Top 3 Ways Lightspeed Systems™ Helps Schools Foster Digital Citizenship

Because so much of the internet is based on written communication, students are deprived of many of the cues that ordinarily inspire empathy: facial expressions, tone, body language. As a result, people often speak or act on the internet in ways they would never dare to do if the other person were physically present. Nowhere are these problems more pronounced than on social media platforms.

The Solution: Customizable social media controls

Because social media platforms are one of the main places online where students interact, it’s important to impose guardrails on the ways students use them. Schools need granular controls in order to promote responsible usage among students of different agents, so districts need Lightspeed Filter™, an award-winning filtering solution designed exclusively for K-12 and powered by always-improving AI technology. With our solution, administrators can block certain social media platforms altogether, or limit their use to certain times of day or to certain age groups. Administrators may also choose to allow these sites in read-only mode, which can help mitigate the sites’ effects on student mental health.

Districts know they need a filter, but not all filtering solutions are created equal. In a recent test, many leading filters let through the majority of pornographic content, while only Lightspeed Filter blocked it all. Further, many filters don’t work on all operating systems, while others fail to block the thumbnails of inappropriate YouTube videos. To keep students safe—and to help promote digital citizenship—districts need a dynamic, customizable filter that gives districts more control over the content students engage online.

The Solution: Lightspeed Filter’s unrivaled features

SmartPlay™ turns YouTube into a safe instructional tool thanks to our patented agents that block inappropriate videos, thumbnails, and recommended content. Customizable policy controls enable administrators to selectively allow and permit content by grade level, group, class, and type of site, which means districts can ensure students are only engaging with YouTube content that is appropriate for them. Administrators may also choose to block the comments section for comprehensive protection.

But of course, students will still sometimes try to engage with inappropriate material. That’s why Lightspeed Filter empowers districts to temporarily lock students out from the internet. Schools can determine what types of sites trigger a lockout and can implement customized conditions for when a lockout will occur (e.g., a student attempts to access blocked websites more than three times in one minute) and for how long the lockout lasts. Lightspeed Filter will display to the student a customizable message that explains why they no longer have internet access, which provides an opportunity to remind students of the duties involved in good digital citizenship.

If responsible internet usage is challenging for people who grew up online, it is still more difficult for parents who are always forced into playing catch-up with their children’s digital lives. Because parents so often do not know what kids are doing on their devices—or what healthy online behavior would look like—they can struggle to effectively support schools in their efforts to promote digital citizenship.

The Solution: Give parents a window into their kids’ online lives

One of the best ways to promote digital citizenship is to engage parents and give them the information they need to have constructive conversations with their children. That’s why our filter includes the Lightspeed Parent Portal™, which keeps parents informed about students’ online activity through weekly emails. The tool also allows parents to see what their children are doing online at any time and to impose temporary restrictions on internet access in order to impose healthy limits on screen time.