Qustodio for "School" this semester?

[bisous]

Like many of you we'll be remote learning this fall. We will have 3 ipads and 1 chrome book to help my kids facilitate their learning. ALL of these are school provided devices. We would like some kind of filtering software. We looked into Circle but it is pretty expensive. DH also liked the look of Qustodio and a search indicated that many of you used it successfully. Would this be something that works well with four remote learners on a variety of devices? The plan we're looking at would cover 5 devices. We'd like to cover the 4 school machines and DS1's iphone.

Would love feedback!

TIA!

[SnuggleBuggles]

A not helpful reply follows...but could you just wait and see if such a product is necessary? Don't assume that you'll need something because there are good odds that your kids won't give you cause for worry. You've said before that your house is small; it seems like there would always be eyes available to make sure everyone makes good choices.

[carolinamama]

I use Qustodio in our home for DS1's phone, DS2's laptop and DD's iPad. It works fine for what it is and it's easy to use my phone to adjust settings. DS1 complains about it and has removed it from his phone a few times. I've learned that a simple Google search provides sneaky kids with instructions to thwart it but it took DS1 a few years to figure that out.

Are you sure that school issued devices do not already have a filter installed? I don't have anything on our chromebooks but I expect them to stay downstairs. Where there's a will, there's a way but it takes away a good amount of opportunity.

[mmsmom]

IME school devices are already locked down and installing anything on them is against the user agreement the school requires to be signed by student and parent.

ETA: At our school using a school device in an inappropriate way is grounds for suspension and most students take that pretty seriously and wouldn’t try.

[o_mom]

Will you be able to install anything on the school devices?

Qustodio will not work on the Chromebook for sure. For the iPads, I think you need admin access and you need to check with the school.

We only use it on our PC.

[JustMe]

I used Qustodio for several years, but only on my kids phones so no experience with laptops or tablets. In general it works relatively well...my kids were able to bypass the time limits easily though, something about pinning their screen or something. but you can see what they did. As far as texts/phones it does not monitor them on iphones, only androids. Also, for some reason, it slowed down internet on my daughter's iphone a lot; I was just getting ready to release her from needing Qustidio anyway, so I did choose to remove it from the iphone; not sure if that issue was particular to use or not. We did not have the issue on androids.

ETA: I did have up to 4 covered devices at one point (kids changing phones) and this worked fine.

[PZMommy]

If you have devices from the school, you most likely will not be able to install anything on them. Those devices are locked down. Even as a teacher I can’t install anything without the administrator password, which is a 20 digit/letter/character long password that we must ask for.

[klwa]

I agree with the others to look and see if anything is necessary on school devices. Ours are VERY locked down.

[bisous]

Hmm. Yeah, I'm thinking maybe this won't work. Sadly I know from my kids that the elementary school filtering software is not very good (they tell me what they've accidentally stumbled upon/what kids have shown them and this is only what they TELL me!) I know the high school has good monitoring software at school--not sure if the devices at home are similarly locked down.

Would you guys recommend contacting the tech departments at the schools and asking for suggestions?

[o_mom]

Hmm. Yeah, I'm thinking maybe this won't work. Sadly I know from my kids that the elementary school filtering software is not very good (they tell me what they've accidentally stumbled upon/what kids have shown them and this is only what they TELL me!) I know the high school has good monitoring software at school--not sure if the devices at home are similarly locked down.

Would you guys recommend contacting the tech departments at the schools and asking for suggestions?

I would start with Disney Circle as long as the school is not using a VPN. That will let you filter content and put time limits on internet access (though not device access, but most stuff on iPad and Chromebook will require internet).