Austin, Texas—Sept 16, 2022—Lightspeed Systems^®, a leading K-12 online safety and effectiveness solutions provider, has won Tech & Learning’s “Best Tools for Back to School” award in the Secondary (6-12) category for two solutions, Lightspeed Classroom Management™ and Lightspeed Alert™. Each was recognized as an outstanding education product that supports teaching and learning. The awards were bestowed as part of Tech & Learning’s 2022 Awards of Excellence program.

Lightspeed Classroom Management helps teachers keep students engaged and focused on digital learning. With real-time visibility into student activity and control over their online workspaces, teachers can remove distractions and keep students’ attention on classroom instruction by pushing out vetted URLs to all students, closing distracting tabs, blocking inappropriate websites, and enabling screen sharing for a collaborative, interactive classroom.

For the 2022 school year, Lightspeed Classroom Management was enhanced to give educators more control over student learning. Educators have more visibility over student activity with larger screens view, drag-and-drop functionality to create on-the-fly student groups, lesson customization to create differentiated instruction, and control over student attendance. Additionally, Lightspeed Systems launched SmartSync™, roster syncing technology with enhanced syncing speeds and multiple directory sources to ensure students are in the right classes with access to the content they need to succeed in the new school year.

“It’s an honor that the edtech leaders at Tech & Learning have recognized how effectively Lightspeed’s classroom management solution promotes student engagement,” said Scott Meeks, Director, Classroom Management. “As districts embark on a new school year, it’s essential that educators are empowered to keep students on task without disrupting valuable instruction time.”

Lightspeed Alert helps safety staff monitor their school communities for potential incidents of self-harm, suicide, bullying, and campus violence. The combination of 24/7/365 AI monitoring and human review ensures no alert goes unnoticed, no matter the day or time. Threats requiring more attention are sent via email to designated staff with a screenshot of the flagged activity and any of the student’s relevant contextual activity. Imminent threats are escalated via live calls from Lightspeed Safety Specialists to emergency responders and safety staff for rapid intervention.

Enhanced in time for back-to-school, Lightspeed Alert now offers image scanning capabilities to monitor for weapons and explicit imagery students share online and includes AI scanning for threats of bullying and physical harm. Additionally, improved integrations with Google allow for better monitoring across Gmail and Google Drive. These product enhancements help safety teams ensure every student stays safe on campus.

“With the youth mental health crisis showing no sign of ending, deploying the right threat detection system can save lives,” said Ryan Keag, Director, Student Safety. “We are honored that Lightspeed has been recognized for its unsurpassed ability to promote student safety by monitoring students’ online activity, no matter when or where they use their devices.”