Technology is becoming a much larger part of District 117’s curriculum and infrastructure, especially this year. The school is equipped with new Google Chromebooks, email accounts with access to Google Drive and consistent passwords to make students’ work and communication more efficient. We, as the Tom Tom staff, feel that the new technology will benefit all students in the future, but the fact that it was not ready by the start of school caused many issues.

Trying to learn a completely new computer system at the beginning of the school year has been a little overwhelming. We appreciate how the school tried to prepare us at freshmen orientation and textbook pickup, but the various issues of the new technology are still a bit frustrating.

The new technology, especially the new email system, is frustrating for older students because of how many times the system has been changed. It is difficult to learn how another email system works. Additionally, some of us have signed up for important notifications from colleges and other groups with our old email accounts. Now that they are changed, we no longer receive those important emails.

In addition to the new email and computer systems, the school purchased four sets of Chromebooks for classroom use when a computer lab is not available. Although the new Chromebooks have many advanced features to help us, they could cause a problem if there is no Internet. Chromebooks are Internet based, so if we are working on an assignment on Google Documents and the Internet goes down, we will not have access to it. Additionally, the Chromebooks are not equipped with Microsoft Office, which can cause issues for students with this system at home.

The new technology is confusing at the moment, but after we learn how to operate everything, we hope it will be much more efficient and resourceful. The students will likely appreciate the new technology after they learn and become familiar with the changes. Now that technology is becoming a larger part of our classes, it is important that we all know how to use the new tools we have been given.