Classwize Reviews

Summary: No attempt made to respond or fix issues. Our district got this because it was cheaper than Google Classroom. Well, there's a reason it's cheaper. It barely works.

Positive: When it works, you can easily block internet and add students to the class. When it works, it has an easy to view whole-class interface.

Negative: It rarely works for an entire day and is very slow to open individual screens if you want to see a particular student as opposed to the whole class. I do NOT recommend this product at all, unless you only want to monitor student screens occasionally. If you are trying to teach remotely/ virtually you will be frustrated every day, and so will the parents of your virtual students.

Summary: If you visit their website, You will see the following: "Classwize provides full-screen visibility on all school-issued devices to keep students learning and teachers teaching". One, it does not keep students learning because they can just use their phones or play an offline game like Snake or Minesweeper and then disconnect from the internet (where Classwize doesn't work). Two, it doesn't help teachers keep teaching because they're too busy staring at Classwize and closing other people's tabs than actually teaching. Classwize gives teachers TOO MUCH control over student computers, and all that does is create the "I hate you, you hate me" situation. So that's a load of BS.

On the website, they also go on forever about how they give teachers "control over student internet activity", how it "Restricts learners’ access to specific apps and sites", and most ironic of all, how it, and I QUOTE, "Rewards Good Behavior: Guides and reinforces responsible use by students whose constructive internet use can be a model for others". What kind of good behavior do you expect when you block every site on the internet except for Google Docs, huh??? What kind of good behavior do you expect when it closes and doesn't save your work on other tabs in this so-called "Focus Mode"??? What kind of good behavior do you expect when it lags the crap out of your computer and there's no way to turn it off, even at home??? If anything, this makes things worse...

Even though every student in my school (the administration did a survey) hates this with a passion, I've got to laugh about how it doesn't even care about how it impacts students. The site doesn't mention a single review or experience from a student (oh, there are plenty from teachers), which is ludicrous since most users will be students.

Fun fact: All our student council presidents and representatives were selected by the student body because they listed "Ending the use of Classwize" as their number 1 campaign goal. I'm not kidding. Everyone hates this.

Now for those "red flags". To make things clear, I GOOGLE WHAT I WANT, and I DO NOT NEED THIS THING RAISING A RED FLAG AND SENDING ME TO ADMINISTRATION BECAUSE I SEARCHED "terminal velocity of a bullet" FOR PHYSICS CLASS.

Some of our teachers warn us before class starts that they will be turning on Classwize in X minutes, to give us a little time to save our work for other classes and close tabs with sensitive information on them (don't get me started on how many ways this violates personal privacy).

Sending red flags is beyond the control of the teacher, unfortunately, so my physics teacher and I wasted an hour of our lives trying to clear things up.

Anyways I have better things to do than write about this, so thus I end this review.

Tl; DR version:
Don't use it unless you want this generation to grow up with some serious grudges and problems.

Positive: Literally nothing.

Negative: For one, it gives teachers way too much control over students' screens.

Summary: Horrific, I would much rather walk around the room and check my student's computers. When I need it, it does not work.

Positive: It's the product we must use to watch our students' screens. There is nothing I can say that makes this product any good.

Negative: Everything is generic and does not allow you to do much to your student's computer. When I was a computer teacher with desktops LANschool was 1000% better.