GoButtons

For schools and classrooms

A pupil asks, and the right adult knows which one

Getting an adult’s attention across a busy room is a skill, and it is not equally available to everybody. GoButtons turns it into one press that reaches every member of staff at once.

If this is the situation, it is the right thing to read

A pupil needs an adult. Calling out is not available to them, or not reliably, or not in a way that competes with twenty-nine other people. Putting a hand up works when somebody happens to be looking. So they wait, and the adult finds out later than either of them wanted.

The problem is not that nobody is willing to come. It is that the request has no reliable channel, so it depends on somebody's attention landing in the right place at the right moment.

How it works in a classroom

A tablet on the desk shows a few very large buttons, and nothing else — no menu, no home screen, nothing to navigate away into. A press sends a notification to every member of staff connected to that room, naming the room and the button: “Room 4 · I need help”.

Whoever gets there first clears it or replies, and the rest of the team can see who did. In a room with a teacher and two assistants that is the difference between a coordinated response and three people guessing.

The pupil sees what happened. A large status line tells them the message went, that somebody has seen it, and that somebody is coming — which is the part that makes it worth pressing a second time.

The data-protection answer, up front

Schools ask this before anything else, so it is here rather than in the terms. The pupil has no account and tells us nothing about themselves. There is no name field for them, no sign-in, and nothing to type. A station holds a name that staff chose and an anonymous session identifier, and that is the whole of it.

If a child's name ends up in our records it is because a member of staff typed it into a station or a button, which is a good reason not to. Name the room.

Accounts, with email addresses, belong to the staff who receive the messages. We store no health information, no date of birth, and nothing about why a button exists. The Privacy Policy states all of this, including the parts that are less flattering.

Rooms other than classrooms

Settings that start in one classroom tend to add a second station somewhere unstaffed for parts of the day — a sensory room, a library corner, a food-tech room, a changing area. Each station keeps its own buttons and its own name, and the same staff can be connected to all of them.

What GoButtons is not

It matters more here than it would for most software, because the thing it looks like from a distance is a thing that people's safety depends on. It is not that, and we would rather lose the sale than be misunderstood about it.

  • It is not a safeguarding system, an emergency alert, or a panic alarm, and it must not be written into a policy as one. Your existing procedures are unaffected by it.
  • It does not escalate. If nobody answers, nothing further happens — no siren, no second recipient, no call out.
  • It cannot guarantee delivery. Staff phones are silenced in lessons, out of signal in some rooms, and left in bags.
  • It is not an assessed communication aid, and it is not AAC. It sends a handful of fixed messages that an adult wrote; it does not help anybody build a sentence.
  • It records nothing about the pupil and therefore cannot be used to evidence anything about them.

What it is: a fast, dignified way to say something to people who have agreed to listen. If you need a guaranteed response, a monitored alarm or anything a clinician would sign off, you need a different product and probably a service contract.

Questions people ask

What data do you hold about the pupil?
None. A station has no account, no email address and no password, and the pupil types nothing. The only things stored are what staff wrote — the station’s name and the button labels — plus the times presses happened. That is why we suggest naming a station after the room rather than the child.
Can several members of staff receive?
Yes, and all of them are notified. When one answers, the others can see who — which is what stops two teaching assistants crossing the room at the same moment while a third assumes it is handled.
Can the buttons change between lessons?
Yes, from any connected member of staff’s phone. The buttons belong to the station rather than to whoever set them up, so they survive staff changing, and a supply teacher connecting does not disturb them.
What hardware does a classroom need?
A spare tablet, plugged in. The buttons are drawn very large by design, so a tablet is a better fit than a phone. One station covers one room; more rooms are added individually.
Does a pupil need to be able to read?
The buttons carry words, so somebody in the room has to know what each one says. Many settings pair each button with a consistent position and colour and teach it that way. We would rather say this plainly than imply the product solves a literacy question it does not.

What it costs

$9.99 a month covers one station and one person besides you, after two weeks free with no card. More stations and more people are added individually, so a setup costs what it uses. The pricing page has the sums worked out, and what happens to the money if you stop.

If a payment ever fails, the buttons do not go dark. Every station keeps working and drops back to a single I need help button until it is sorted out. Someone's way of asking for help should not depend on whether a card expired.

Where this is up to

GoButtons is not in the app stores yet, so there is nothing to download from this page. It is being tested on real iOS and Android devices. This page will say so plainly on the day that changes — until then a store badge here would be a false claim.

If you want to know when it does, write to hello@gobuttons.app. It reaches a person, not a mailing list — there is nothing to sign up for here, and nothing to unsubscribe from.