Blocksi: Leveraging IoT for Enhanced Classroom Management and Cybersecurity

Blocksi's primary customers are educational institutions and families seeking to enhance the digital learning experience while ensuring the safe and compliant use of devices. The company's tools are particularly popular with teachers and administrators in schools across the U.S., where Google for Education is widely used. Blocksi's solutions enable schools to transform an off-the-shelf Chromebook into a fully functioning school device, removing distractions and fulfilling compliance obligations regarding the proper use of those devices. The company's tools also provide educators with more awareness of the digital learning challenges facing students and allow them to monitor student activities on Chromebooks safely.

The advent of education technology has revolutionized classrooms worldwide, providing a plethora of tools to enhance learning. However, this surge in educational tools also presents numerous challenges, such as identifying the most effective learning devices and equipping them with reliable management and monitoring tools. Blocksi, a company launched in 2011, initially provided internet filtering services through a Chrome-native app. The company soon realized that a significant number of families and schools were downloading its app, prompting it to tailor its tools for the education sector. The challenge was to expand its reach in education and power its business while ensuring the safe and compliant use of devices in schools.

To address these challenges, Blocksi chose to build its environment on Google Cloud and partner with Google for Education. This partnership enabled Blocksi to provide a content filtering solution that could flexibly govern how students use their Chromebooks. Schools could use Blocksi to block games and websites that did not fit into a school’s curriculum. Blocksi also expanded its capabilities to provide more controls to both Chromebooks and Google Workspace for Education, giving educators more awareness of the digital learning challenges facing students. Blocksi also introduced a teacher dashboard for safe monitoring of student activities on Chromebooks and tools to detect threats and cyberbullying. Blocksi relies on Google Cloud solutions like Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, and Cloud Load Balancing to efficiently scale its compute power, containers, and virtual machines. It also uses Google Cloud’s Vision AI to power its cyberbullying detection by automating image detection and labeling with AI solutions.

• Blocksi's partnership with Google for Education and its use of Google Cloud solutions have significantly enhanced its operational efficiency and effectiveness. The company can now scale up and down at a moment's notice to handle high-traffic times when all users are connected to the application. This agility has allowed Blocksi, a relatively small company, to keep its overhead down while serving more students and educators. The use of Google Cloud’s Vision AI has also enabled Blocksi to automate image detection and labeling, thereby enhancing its cyberbullying detection capabilities. Furthermore, the deployment of MongoDB Atlas as its cloud-native database on Google Cloud has allowed Blocksi to effectively manage large volumes of data, reducing operational costs and accelerating the delivery of new services to schools.

• Enables a team of 45 employees to support 1,000,000 students and educators thanks to a highly scalable solution

• Incorporates advanced ML/AI technologies to help schools combat cyberbullying

• Improves visibility into student performance and needs through reliable, compliant monitoring solutions