Caroline Haskins has a must-read article about Gaggle that is part of a BuzzFeed News package on schools and social media surveillance. This article begins:
For the 1,300 students of Santa Fe High School, participating in school life means producing a digital trail — homework assignments, essays, emails, pictures, creative writing, songs they’ve written, and chats with friends and classmates.
All of it is monitored by student surveillance service Gaggle, which promises to keep Santa Fe High School kids free from harm.
Santa Fe High, located in Santa Fe, Texas, is one of more than 1,400 schools that have taken Gaggle up on its promise to “stop tragedies with real-time content analysis.” It’s understandable why Santa Fe’s leaders might want such a service. In 2018, a shooter killed eight students and two teachers at the school. Its student body is now part of the 4.8 million US students that the for-profit “safety management” service monitors.
Read more on BuzzFeed.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified Gaggle as “Google’s Gaggle.” Thanks to the alert reader who caught my error.