Hapara and Deledao: Friends or Foes?

The chances are that sometime within the past semester, you’ve heard one of your teachers call out one of your classmates, or even you, for being off-task on their computer, whether it’s watching a sports game, scrolling through YouTube shorts, or messaging your friends on Outlook. Or you tried to sneak onto a game website during lunch, but to no avail. This, of course, is through the Hapara and Deledao extensions, which “stalk” you all the time. But are these new additions really as bad as many in our school claim? Turns out, there’s actually valid reasoning to both sides of the argument.

You may be asking, is there any good reason to have Hapara or Deledao? 

There are a couple of solid reasons, starting with Hapara. It should be fairly evident that Hapara helps teachers monitor their students’ web browsing. In the past, students would frequently misuse their devices, playing games, watching videos, emailing their friends, etc. during inappropriate times like class times. This is very disrespectful to teachers who spend hours crafting lesson plans and grading papers to sneak onto websites you’re not supposed to be on. (Don’t deny it. We’ve all done it at some point.) Hapara can be used to view students’ screens during class as well as close irrelevant tabs that may be distracting. Therefore, this concern is mostly eliminated, and teachers can make sure that students are fully engaged at all times. 

Next, Hapara also influences student behavior positively. Before, the most underhanded students would find a seat near the back of the room so their teacher wouldn’t notice them and so they would have the freedom to do whatever they wanted without any supervision. Now, it’s simple; since students are aware of potentially being tracked by their teachers, they won’t take part in distracting activities and will pay attention in class more. 

Moving onto Deledao. This browser filter actively tracks the websites that someone visits and checks if they are school appropriate and/or safe; for example, game websites or scam domains. This is necessary to confirm that students are using their time on their devices wisely.

Alright. Surely now I’ve convinced you that these extensions are amazing, and a beneficial contributor to the Lakeside community, right? Well, Lakeside itself disagrees. According to the survey sent via the Daily, out of the 74 responses received, their average rating was 2.23 out of 5. Yikes. 

Students provided a spectrum of reasoning, but they were mostly negative. They expressed their disapproval of teachers closing important tabs through Hapara, invading their privacy by watching their screens, and Deledao blocking websites that would be used for educational purposes. Furthermore, they reproached the 8th grade class for being free of these particular restrictions and potentially taking great advantage of this. 

A Lakesider presenting themselves under the alias FailedChromeUser123 protested against not only Deledao annoyingly blocking important websites but also removing extensions that actually benefit their learning experience (specifically AdBlock, which blocks ads and various pop-ups across the internet). 

Another student – in 7th grade, specifically – wrote about how Lakeside staff should be more trusting of students, as we have the capability to “use our computers for fun stuff and keep our grades up – and if we can't, then that's between us and our parents, or potentially our advisors.” Additionally, they reiterated that blocked websites made it hard to do work in their Product Design elective. 

Finally, to cite one more person, Banana_Train_Child seemed especially frustrated at the 8th graders, stating, “In a school that promotes equality and inclusion, the use of Hapara filters should be an all-or-nothing thing.”

These points are all valid and make sense. While Hapara is just used to make sure students aren’t off-task, it may feel like an invasion of privacy to individuals in classes. What’s more, Deledao has seemed to be an even bigger issue within our community, since it greatly restricts digital freedom for our students. 

In conclusion, while Hapara and Deledao have done their part to help our community’s digital habits, it hasn’t always been the most helpful nor respectful to us either. We hope that Lakeside will work to create a better digital space for our students.