Lightspeed Systems

““We’ve probably made more back than we’ve had to spend so far. And it helps us with compliance—we now have quantifiable information we can share if it’s ever requested.””

“Don’t have that conversation only at a board meeting. Be intentional and campaign around it. Get the community together. Have a roundtable, have a town hall. And if the pressure slows down, don’t stop. That parent engagement needs to be continuous.”

“If they don’t understand what’s going on, they’re going to make up their own narrative. Being able to own that narrative and lead into it, being honest and transparent, is what builds genuine trust.”

“We have Lightspeed Insight, and we absolutely send that information to our curriculum and instruction leadership, but it’s also across every application we’re using. We show utilization and bounce it against cost. That’s all readily available with the tool, and it helps make those decisions.”

“When I’m seeing some hot spots, Lightspeed Insight allows us to be very prescriptive in how we address what teachers are teaching. It’s a tool that communicates to parents, but it also communicates internally to central office staff to help them understand what’s going on in a classroom from a macro level, so curriculum and instruction can articulate clearly whether changes are needed, and where.”

“We reached out to Lightspeed because we already had Lightspeed Insight. We asked whether Insight could provide this data, and the team was nice enough to really dig in, ask questions, and start that process, providing monthly reports that eventually expanded into a full picture of screen time across the district. Luckily, Lightspeed was in the process of developing the capacity to get these numbers and metrics and have them available to strengthen the conversation.”

““When vendors pitch to us saying they’re selling licenses for 60,000 students, I can go in and say we only have 15,000 students actually using this tool. We’ve had vendors try to use three years of active users as their proof of adoption, and then I pull it up and it’s dramatically different.””

““We really lacked a measure of what AI usage actually looks like in our district. Being able to track month by month has been really helpful, and everyone who sees that information has called it an eye opener, seeing our progression over the last year, how things have changed, and how students are impacted when we make governance changes. When we approved Gemini in April, usage quadrupled over about a month. It was valuable to see the data behind the decisions we were actually making.””

““The communication piece is what we get the most feedback on as being useful. That is parents, school leaders, and teachers. When a teacher wants something, they can come in and see it’s not approved, and why. Having that context next to the tool is what our community finds most valuable.””

“Having that visibility is so important because there are always going to be breaches and there are always going to be individuals who may not remember the software they are using.”

“I then checked Lightspeed Digital Insight, and I could see that there were some individuals using it.”

“I reached out to my teachers to confirm it was not being used.”

“There was a product that was not approved by our district, and that company had a breach,”

“Also, we are now asking our vendors what security training they provide to their employees who manage their servers.”

“I’m very concerned about how long some vendors are keeping their customers’ data, even years after their contract has ended.”

“Ed Law 2-d was a challenge for everybody, but I’ve really learned a lot through this process,”

“We generate our approved applications in Lightspeed Digital Insight and have them posted in multiple places, including on our district website and within our learning management system, which parents have access to.”

“I like being able to quickly see how much we paid for a tool or if we have the contract yet.”

“Every new software purchase is entered into the system, how much we paid for it, when we purchased it, the renewal date, and the contract.”

“I like having all of our approved applications in one place,”

“With cybersecurity threats and data breaches on the rise, districts need to evaluate their current compliance practices to help safeguard their students’ data.”

“It’s critical for district leaders to see what applications and online tools are being used by students and teachers.”

“I regularly check my Lightspeed Digital Insight dashboard to monitor the trending apps being used in the district.”

“We have to get teachers what they want when they want it, but we also have to protect our kids,”

“The tool also shows how teachers can best roll out and begin using each app, while showing parents what apps we’re actually using. Lightspeed Digital Insight has really helped us.”