In the past year or so I have had all too many experiences with depression and suicide in both my professional life and my personal life. Too many of my students know somebody who has taken their own life and the effects on everyone reach far beyond the family. More students then we know are at risk and what I have learned is that is is VERY difficult to tell who is going through what. High achieving students are overlooked because "they can't possibly be serious" and low achieving students are overlooked because "they're just acting out". For these reasons, suicide prevention is a major concern of mine.
NPR did an article about a school that was able to provide their student population with Google Chrome book laptops. I find this to be an excellent way to ensure all students have the same resources and therefore are all equally set up for success. As always, the parents and school had to find a solution to an computer age old question. How to we keep our students from abusing their technology? The answer: GoGuardian.
GoGuardian was a program developed to block students from inappropriate/time wasting content. Since the program has the ability to monitor what the student was looking, it also had the ability to key in on "red flags" for search queries that would allow school officials to zero in on students that would be at risk for suicide. As any parent who has lost a child to suicide and they would say that if they were able to find any sign of their child's troubles, they wish they did so they could have saved their life. Other parents understandably worry about their child's privacy. Whats to stop the program from picking on the wrong kid that maybe is looking for a friend? Doing some research for a school project? Or worried about a family member?
Our society is overwhelmed right now with tying to find a happy medium between safety and privacy. This seems to be the next frontier, any thoughts?
I really like this post! I feel that the line between providing safety for students and invading their privacy is one were there are many strong and varied opinions. i believe the key is finding the balance. It would be a great tool for guidance counselors and other school officials to be able to have insight into their students lives, not only to identify suicide risks but other factors such as abuse or neglect. At the same time it is not the responsibility for schools to play detective and search out these situations. As mandatory reporters, school officials just need to make reports when necessary. tools like GoGuardian, that provide this kind of information can be invaluable, but it comes down to how the information is used. when I was in highschool I was the subject of a "witch hunt" for campus violence, and the guilty until forced to be guilty mentality that the administration handled everything with was a harrowing experience. Basically the admin used hearsay from another student and had already decided what was true before even speaking to me about it. However that is just an example of poor information handling, and information provided about students search histories on school property no less, and the like can be used intelligently, discretly, and with care, and not as and excuse to victimize the students using the educational tools provided for them.
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