The laptop in front of a student is the most distracting thing in the room.
Multitasking is rife in the classroom. Students play games, watch videos and message each other through the lesson. They use VPNs, phone hotspots and obscure websites to get past the school filter. It costs them marks, and it distracts the classmates sitting near them too.
PACT (Pupil-Activated Curbs on Technology) lets teachers specify what websites are relevant for a lesson. Students opt in to block distractions for the lesson. If they opt out, teachers have data for a wellbeing discussion.
The more of the lesson a student spent off-task, the worse they did on the exam.
Students who brought a laptop to take notes went off-task anyway, and paid for it in their grades.
Sit next to someone browsing off-task and you remember less of the lesson yourself.
Won't students always opt out?
They already are, you just don't know it. Students are experts at alt-tabbing back to Excel when the teacher is coming past.
PACT has a different philosophy to classroom monitoring tools, where a teacher watches screens and closes tabs when someone does the wrong thing. Students generally want to do the right thing. Nearly half of teenagers say they spend too much time on social media, and about half of those have already tried to cut back on their own. They are not short on intent, they are short on a way to hold the line.
The problem isn't motivation. An open laptop puts the temptation one click away, all lesson, and no teenager wins that argument five hundred times in a row.
PACT is built on dual systems theory, the fast and slow thinking most teachers already know. The planning brain makes one decision at the start of the lesson and turns blocking on. Later, when the lizard brain gets bored and reaches for YouTube, PACT is what stops it.
That is also why the block is firm once it starts: reviews of self-control tools find that the interventions students can easily dismiss are the ones that stop working.
Sounds good in theory, but some students will abuse the privilege.
A few will, and that is the useful part. Today teachers have no concrete evidence of students going off task. If they spot YouTube they can enforce the rules, but that means policing screens rather than teaching.
Lists the students who repeatedly decline the invite, drop out mid-lesson, or force-quit the app to get around the blocking. A pattern surfaces in week two rather than at the end of term.
Most students never appear on it. For the few who do, you have something specific to raise with them, their parents and your wellbeing team, instead of a hunch.
You should not have to watch a dashboard while you teach. Start the session, teach the lesson, and read the report afterwards if you need to.
Below 80% focus over the last 2 sessions
Ranked by total deep-work time.
| Student | Sessions | Avg focus | Deep work |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.Grace Hopper | 11 | 94% | 540m |
| 2.Alan Turing | 10 | 88% | 450m |
| 3.Ada Lovelace | 6 | 62% | 210m |
| 4.Katherine Johnson | 2 | 40% | 90m |
How a lesson runs
Name it, list the sites students will actually need, add the tasks for the hour and the time it ends. About 20 seconds.
The invite pops up on their own laptop. Joining is one click, declining is one click. The lesson starts on time either way.
Games, videos and social media stay shut until your end time. Students can't switch it off; you can release it early for one student or the class.
Attendance (did they join and keep blocking on), focus (were they actively typing or staring out the window) and achievement (did they finish the tasks).
Your teacher invited you to join a PACT session
History · Russian Revolution — causes of 1917
Ends 2:50 PM
You can use
Everything else is paused until 2:50 PM. If you need another site, you can ask your teacher to add it. You cannot end the session early.
The tasks sit on their screen, to tick off
Sometimes distraction happens because students don't know what to do. With PACT they see the tasks for the lesson in front of them, and as they tick them off you see their progress on the dashboard.
An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.
Mahatma Gandhi
Let's keep the focus on Researching the Russian Revolution
Just 23 minutes to go until the end of your focus session.
Save https://www.instagram.com/ for laterWhat a blocked site looks like
The student gets the lesson they are meant to be working on, not a telling off. They can save the site for after the bell, or press I need this for class to ask you for it.
Approve a request once and the site is added for everyone, so the next student who needs it never has to ask.
What a teacher can and cannot see
Session records belong to you, not to us. We don't sell anything and there's no advertising.
Then deleted. A teacher can clear their own session records at any point before that.
We give you an editable letter explaining what PACT does and doesn't do, ready to send home.
The other questions principals ask
Not on their own. Every session has an end time you set when you start it, so blocking stops when the class does, and you can end it early for one student or everyone.
Not easily. Force-quitting the app restarts it automatically and the attempt is recorded. You shouldn't have to watch a dashboard during class. The evidence is there afterwards.
A page with a button to ask you for it, and a link to save it for after the bell. Approve a request once and it's added for the whole class.
If your school uses a device management provider it can be pushed to every laptop at once and students sign in with their school email. If not, they download it and an invite email links them to the school.
A pilot with a few classes is close to nothing. A whole-school rollout is real work: contracts updated, students informed, class lists synced from Compass, software installed and tested. Best scheduled for the break before a term.
Focus Bear, in Melbourne, a focus app made by and for ADHD and autistic people. PACT is the classroom side of the same app.
How is this different from a school firewall?
A firewall is one list for the whole school, all day. It cannot know that britannica.com is the lesson in period 3 and a distraction in period 4, so it ends up blocking things teachers need and allowing things they don't.
PACT works one lesson at a time. The teacher who is standing in the room decides what is relevant, students opt in, and the list expires when the bell goes.
The two work together. Keep the firewall for what should never be reachable at school; use PACT for what should not be open during this lesson.
Try it with two classes and a teacher who's curious.
PACT is new and we'd rather learn with you than sell at you. A pilot is a handful of lessons, a short chat afterwards, and no commitment past the term.