BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (Sept. 10, 2020) – Many districts across the United States are starting the 2020–21 school year using hybrid or fully remote learning, so students’ online safety remains a top priority. That fact, plus Gaggle’s high success in saving student lives (927 in the 2019–20 school year), has resulted in 95% of districts renewing subscriptions to Gaggle’s student safety solution, up from the previous year. In addition, 286 districts across 42 states have implemented services with Gaggle since March.
“The School District of Osceola County utilizes multiple systems to protect its students in an increasingly complex digital world,” said Superintendent Dr. Debra Pace. “Gaggle is one system that the district relies on to monitor the safety of our students’ Microsoft email and OneDrive, and has proven itself on multiple occasions, especially during possible student situations. During the last year, the district was notified of 14 possible student situations, including issues of violence and suicide. Knowing that Gaggle is monitoring the safety of our students is a great comfort.”
For more than 20 years, Gaggle has helped thousands of districts avoid tragedies and save lives while also protecting against district liability. The company helps ensure student safety in digital spaces by providing real-time monitoring of the use of online tools within Google’s G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, and the Canvas learning management system for more than 4.5 million students across the United States.
Gaggle’s machine learning technology watches for specific words and phrases that might indicate potentially harmful behavior. An in-house team of trained safety professionals with backgrounds in law enforcement, psychology, social work, suicide prevention, and crisis management evaluates flagged content for false positives, categorizes incidents, and determines their severity. The team then alerts district personnel to policy violations, inappropriate content, critical mental health issues, and imminent danger to students.
“Gaggle has become an integral part of our district’s strategy for keeping students safe on campus and at home,” said Alvin McQuarters, chief technology officer for Irving Independent School District. “Within 48 hours of deployment, Gaggle notified key district administrators of an incident involving possible student abuse and self-harm. The program has an outstanding notification process that includes vetting, categorizing, and prioritizing potential student situations. In fact, Gaggle’s vetting process includes not only a state-of-the-art search engine, but also real people applying sanity checks to data results prior to sending the notifications to district personnel. This significantly reduces time being wasted by our district personnel chasing false positives.”
About Gaggle | www.gaggle.net
Since 1999, Gaggle has been the leader in helping K-12 districts manage student safety on school-provided technology. Using a powerful combination of artificial intelligence and trained safety experts, the safety solution proactively assists districts 24/7/365 in the prevention of student suicide, bullying, inappropriate behaviors, school violence, and other harmful situations. Most importantly, Gaggle continues to help hundreds of districts avoid tragedies and save lives, while also protecting their liability. During the 2019–20 academic year, Gaggle helped districts save the lives of 927 students who were planning or actually attempting suicide. For more information, visit www.gaggle.net and follow Gaggle on Twitter at @Gaggle_K12.