AI For Students

[Rogueleeder]

So in a previous MSP world I worked with Securly Filter which had a function to redirect AI searches to Securly AI Chat for controlled AI usage and logging. I'm back in house now with a Smoothwall so I'm not wanting to overhaul the filtering solution just for AI usage.

 

Is there any product similar to Securly AI that integrates with G-Suite to provide a bit more control on the Student's usage of AI and provides some tracking for teachers to check what students are using AI for?

[dhicks]

1 hour ago, Rogueleeder said:

Is there any product similar to Securly AI that integrates with G-Suite to provide a bit more control on the Student's usage of AI and provides some tracking for teachers to check what students are using AI for?

 

The features / controls for Gemini should be built in to Google Workspace for Education, manageable via the Workspace admin console. Smoothwall (or any filtering solution) should provide keyword filtering, so any trigger keywords typed into a Gemini prompt should produce an alert, same as with any text input box. You should be able to limit by OU what features are enabled / disabled for pupils - I think Gemini as a general chat interface is now disabled by default for under-18s, I think NotebookLM might be enabled by default still.

[Rogueleeder]

That's valid, however my school's staff are looking for something that stops the pupils just using the AI to do their coursework, less of a safeguarding concern here (though its always present).

[dhicks]

6 minutes ago, Rogueleeder said:

That's valid, however my school's staff are looking for something that stops the pupils just using the AI to do their coursework, less of a safeguarding concern here (though its always present).

 

You (assuming you have Google Workspace for Education super-user privileges) should be able to get a report of every prompt inputted by users. You could then filter / search through those to look for anything along the lines of "Hey computer, write an essay about Henry V for me". That would show prompts inputted via your school-managed accounts - fine for in-school managed devices (where you can also block access to other AI tools), but pupils could get around this for take-home coursework by simply using a non-school account on a non-school-managed device when at home.

[tom_newton]

Some of you may be interested to try Smoothwall monitor which will pcik up what students have typed into AI (it's a bit more bread reaching than just redirecting gemini to a different frontend... still  works if the students find, for example, an AI support bot to talk to)