Big Brother Is Watching At Highland

Technological privacy? Never heard of her.
The world is full of technology nowadays and because of that people are chronically online. They share things on social media, they allow websites to collect personal data, they share information about themselves… and technology is designed to remember all of it. So, once things are out there, they’re out there. But where does privacy play a role in this?
This year, Highland – as well as all Salt Lake City School District schools – was introduced to Lightspeed Classroom Management, a program “designed to help keep your students focused and engaged in digital learning,” according to the Lightspeed website.
This new program allows teachers to monitor and control the screens of students logged into school devices. Lightspeed gives teachers the ability to view, lock, or record student screens. They can also force close tabs, restrict web access, and share student screens.
In other words, Big Brother is watching… and so are teachers.
Some teachers are thrilled by its arrival; others don’t love it. Highland chemistry teacher Caleigh Oliver for example, hasn’t been a big fan.
“I feel like it’s kind of lazy to rely on a system to know if kids are doing what they’re supposed to,” Oliver said. “If teachers are circulating and working with students, they’re presence being next to them is going to make the kids be on task more than if they’re like ‘I’m watching on the computer’.”
Oliver has also found that some students will use the program to create a “cat and mouse” type of scenario where they will intentionally wander off task to get a reaction from the teacher. This kind of scenario defeats the purpose of the program, which is to increase classroom productivity and keep students focused, especially on tests.
Instead of using Lightspeed, Oliver uses a different program for online testing. She uses a Canvas feature called quiz auditing. Quiz auditing allows teachers to keep track of when students leave their quizzes to open other tabs, what tab they go to, and when they return.
“I feel like it’s a good balance between giving students responsibility for their own usage but then still ultimately giving me power to look at it without monitoring every single moment,” Oliver said.
While there are teachers like Oliver who don’t love Lightspeed, there are also teachers who are 100% on board with it. Highland science teacher Nancy Wright, for example, has found it to be super helpful.
“I’ve been asking for a similar program for years,” Wright said.
Wright had been pushing the district to replace a previous classroom management program that they had gotten rid of a couple of years ago called LanSchool. And her push seems to have worked because Lightspeed is here.
“I was just sort of petitioning the district and I was like listen, we have these kids completely unmonitored,” Wright said. “Unless I’m right there next to them holding their hand they could be looking at porn, they could be doing nefarious things, or they could just be distracted. It could be the best, it could be the worst, it could be whatever.”
While Wright understands that people may have concerns about privacy, she thinks “privacy is tricky” because the devices that lightspeed monitors are school-issued devices, not personal ones.
“Listen I’m big brother over here. I’m big brother, I can monitor,” Wright tells her students.
According to Wright, “privacy doesn’t exist in that space.” This is in same way a parent can take away a child’s phone because the parent pays for it. They give it to the child, entrust the child to use it for its determined purpose, and then they can confiscate and look through it if they think necessary. Whether morally that’s something a parent should do or not, the parent has the right to do it.
While Lightspeed is new, the concept of monitoring computer usage isn’t. The school has always had tools to monitor students’ activity because that’s the way computers are made. They are made to store information.
“I think that no matter what you do, the way that computers are built is they are always watching no matter if you think they are or you don’t,” Oliver said. “Even if it’s not directly saying that it’s watching you, it is always watching you.”