Teachers expect a one-sided bond of trust that students have to establish with the staff. If a student can’t establish this trust, then the eagle eye of teachers and other school officials constantly watch untrusted students. Linewize and Classwize help with this. They are monitoring software that schools nationwide use. These two software programs created by Qoria can monitor what websites students visit, block various websites, and more. Linewize Monitor, one of Qoria’s services, can’t monitor what sites unmanaged “Bring Your Own Device” laptops browse. That job is for Classwize, a supplement to Linewize that allows teachers to view what students are doing on their school Chromebooks.
Linewize and Classwize also limit sources for legitimate research and flag anything under the sun related to something bad such as keywords related to “shooting,” even if it’s for class work. According to examples provided by The Falconer, a student’s search has been flagged because the system cherry-picked the keyword “shooting” despite the whole query being a basketball player shooting, specifically an image of it. The same article points to approximately 10-12 flags sent per day, but the vast majority did not need any action against students. This means that the system is also a huge waste of time and school resources, which isn’t discussed because administrators caught one or two people throughout an unstated time.
Classwize and Linewize serve no purpose in school other than being a headache for students and administrators. It is trigger-happy software that can land students in potential trouble because of certain keywords affiliated with an entire query. Thus, making the use of Linewize and Classwize irrelevant and frankly incomplete in what it’s supposed to serve.
