As I sit in the back of many of my classrooms, I am greeted with a well-known sight: Geometry Dash, Netflix, Pinterest, and other websites displayed on my peers’ Chromebooks. Unrestricted Chromebook access has allowed students to waste class time delving into games or apps instead of focusing on learning.

Because of the distractions posed by Chromebooks, South has begun testing different monitoring softwares that would allow a student’s teacher to monitor their screen from the beginning to end of the school day, if the student is in their school Google account, according to District 225. 

Teachers from around the country have have raised their classroom technological surveillance after noticing over half of their students’ learning disturbed by distractions from school-issued technology, according to a survey from EdWeek Research Center.

The new digital monitoring programs may feel like an invasion of privacy, but the software is in accordance with the rules set by the school. It will take place while using our school-issued Chromebooks, our school-issued Google accounts, during school hours. 

Without the ability to limit classroom disraction, teachers lose the capability to teach students. Chromebook monitoring is a fair consequence of losing focus due to various distractions.