New Changes Coming to Chromebook Filtering and Monitoring

After reviewing outward network traffic from Chromebooks in the Edmonds School District, the district board of directors has decided to implement several new measures to ensure the safety of our students and also to prevent the use of school property for things like games and social media. These changes will go into effect immediately after spring break, and include the following:

- A permanent keylogging extension will be installed on all chromebooks, tracking the text made by keypresses. The text recorded will be submitted to teachers and updated live, and if a teacher detects an inappropriate input ostensibly used for non-academic searches, communication, or the like, they can intervene.

- A Chromebook version of NetSupport, the software STEM/Sci-Ma-Tech teacher Mr. Sullivan uses to monitor his room’s computers, debuted in March 2017. Therefore, it will be used by teachers to monitor chromebooks as an upgrade to Hapara Highlights. For those unaware, NetSupport can do many things, such as view screens, initiate remote access and control, and lock down problem computers. Teachers can do all of these in order to regulate chromebook use.

- The district will be using a custom copy of CommunitySift to track communications. CommunitySift is a powerful learning computer, modified extensively to fit the district’s demands. It automatically censors anything its high-end artificial intelligence deems inappropriate for the school environment. If CS detects a bad word or a word used in the context of the message for inappropriate meanings, it will strike out the word or phrase and replace it with a group of hashes (#). The copy of CS has been loaded with a large amount of precepts, the entirety of Urban Dictionary’s database, and other custom settings, which makes it ready to strike and censor anything inappropriate at a moment’s notice.

- Parents will gain access to a new portal opened up by the Edmonds School District. This allows them to personally monitor your chromebook and functions similarly to Hapara Highlights. It can also force the Chromebook to go offline to constrict off-task browsing sessions and can notify the district itself in the event of an emergency.

Around the school, teachers and students have been in agreement with the new changes and hope to see them in action soon. “With these changes, we’ll be able to focus better and get stuff done, and those who usually slack won’t be so annoying,” says Andre Stewart, a student at Brier Terrace. Do you like these changes or not? Please send your comments to bulldogbriefstaff@gmail.com.

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