Four ways digital monitoring facilitates student learning
Today’s educators perform a difficult balancing act — enabling student exploration, but in a safe and guided way. When students have the freedom to use the internet to explore their areas of interest, teach themselves new concepts, and teach others what they are learning, it can ignite their imaginations and help build skills like resourcefulness and teamwork. Yet, students also need guard rails in place to ensure their digital exploration is on track, on topic, and driving toward the learning outcomes teachers intend.
Digital monitoring tools can help schools enable the ideal balance between digital freedom and safe, guided learning. Here are four ways digital monitoring facilitates learning:
Promotes student safety
The internet is a vast playground that can enrich academic learning. However, it also hosts a variety of digital dangers that can threaten students’ safety and data.
More schools are implementing web filtering and digital monitoring tools like Lenovo NetFilter as a way of protecting students from these often-invisible cyber threats. But digital monitoring can do more than stop exploits and cyber attacks — it can also help mitigate or prevent bullying, harassment, self-harm, drug use, and violence.
Bullying has always been a school issue, and that has only escalated with the introduction of digital devices and social media. Cyberbullying is a now major threat that can have dramatic consequences for the students who are targeted. Digital monitoring tools like Lenovo NetFilter+ can help recognize and flag keywords in students’ online interactions that indicate cyberbullying is taking place, enabling educators and parents to step in when needed.
The same technology can be used to flag likely incidents of harassment and conversations that imply ideation related to self-harm or violence. By monitoring concerning student behavior, teachers may be able to spot warning signs and intervene through the appropriate support channels.
Reduces digital distractions
When schools began incorporating 1:1 devices into the classroom, one of the first challenges teachers faced was overcoming digital distractions. Social media, streaming platforms, and online games can entice and distract even the most devoted students, making it difficult for teachers to maintain their full attention.
Digital monitoring tools like LanSchool enable teachers to view what students are seeing and doing from their own screens. Teachers can see all screens from a central dashboard in thumbnail view for continued oversight of the entire class as students work. LanSchool also enables teachers to quickly block websites that are proving to be a disturbance, without needing IT help.
Improves engagement during remote learning
Remote learning used to be a rare need that was mostly of interest to schools who regularly faced inclement weather or other challenges with campus access. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, more schools began to embrace remote learning as a viable option when students or teachers are ill or otherwise forced to learn from home for an extended time.
Cloud-based digital monitoring tools like LanSchool Air enable teachers to maintain visibility into students’ work as they learn from home. By remotely viewing screens during school hours, teachers can see whether students have strayed off topic, misunderstood the assignment, completed their work early, or become unengaged. This information gives teachers the insight they need to intervene and guide students toward their learning objectives.
Fosters good digital citizenship
One large benefit of digital monitoring is that it encourages students to be accountable for their actions. Being accountable and thoughtful while working and interacting online are central tenets of digital citizenship. Like most skills, digital citizenship is best learned through practice.
Digital monitoring tools enable teachers to guide students toward better digital citizenship by monitoring their interactions with other students and providing feedback on each student’s behavior in real time. When students understand they are being observed, they often make better choices in how they use the internet and communicate with other students. Over time, these behaviors become habit.
For more elevated behavioral issues, digital monitoring tools like Lenovo NetFilter can help flag keywords that indicate concerning behavior so teachers, administrators, and parents can intervene.
Implementing digital monitoring in schools
With the safeguard of digital monitoring in place, educators and administrators can give students more freedom to explore the internet on their devices, knowing they can spot and address problematic behaviors as they arise. This freedom can unleash creativity, curiosity, and engagement — ultimately, supporting the type of learning that sticks with them long after their school days.
