Kumar Singam reports:
Reliable sources have informed the Examiner that Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), the largest school system in Maryland, has installed LanSchool in Chromebooks distributed to students.
[…]
As the product brochure disarmingly mentions, LanSchool can be used for real-time monitoring of student activity on the computer. The website states that “Thumbnail monitoring allows the teacher to quickly view each student’s screen. At a glance, it is easy to see which students are on or off task. Administrators can monitor up to 3000 students at a time and dual-monitors are supported.” The website goes on to say that “LanSchool v7.8 automatically logs all keystrokes on student machines. (This can be disabled if your organization has policies against keystroke monitoring) Months of keystrokes are kept in a rolling log that can be watched in real-time or exported to a .csv file.”
[…]
The Examiner has confirmed through knowledgeable sources that MCPS did not obtain parental authorization for the use of the intrusive software from students who were given Chromebooks with LanSchool installed.
Read more on Examiner.com