As temporary school closures due to COVID-19 push education online, a US platform is striving to make remote learning a safe experience for schools and K–12 students.
ManagedMethods, a leading Google G Suite and Microsoft 365 cybersecurity and student safety platform for K–12 school districts, today announced the addition of Google Meet and Chat monitoring and reporting to its platform.
The extra functionality has been specially designed to give school districts full visibility and control into all lessons and student activities taking place within Google Meet and Chat.
“The current circumstances due to COVID-19 have rapidly transformed K–12 education, and brought with them new cybersecurity and student safety challenges. Schools are relying on Google Meet for video conferencing and Google Chat for communications," said Charlie Sander, CEO of ManagedMethods.
“Our new Google Meet and Chat monitoring functionality will give IT teams more insight into school meetings to better protect sensitive data, secure remote learning, keep meetings private and students safe.”
The monitoring and reporting platform updates school IT administrators on who has joined a meeting or virtual classroom and from which device. It also helps schools monitor the images and text content of remote learning environments for any cyber-bullying, threats of violence, discrimination, and warning signs of self-harm and domestic abuse.
The rapid transition to virtual learning as a result of the health pandemic has posed a challenge for even the wealthiest school districts. When conducting remote learning, districts are still responsible for complying with student data privacy regulations, including FERPA, COPPA, and CIPA.
For IT teams, that means securing video meetings against unauthorized access by any non-organizational account—including a parent or guardian account—while all school activity takes place outside the network perimeter.
According to ManagedMethod's chief revenue officer, David Waugh, effecting the transition from face-to-face to virtual learning is just one part of the challenge schools are facing right now.
“We consistently heard from our customers who have made the transition to remote learning that Google Meet and Chat use has rapidly increased, and they needed a tool to give them visibility and control into the activity taking place there," said Waugh.