Balancing freedom and focus: How Lenovo LanSchool and Netsweeper enhance digital learning together 

As classrooms become increasingly centered on digital learning, educators face a dual challenge: fostering student engagement while mitigating distractions. Digital devices provide immense opportunities for creativity and collaboration, but they also come with risks, from online distractions to potential cyber threats. By leveraging the right combination of AI-driven solutions, schools can strike a balance between digital exploration and maintaining a focused, safe learning environment.  
 
Lenovo has partnered with Netsweeper to address the critical need for secure web filtering, complementing Lenovo LanSchool’s classroom management solutions and ensuring a safe, focused digital learning environment for educational institutions. 

Here are 5 ways LanSchool and Netsweeper work together to empower teachers and IT teams to enhance productivity, safeguard students, and create a seamless, secure digital learning experience. 

1. Using AI to keep learning on track

Digital devices enable teachers to be endlessly creative in the way they teach, coach, and collaborate with students toward reaching their learning goals. But devices can also be gateways to student distraction and disengagement.  

LanSchool and Netsweeper use AI-driven monitoring features to keep students on track and in bounds while learning on digital devices. Teachers can enter their learning objective for each class period within LanSchool, and the software will automatically monitor students’ online activities to alert teachers to behaviors that indicate the student is off track. This gives teachers the opportunity to send students a discreet chat message or even block the distracting websites for that student. 

At the same time, Netsweeper uses AI to scan web traffic entering the school’s network to filter out any potentially inappropriate websites students may encounter as they wander off task. IT teams can also set rules to block or restrict access to common distractions, such as streaming platforms and social media networks.  

2. Keeping students and networks safer

Of course, there are worse dangers than digital distraction. If students are allowed open access to the internet, they are at a high risk of exposing the school’s network to data-stealing malware, ransomware, and other cyber threats. Moreover, students may use school devices to engage in cyberbullying, searches related to violence or self-harm, or other concerning conversations and activities. 

Netsweeper protects school networks from malicious traffic by using AI to find both known and new threats that are often missed by other web filters. It even provides device-level filtering to catch threats that are lurking in applications and multimedia content. Moreover, unlike free web filters, Netsweeper can detect worrisome user activity and alert teachers and administrators to any concerning searches or conversations. As another line of defense, LanSchool enables teachers to view students’ screens in real time, including any open, non-active tabs. This gives teachers the opportunity to spot risky online behavior taking place during class, including the visitation of unsafe websites or engagement in cyberbullying. 

3. Enabling IT teams and teachers to set flexible policies

Setting overarching rules to filter or block websites can work in some circumstances, but often schools struggle to find the right balance. If web restrictions are too harsh, it can limit productivity and learning. If they are too weak, harmful content can slip through.  

LanSchool and Netsweeper work together to help schools achieve the right balance by giving both IT teams and teachers the flexibility to set and remove certain restrictions as needed. LanSchool enables teachers and IT teams to set web restrictions in real time for each student, classroom, or building. This ensures teachers do not require IT intervention to quickly block a distracting website in order to keep students learning. Netsweeper also enables IT teams to set user-based policies and personalized access rules to further customize their school’s digital learning environment. 

4. Unifying mixed-device environments  

Often, edtech software is developed only for specific environments due to vendors’ production limitations, licensing agreements, or other limiting factors. This can cause compatibility challenges for school districts whose fleets typically include a mix of different devices and OSes.  

LanSchool and Netsweeper can provide a unified experience for teachers and students, no matter which devices they are using. Both solutions are cloud based and work seamlessly on Chrome, Mac, and Windows devices.  

5. Enabling secure, supervised hybrid learning

Whether they’re at school, at home, or at the library — today’s students engage in schoolwork in a variety of places. That means the monitoring and filtering products schools use need to work outside of school walls. 

Cloud-based LanSchool enables teachers to supervise hybrid learning and testing with all the same monitoring, chatting, screen sharing, and web limiting features they use in the classroom. Netsweeper’s cloud-based delivery model means it works on devices even when they connect to non-school networks at home or in public places, extending the same great protection and web filtering wherever students go.  

Bonus benefit: Making your budget go further 

When you purchase LanSchool and Netsweeper together through Lenovo, you get to take advantage of our bundle deal. Bundling these two Lenovo Education suite solutions not only saves you money, it enables you to streamline billing and product support. 

Contact our team to find out more about the LanSchool + Netsweeper bundle for school districts.  

Empower teachers and foster future-ready students with LanSchool and Netsweeper 

It might seem counterintuitive, but setting clear digital boundaries can actually expand students’ horizons. Using Lenovo LanSchool and partner solution Netsweeper allows educators to focus on teaching and personalizing learning experiences while ensuring students remain safe and engaged, both in and out of the classroom. By creating a secure, well-monitored digital environment, educators empower students to explore their interests with confidence, fostering growth and helping them reach their full potential. Safe digital spaces pave the way for deeper exploration — and more meaningful learning outcomes. 

Explore these software options and more in our full Lenovo Education Software lineup.