"I was hesitant to switch filters because it was the middle of the pandemic and it was the middle of the year, but I knew we had to look at other options"

— Kyle Calderwood, Technology Coordinator

The Challenge

Over the years, Big Ed Tech companies have decreased their support for smaller schools and slowed down their product updates.

Compounded with the challenges from the recent pandemic, many school districts felt like their content filters couldn’t keep up with the evolving digital learning landscape.

Tabernacle Township School District was one such school district. Their previous Big Ed Tech content filter was over-blocking and under-blocking to the point that it was disrupting instruction.

The support offered by the Big Ed Tech solution was decreasing and the technology powering that filter was no longer innovative enough.

It’s difficult to tackle the nuances of what should and should not be blocked when there isn’t advanced technology to evaluate web content more effectively.

"There’s only one of me, so I have to find extra time to do it, or it gets pushed back. There has to be a better way," recalled Kyle Calderwood, the Technology Coordinator at Tabernacle Township School District.

"I have assemblies to set up, meetings to attend, and other time-sensitive responsibilities. I can’t just push back the assembly time or miss an admin meeting to do blocklisting or allowlisting."

— Kyle Calderwood, Technology Coordinator

Finding a Solution

When a trusted connection in the EdTech industry introduced Kyle to Deledao, he decided to do a trial of Deledao ActiveScan™, the content filter.

Kyle put real students in the trial and was impressed with Deledao’s proprietary multi-layered InstantAI™ technology, which analyzes what's rendered on the screen, not by using keywords, but by understanding intent and context. There are 4 major layers to InstantAI™:

• ProxyGuard™ automates the detection of proxy sites students use to bypass your current filter.
  

• GameChanger™ detects embedded games and full-screen games by analyzing keyboard and mouse movements.

• MediaMonitor™ blurs inappropriate images and video while keeping other media accessible (down to the frame!).

• WordCipher™ understands a page’s context by reading like a human, like picking up inventive spelling and slang language.

Instead of manually managing the flood of IT tickets asking him to unblock or block a website, Kyle could rely on Deledao’s AI technologies to evaluate web content for him in real time.

Because of the use of real-time AI, Kyle was able to get cleaner, more intuitive reports that he could share with teachers, parents, and the Child Study Team in his district.

Kyle says, “Other filters I tried before had cluttered reports with 40 columns of information, it was cognitive overload. A lot of it is unnecessary.

“I just need the name of the student and where they went online. With Deledao, it’s so easy to jump in to find what I need. Our Child Study Team has been liking the report. I just pull it up for them to see and I don’t have to explain it to them."

Just as important as the difference in technology, Kyle immediately noticed the difference in the level of support provided by Deledao.

“Love that I can see details of why something was blocked when I hover over the status column in the report... I can see... something is blocked because the AI detected a game, or the AI blurred an inappropriate image.”

— Kyle Calderwood, Technology Coordinator

The Result

After transitioning to Deledao, Kyle saw consistent product updates and customer support. Whenever he required assistance, he was able to see a response from Deledao.

Some time ago, Kyle started noticing that students were using proxy sites to bypass the school filter. This allowed them to get to sites that were a distraction during class, causing a loss of learning during instruction.

“A big one was Interstellar,” said Kyle. “The group that runs the site were posting new lists of bypass sites, each containing 20-30 URLs, 3-4 times a day on Discord. I can’t compete with this because there’s just too many.

“The level of support that we are given is far above anything that we had previously. It’s like night and day.”

— Kyle Calderwood, Technology Coordinator

“We can't just keep putting all these proxy URLs manually in our blocklist because it's just too much and they come out too frequently. That’s a job in itself.”

In response, Kyle sent a ticket to the Deledao support team. Turns out, a lot of other schools were experiencing the same thing. Deledao worked with Kyle and other school districts to expedite the development of a new AI model to detect and block proxy sites in real time.

A short while later, Deledao released ProxyGuard™ to address the proxy issues.

Due to Deledao’s focus on listening to customer feedback and rapid production times, schools everywhere now use ProxyGuard™ to automatically block sneaky proxy sites: 

​

• Doge

• Shuttle

• Interstellar

• Rammerhead

• Croxy

• Abyss

• Astroid

• And more...

Want to see the results for yourself?

Request a demo and get the chance to run a pilot program with us!

“The proxy detection feature alone has saved me 10-15% of my weekly time spent manually adding sites to the blocklist. That’s 4-6 hours I get back every week!”

— Kyle Calderwood, Technology Coordinator