For about a decade, classroom technology quietly broke something important.
Teachers lost their line of sight into student work.
I don’t mean theory—I mean the simple ability to know what students are actually doing.
Some call this “command and control,” but that misses the point.
What teachers actually need is simple: the ability to know what students are doing, in real time, so they can guide and support them.
We need the old fashioned line-of-sight supervision and guidance that instructors maintained in effective classrooms in the ages before every student got a ChromeBook with a pile of office productivity software. I knew exactly what my students were doing as I circulated the classroom. I could look over their shoulder and contribute advice to a forming essay. I could redirect students who found something off-task more interesting to do. I could ensure with some reliability that no cheat sheets were being used on tests and that students were doing their own work. I was able to keep the class workflow moving so we didn’t fall behind with delays and procrastination.
Then came ChromeBooks whose screens we could not see or were easily hidden. With that came office productivity tools designed for mature adults in paying jobs who were motivated for the most part to get their work done. Ironically, tools designed for productive adults often made classrooms less productive.
There are a number of expensive software on the market now for monitoring student screens. At my last district, we had a product that let us monitor everyone’s tabs. But I really don’t think my own workflow is much improved by surveilling a dozen tiny screencasts.
I’m retired now and I teach remotely a few hours a day. I need more than ever to know know exactly what my students are doing. It is important to maintain the pace of the lesson and to ensure assessment integrity. This post’s “EduTech from a Teacher-Coder” is the monitors and proctors in all of Innovation’s apps.
Monitor
Every application at Innovation comes with a monitor to display in real time how students are progressing on their task. The test monitor shows what question students are on and even has a messaging feature so I can quietly post notifications to students in their test. The writing app monitor displays the current essay for each student, the number of words, their use of any AI licenses. Vocabulary quiz, sorting app, the “KnowWhere” map study, cause and effect study, reading comprehension, cloze app, ordered list, forum, even the AI chat application can display student progress and often their work product. The monitors all hide the student names as an option so that teachers can display the monitor on shared screen or in front of the classroom as a way to remind everyone to keep pace.
Monitors let teachers see the correct responses for many activities. The monitor returns an important feature of command and control of the classroom: I need to know exactly what they are doing.
Proctor
The proctoring feature is extensive throughout all of the activities. Proctor is an after-the-fact kind of analysis and proctors come with AI interpretation and summary features. When did they start the app? How long did they spend on each question? Did they leave the screen? Paste in any text? Try to right-click and use a spellchecker or AI assistant not licensed?
Common thoughts on giving assessments in remote teaching are that it is not reliable. But if there is a strong AI-assisted proctor running during the assessment and there is an adult supervising in the room, we can be assured of an assessment result as reliable as old fashioned in-person classes.
Teacher Command and Control Supports Successful Student Outcomes
When the proper guardrails are in place, guardrails we have always had in teaching, then we can be more assured of delivering the kind of high quality, effective training that leads to student success. A dozen applications at Innovation include monitoring and they all include proctoring.
For years, we handed students powerful tools…
and took away the teacher’s ability to see how they were being used.
That was the mistake and now we’re correcting it.