Del Val students are frustrated by a safety feature on the MacBook Neos, Gaggle, which has contributed to disrupting learning when trying to complete work online. Gaggle is a digital safety management and student surveillance system used by schools in order to monitor student activity on school-issued accounts and devices.
The system continuously scans for signs of safety risks, mental health struggles and behavioral concerns. Students are upset by its constant interruption of repeated sign-in tabs.
“Gaggle itself is actually not new to Del Val,” Information Technology Manager Matthew Cirigliano said. “We have used Gaggle Safety Management since 2014 to help monitor our student Google Workspace environment, including school email, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and other services, as well as Canvas. What has changed is the online environment students are using.”
What’s new this year is an additional safety layer, Gaggle’s Web Activity Monitoring.
In “The Delphi Detectives” case on Gaggle, they discovered a common complaint amongst the student body, as well as teachers.
“I did a Blooket review first day for my students, and one of my students, every time she answered a question, the Gaggle thing would pop-up, so she was unable to continue her review,” Paraprofessional Kaitlin Donnelly said.
Gaggle has caused a constant pop-up of repeated sign-in tabs. Sometimes this caused two tabs to open, and others, 17 sign-in tabs.
“Students experiencing repeated Gaggle tabs should not try to remove or disable the managed extension,” Cirigliano said. “They can close the duplicate tabs, continue working and report the problem to us so we can document which devices are being affected.”
Students have been instructed to send any questions, problems or suggestions to neohelp@dvrhs.k12.nj.us.
“Feedback is especially helpful right now because there are things students and teachers will discover through everyday use that we could not necessarily predict during the initial setup,” Cirigliano said. “If something doesn’t make sense, a setting is interfering with an assignment, or students have an idea that would improve the experience, we want to hear about it.”
Although there seems to be some workarounds and tech is working on more permanent solutions, Del Val students will not forget the frustration that Gaggle caused during the first several weeks of a fresh new school year.
The system caused severe classroom disruption and distraction for all students. A fix is being worked on, but the lost classroom time cannot be given back.
“Gaggle has definitely been an incredibly frustrating aspect of this new school year, a lot of people miss the iPads and I feel like Gaggle is really exacerbating that,” Editor-in-Chief, Emma Haig said. “Hopefully, all of the Gaggle problems will be resolved soon, but getting ‘Gaggled’ will definitely be a shared memory for all students this year.”
The Editorial Board voted that 13 editors have had issues with Gaggle, one has not and two abstained from voting.
