Perch

A deterrent with an honest record. Not a lockdown browser.

Perch is a lightweight Chrome extension for in-class, teacher-supervised quizzes. It removes the lowest-effort shortcuts — a quick tab switch, casual Googling, copy-paste — and keeps a tamper-evident record. The teacher in the room is still the real control.

Install Perch for the pilot Currently in classroom pilot · for school IT

The report is the product

After every session the student hands their teacher a plain-English, verifiable record. Observations, never accusations — each weak signal carries its benign explanation.

Perch report — Ch. 4 Cellular Respiration

These are observations that need a teacher's judgment — not a determination that anyone cheated.

Ran 40 min of 45 min expected; 1 attention signal,
all recovered promptly; 20s away from the quiz in total.

12:55:06  Clicked away to another window or app for
          20 seconds — came back after the warning
12:58:41  Tried to open a blocked page — returned to quiz

Verification code: G3GA-FJIR-WB ✓ record intact

Reports are hash-chained on the student's device and carry a verification code the teacher can check in bulk — casual edits show up as a broken chain.

Three modes, sized to the stakes

Most classroom assessment is low-stakes. Perch scales its posture instead of treating every warm-up like a final exam.

Quick Checkdaily warm-ups & exit slips

The adoption wedge: once-per-class pledge, fullscreen with log-only exits, no escalation ladder. Ten seconds of friction for ten minutes of quiz.

Examtests & quizzes that count

Navigation off the quiz site is blocked and recorded. Leaving the quiz escalates gently — grace period, warning, then a lock the teacher's PIN (or a class-wide live code) releases. Other extensions — AI sidebars, translators, answer helpers — pause for the duration and restore automatically.

Focus Sessionreading & classwork time

An allowlist instead of a lockdown: only the sites the teacher names, website notifications muted, a countdown on the extension icon. Nothing closes, nothing locks; early endings simply show on the summary.

What it does — and what it deliberately doesn't

The caveats aren't fine print. They're the design.

Perch does

  • Keep students on the quiz site until they submit, and log where they tried to go
  • Notice when a block of text lands in an answer all at once — size and timestamp only, never the text itself
  • Pause other Chrome extensions during exams and restore them after, automatically
  • Give students a practice run at home, so test morning has no surprises
  • Produce a verifiable, plain-English report the student hands in themselves

Perch doesn't

  • Take screenshots, or use the camera or microphone — ever
  • See other apps, other devices, or anything outside Chrome
  • Stream live activity to a teacher dashboard
  • Prevent a determined cheater on their own laptop — on personal devices it detects and records, it doesn't pretend to prevent
  • Replace you. It monitors a tab, not a student.

If you need those things, you need a different (heavier, more invasive) product — and Perch's docs say so.

For school IT

This pilot uses an unpacked Chrome extension. School policies may prevent students from enabling Developer mode or loading it. Ask school IT to verify installation on a managed device before using an extension session in class. Store publication and managed force-install setup are not part of this pilot release.

Data stays on the device. There's no Perch server collecting student activity — reports live locally until a student chooses to hand one in, and contain a self-entered name and a behavioral timeline, never page content.