Components of a Scene

What is a Scene?

Scenes are a feature of GoGuardian Teacher which provide greater control over how your students are using their computers. Scenes include many components that will be covered in this article.

What are the components of a Scene?

Scenes have several main components:

• Scene information (name, description, color label)
• Filter list type (Allow List or Block List)
• Allow and Block List websites (sites added to the filter list)
• Quick Lists
• Auto-Open Tabs
• Maximum open tabs
• Advanced Filtering

Scene information

When you navigate to Scenes in GoGuardian Teacher, you can gather Scene information at a glance:

 

Here, you can see the names of your Scenes, the filter list type, as well as the colored label for your Scene.

To further clarify, please view the following image:

Here are two Scenes. Both are of the filter list type called an Allow List. One is named “All else blocked” and is labeled with the Niagara color. The other is named “Classroom and IXL” and is labeled with the Vivid Violet color.

When you are creating a Scene, all of this information can be entered immediately after clicking the Create a new Allow/Block List button. You can also modify the information after its creation by clicking the gear icon on the right side of the scene name.

This is what the fields look like when you need to enter the information:

Name - Give your Scene a descriptive name. Scenes are displayed in the order in which they were created, starting with the oldest.

Description - Write a custom description of the context in which the Scene will be used.

Color - Set an Icon Color to visually distinguish the Scene from others. 

 

Filter List Type

For more detailed information on filtering within a Scene, please read the How to filter websites using Scenes article.

Scenes can help teachers control which sites students can and cannot reach during their live classroom sessions. The primary way you may control which sites you would like students to be able to reach is by leveraging an Allow List or Block List. 

Allow List

Creating an Allow List will make it so that students can only access sites that you specify. Allow Lists are restrictive in that students may only reach websites that are added directly to the Allow List.

Allow Lists are perfect for keeping students on task and off of distracting websites.

Block List

Creating a Block List will enable students to freely browse websites except for those which you specifically block. Block Lists are unrestrictive in that students will only be prevented from reaching sites that you enter into the list.

Note: GoGuardian Admin policies will still prevent students from accessing inappropriate websites regardless of your Block List settings.

Block Lists are perfect for when your students should be able to browse freely.

Allowed and Blocked URLs

Allowed and Blocked URLs are the sites that are added into an Allow List or Block List. A site added to an Allow List would be a site which gets allowed, and a site added into a Block List would be a site which gets blocked.

Sites are entered in the same way regardless of which type of filter list you’re working with. There is a box where you may type in website URLs or keywords.

The Allow List website entry box looks like this:

The Block List website entry box looks like this:

Adding Sites or Keywords

When an website URL or a keyword is entered, the search results will show suggested options to choose from.

If docs.google.com/forms was entered, the following results will appear:

With these suggested sites provided, teachers will be able to quickly add several different sites at once if it suits their needs. Simply click "Add" and the selection will appear on the right hand side.

Sometimes, additional tips will be provided as well, as can be seen in the yellow box with the light bulb.

Allow List Websites

Websites added to an Allow List are the only sites that students will be able to access. All other sites will be blocked.

Websites blocked by GoGuardian Admin will not be able to be allowed by an Allow List.

Block List Websites

Websites added to a Block List are the only sites that will be blocked for a student, in addition to those which are blocked by GoGuardian Admin.

Knowing which sites are blocked in GoGuardian Admin is not available within GoGuardian Teacher.

Quick Lists

Quick Lists are groups of URLs that can be quickly added or removed to your Allow or Block list. There are three types of quick lists: GoGuardian Quick Lists, District Quick Lists, and Custom Quick Lists. 

GoGuardian Quick Lists

When using an Allow List, adding a single URL to your website list may not be enough to allow access to a site. Many websites use a series of redirects and subdomains in order to access their site.

Google Docs, for instance, has 21 subdomains and redirects that need to be accounted for in order to access all features in Google Docs. So, GoGuardian put together Quick Lists for commonly used educational websites to help quickly add websites to your list. 

GoGuardian Quicklists are typically used in Allow List scenarios. Adding the Google Docs Quick List to a Block List scene will cause all Google Docs services to be blocked. 

District Quick Lists

District Quick Lists (also referred to as Shared Quick Lists) are collections of URLs managed through Org Management by a Super User. These Quick Lists will be accessible to all Teachers within the organization. 

Custom Quick Lists

You can also create your own Quick Lists to easily add or remove groups of URLs to your Allow or Block list without having to add or remove them individually. 

Quick Lists can be added to any of your personal scenes in an Allow List or Block List. Quick Lists can be modified at any time.

Auto-Open Tabs

You can configure your scene to automatically open websites on your students' devices when applied using the Auto-Open Tabs section. URLs added to this section will be opened when the scene is applied. 

Tabs will only open if the student has a Chrome web browser window open and running. So, if your student does not receive them right away, ask them to open a Chrome web browser window, and they should receive the tabs.

The option to auto-open tabs is in a different location for Allow Lists and Block Lists.

For Allow Lists, you must first add a site to the allowed list before the option will appear. Once a site is added to the allow list, a check box will become available on the right side.

For Block Lists, the Auto-Open Tabs section will be available as soon as you go into the Create Blocked Websites List screen.

A pop-up window will appear, and you can enter any sites to be auto-opened that you wish. When done, simply click Update Scene.

Maximum Open Tabs

You can limit the number of tabs a student can have open at a given time using the Maximum Open Tabs option. By default, there is no limit set, but you can quickly adjust the limit using the drop-down menu. The tab limit is only in effect while the scene is actively applied to your classroom session. When a scene with a tab limit is applied, any tabs over the limit will be closed automatically. 

Advanced Filtering

Advanced Filtering allows exceptions to be added to Allow Lists and Block Lists. This is useful for more complicated filtering. Please read Scenes: Advanced Filtering Option for more detailed information!

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