With alarming acceleration, we have witnessed technology encroach further and further into students’ lives. We have reached the point where students are seemingly granted no right to privacy in their digital activities—how else could you interpret a platform like Hāpara Highlights?
This is a “monitoring software” that professes to help students “work towards” a time when they are worthy of “online independence.” In the meantime, Hāpara Highlights will be stalking their every move, even “giving educators visibility” into students’ Google Drives, which could contain photographs, videos, journals, and other sensitive media the student has no intention of sharing.
To be fair, the internet can be a hair-raising ecosystem, and many young people are at risk simply by being on it. However, platforms have existed for more than a decade that merely lock a student’s browser or restrict access to problematic sites.
Hāpara Highlights is something different. Sure, its stated purpose is to protect students while helping educators manage their classroom and teach more effectively. But at what cost?
If you believe your student’s rights were violated, or they were inappropriately accused of wrongdoing based on information gathered through Hāpara Highlights, call the LLF National Law Firm Education Law Team today at 888-535-3686 or contact us online. We are tactful but urgent in our approach to defending students from unjust discipline and rights violations, and we are here for you and your student.
Hāpara Highlights Undoubtedly Has Useful Features
There are very few AI platforms that lack at least one useful feature that would benefit the intended user. That’s true of Hāpara Highlights, which can help students by:
- Filtering out inappropriate (and potentially harmful) content: The platform utilizes the Gaggle Web Filter to proactively prevent students from accessing content that the AI deems harmful, inappropriate, or unrelated to educational activities.
- Helping educators identify students who may need assistance: Even though technology has evolved unfathomably, students continue to struggle with the age-old problem of being hesitant to speak up. Hāpara Highlights gives teachers seemingly unfettered access to students’ Google Drive files. The stated purpose of providing teachers such access is so that a teacher might, for instance, open a student’s “Shakespeare Essay” Google Doc to see if they have actually started writing. This feature might allow teachers to identify students who are stuck or struggling but too shy or ashamed to speak up in front of the class.
- Potentially alerting educators to students in crisis: Many who market student-monitoring platforms tout their ability to identify students who are psychologically or emotionally unwell, and Hāpara Highlights does the same. The platform claims to use both machine learning and “human review” to flag “incidents” that might serve as “warning signs” of a student in crisis. If any student is helped or potentially saved by technologies like Hāpara Highlights, that is a win.
These are the types of purported benefits that those who sell Hāpara Highlights to schools and school districts undoubtedly, well, highlight. Administrators and educators who purchase the platforms likely note these same highlights in conversations with parents and others concerned about such an invasive technology.
Yet, these best-case use cases are far from the whole story when it comes to student-monitoring platforms like Hāpara Highlights.
At the Same Time, Hāpara Highlights Threatens to Cross the Line of Personal Privacy (and Raises Other Concerns)
Platforms built in the mold of Hāpara Highlights are, fundamentally, selling safety. They claim or suggest that, if schools only purchase and implement the technology, students will be saved from upsetting, disturbing, distracting, or otherwise adverse content. Some platforms even suggest that they might save a student from bullying, self-harm, and other grave threats to their well-being.
While student safety is undeniably a goal worth pursuing, author C.S. Lewis once said, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” Many critics of platforms like Hāpara Highlights note that, in the name of protecting students “for their own good,” students:
- Lose virtually all of their digital privacy, at least when using a device with Hāpara Highlights or an equivalent platform installed and active
- Cannot be certain if or when someone is watching their online activity, instilling a sort of latent anxiety that comes with such an uncertain feeling of being watched
- May change what they write, how they conduct their research, and generally how they act due to the ever-present, watchful eye of Hāpara Highlights
In a dark irony, a student might even refrain from activities that promote their well-being—spontaneously journaling about the distress of being bullied, for instance—because they know their teacher may have access to such sensitive musings.
Students and guardians are too often kept in the dark about how these platforms work, when they are being used, and what privacy protections (if any) students are afforded. If you or your student has any concerns related to privacy or other ethical matters, do not wait to reach out to our Education Law Team.
Although it’s decreasingly apparent, students still have a right to privacy. At the LLF National Law Firm, we regard that right with the utmost seriousness and fight with everything we have to defend it.
Educators Might Even Use Information Gleaned Through This Platform to Discipline Students
As if potential privacy rights violations were not reason enough to be wary of Hāpara Highlights and similar platforms, consider the disciplinary threat these platforms pose.
When a teacher is rooting around a student’s computer, granted permission by Hāpara Highlights, they are liable to find information they deem suspicious. A teacher might even decide that they have uncovered unequivocal evidence of misconduct by the student.
In these circumstances, we face a uniquely problematic combination of privacy concerns and potential student discipline. This intersection is like the center of a Venn diagram, with our Education Law and Student Defense Teams meeting to provide the exact service a student in this situation would need.
When rights are violated, discipline is unjustly leveled, or both of these transgressions harm a single student, call the LLF National Law Firm at 888-535-3686. You can also contact us online, and we will reach out as soon as possible.