sticking with Zoom for the foreseeable future--given its compelling feature set, ease of use, and advanced technology, there's just no other competition to be excited about. Plus it's a Gartner-recognized industry leader, so it's a rather easy choice.
Zoom has been very good in terms of usability as I have rarely had issues joining the meetings on desktop and it has always provided me with a stable audio and video and it makes it very easy for me to get through any meetings without much problem. I have found that it helps create a very friendly environment with my team through the creation of conferences and moderated chat rooms.
There have been less than a handful of outages during our two years with Zoom, and whenever there was one, an email informing us of the outage went out immediately, and they had the issue resolved shortly thereafter.
Zoom has among the best performance of any video conference platform, as I've mentioned several times. Besides that, their Chat platform works great, and their back end always runs smooth. It's unfortunate that reporting can now only be done by one month at a time, but nonetheless, it only takes a second to run any kind of Zoom report, whether it's an attendee report, Poll results, a user report, a list of meetings from the past month, etc.
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.
As I've written before, Zoom makes us feel like we matter and that we're a client rather than a customer. They want us to succeed and they put in the time to make sure that we do. I feel like they're more of a business partner rather than simply a vendor or supplier. They spent a lot of time onboarding with us, giving us demos, helping us get set up, and then giving us follow-up to be sure it's going well.
If you receive any pushback from higher ups, point to any of the various positive reviews like this one. Or show Zoom's excellent Gartner report, or articles describing Zoom's partnership with Sequoia capital. It's not difficult to show how Zoom is a trustworthy industry leader with best-in-class technology.
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.
Zoom cannot be beaten for ubiquity - 100% of my clients and prospective clients are already familiar with Zoom. This is the #1 reason why I use Zoom. Additionally, Zoom integrates with AcuityScheduling, saving me a lot of time in creating meetings and adding them to the calendar. Zoom is disappointing in terms of video quality, interactivity features, and privacy. In cases where I need to use the recording of webinars for digital products, I will always use Crowdcast, and in cases where privacy is essential, I will use JitsiMeet.
Overall I feel it is a fair price for what you pay for and the time constraints are not an issue at all. Zoom allows users to be on there for hours and hours and also you can launch as many meetings as you want. Overall I am very happy with using Zoom for our business.
Because the Basic licenses are completely free, and because it's very easy to configure and install Zoom, and because anyone can join Zoom from a link without needing an account, scaling is a Breeze. There are absolutely no roadblocks. My company keeps adding more Zoom Pro license every week since it's so in demand. We were able to convert users from several different platforms onto Zoom with no trouble at all.
The professional service that Zoom offers us in a particular way has been really successful for us to diversify functions and highlight others that allow us to link our remote work in a much more effective way.
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.
It enables me to send and receive messages from my team members during video calls, handling online presentations.
With the ability to quickly stop, mute, and even receive notifications when someone enters or exits the meeting room, I'm never obligated to show up while making a call.
It is possible to record online meetings for future reference and more effective customer service. As we dealt with a lockdown, Zoom helped our business run smoothly.
