By Jonathan M. Gornet ’14
THE ROUNDUP
A new program is being installed throughout the Brophy campus, causing students to grumble while teachers laud its usefulness.
The program is called LanSchool, a school computer monitoring program that teachers use as a substitute for SynchronEyes.
LanSchool allows teachers to watch what students are doing on their Tablets and display individual screens on a projector or even on everyone else’s computers.
Originally, the school used SynchronEyes, said Mr. Mark Pettit, the systems administrator at Brophy.
“When we went with the Tablet program, the students who in this case are the clients, connecting to different teachers all day was very inconsistent,” Mr. Pettit said. “We found that product didn’t work very well over wireless, and we have been looking for a solution for quite a while.”
Mr. Pettit found that program, which is known as LanSchool, during a conference in for the International Society for Technology in Education.
“One of the booths there was the LanSchool salesperson, and they convinced me that their product was a little bit better, so we decided to do a trial with them and they gave us free reign to the program,” Mr. Pettit said. ”We decided with the price of it, which was significantly less than SynchronEyes, and the quality of the program was something we wanted to do and we went in and purchased it.”
Some features in LanSchool are better than SynchronEyes because of the connectivity aspect of it, said Mr. Andrew Bradley, a Western Civilization teacher in Brophy Hall.
“LanSchool has more features; I like the connectivity aspect of it instead of students always having me say ‘OK here’s my IP, everyone connect to me,’ they’re kinda always out there and when class starts I can just bring them to me, which is kinda neat, so once they have it running, it’s always running and it’s easier to use,” Mr. Bradley said.
Some students said they believe LanSchool invades student’s privacy on their computers, and some are uncomfortable with the program.
“I do not like it because I pay attention in class, I also take notes, I just don’t like the fact that a teacher can look at my computer any time,” said Dylan Francis ’14.
But Mr. Bradley said that the program is intended for teaching purposes, not for more control over the computers.
“I think sometimes students get the bad impression that we’re going to go home at 8 p.m. at night and check on them, which we really can’t do anyway, but none of us would be interested in doing. It’s just to make sure that when you’re in class you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing in class,” Mr. Bradley said.
