Webcams in the Classroom — Is Big Brother (or Sister) Watching?

Two school districts in Mississippi (Biloxi and Coffeeville) have installed ceiling cameras in their classrooms and hallways. The technology from CameraWatch Corp. is the same used in stores and casinos to keep an eye on customers. Biloxi has over 500 cameras installed in its school buildings.

The main motivation appears to be to assure security and safety within the school. Biloxi restricts viewing to a limited number of individuals, mostly administrators and security officers. A password is needed to access the system through any Internet- connected computer. Parents, teachers, and students need a court order to view the tapes. The Biloxi "eye in the sky" records photos every one eighth of a second and does not record sound.

A Newsday.com article by Melissa Scallan reports, "Students and teachers said they were intimidated at first by the cameras, but now they don't notice them. Most students said they don't mind the cameras and feel safer because of them. But they also said it's not as easy to misbehave in class, knowing the principal can see what they are doing."

Biloxi Superintendent Larry Drawdy notes that discipline referrals from teachers have declined since the Webcams were installed. He also notes that schools from around the world have made inquiries about the project's progress.

The system installed in Coffeeville video records the whole class and includes sound. The cameras have proven valuable in handling in-school suspensions at Coffeeville. Students serve their suspensions in a different room, but don't miss a minute of their class instruction, as they view it through the closed circuit broadcast from their classrooms. Advocates see this technology as a viable solution to the problem of lost instructional time for suspended students. The tapes are archived for several weeks, allowing students who were absent to view the instruction they missed.

Privacy advocates and teacher unions have expressed some reservations about what they view as an Orwellian imposition. They question the impact such monitoring might have on student and teacher expression.

Last summer a group of London teachers called for the installation of Webcams in every classroom. These proponents argued that such round-the-clock monitoring would make it easier to document student misbehaviors and poor teacher performance. A few would like to make the broad-cast accessible to any parent, as some nursery schools do now. The idea apparently hasn't caught on, perhaps because of the massive expense of setting up such a system. The Biloxi system cost $2.5 million, while the more modest Coffeeville installation ran about $260,000.

As an interesting aside, a Google search of the Web revealed one school in which a hidden Webcam in the teacher‘s lounge broadcasts views of faculty coming and going.

Stay tuned. In an era when metal detectors and security guards are common school expenses, school boards and administrators are under increasing pressure to assure the maximum degree of safety and security in their schools, the use of Webcams in schools is likely to remain a hot issue for some time.

Sources: USA Today, August 11, 2003, and January 5, 2004. Newsday.com (add link: http://www.newsday.com/news/education/).