The buzz around the school is the new syncing program, Impero. The technology department instituted the student-monitoring software this month after looking for ways to improve or replace the SmartSync program. Under the old SmartSync program, students refused to listen when told to sync to the teacher, often unsyncing during a class period so the teacher could no longer see what they were doing. Impero is highly effective in counteracting this problem and is now working on over three hundred computers in the district.

“I don’t like Impero, because you could be connected to a teacher that you are not even in their classroom and they could have one site blocked, but you need it for that class and then it’s a hassle because you have to go back to the classroom you were in to get unblocked,” said Kylie Dunn.

Impero was selected because there were no other programs on the market that did the blocking in such an automatic way. According to Shane Steckelberg, it was the “most feature-rich application in the support department and the company is very helpful.”

This program was made to limit distractions and to get students to focus more on schoolwork. I think that Impero has made a difference within the school district. Even though that it is stricter, going from classroom to classroom it seems to be working. I see less games, and more OneNote or word.

In my opinion, Impero can be positive, but negative at the same time. I think that it has some flaws, but it can be worked with. I think it helps, because teachers don’t have to worry about so many people not focusing on their class work because they can block whatever they want for their classrooms. I think it gets annoying, because if a student leaves early and forgets to get disabled, then they go home and have websites blocked that they had blocked when they were at school. There are students, however, that don’t like anything about the program.

“I don’t like impero because it blocks everything I do even if it’s not bad, such as Google or webmail,” said sophomore Chance Morgan.

With the new program, come many confusions and errors as well. A teacher told me that I had been looking at something I shouldn’t have been when my computer was shut at the time. Another student has a similar story.

“I got a message saying that I had been looking at basketball stuff when I have never looked at anything on my computer that was basketball related. A minute later, someone next to me got the same message,” said Courtney Mollet.

Despite the disabling and the blocked-site annoyances, I believe Impero has the ability to enhance students learning and will further enrich the students of Dakota Valley. Weigh in. What do you think? Send us a letter to the editor and let your voice be heard.

Source:http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/articleid/500343/newspaperid/605/New_computermonitoring_software_draws_mixed_reviews.aspx