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This year has seen many new changes and upgrades for technology at NS. Seventy seven Brand new 24” iMacs were installed in several places around the school, ninth graders received new iPads, and several different educational softwares were combined in a single sign-on software called Classlink. These changes did not happen without a certain amount of issues and hold ups however.
The majority of the problems centered around the iPads.
“iPads at the high school, that’s pretty much the same as always. The freshmen get new iPads and that just cycles through,” said Enoch Brown, the IT Help Desk Administrator at NSSD.
NS has been distributing iPads to students for the last 8 years. In past years, iPads have been handed out prior to the start of school, then returned to the school for routine maintenance at the end of each school year.
However, when schools were closed in 2020 because of COVID, the tech department was unable to collect iPads at the end of that school year. Meaning that when they were returned at the end of the 2021 school year they were in need of more maintenance than usual.
“There were two things that caused us some problems this year,” Brown said. “Last year, we didn’t get the iPads back because of COVID, so there was more for us to go through this year. And then, summer school, a lot of kids checked them out who didn’t know they needed to bring them back so we could get them out in time. Those were our biggest hiccups.”
These problems led to some students not receiving their iPads until weeks after the start of school and other students receiving their iPads and then having to return them due to system management issues.
“So, I came back to school this year, and we were supposed to get them in our advisory class,” said Brooke Moon, a junior at NS. “They didn’t know where my iPad was, and they were expecting to find it within the first three days but they never did. And so I had to use a temporary one, which caused a lot of problems because I couldn’t get into Canvas and upload lots of my assignments and I was behind for a little bit. It took them like two weeks to find it.”
Another cause of the issues was summer school. Students who took online summer classes were allowed to check out their iPad to do their schoowork. However, they were also supposed to return the iPads when summer school concluded in July.
If a student failed to return their iPad, the tech department couldn’t perform the scheduled maintenance updates on it. This led to students who didn’t turn in their iPad during summer, having to turn it in after the start of school.
Another change made this year regarding iPads was when they were distributed. Instead of being handed out prior to the start of school, they were delivered to students on the first day of school during advisory. This change received some pushback from students and teachers, but according to Brown, it was much smoother for the technology department, and they expect that things will be better in future years.
“Changing things always causes a few hiccups, and that’s probably part of why we had some,” Brown said. “It will go smoother in the future.”
On the software side of things, one major change this year was the switch to Classlink. Classlink is a single web-based sign in option. Students can sign in to Classlink and have access from there to all of their other school accounts without having to sign in again.
“We’re hoping that it will effectively replace a few other technologies that we have been using,” Brown said.
This too had some problems, such as students not being able to access their Classlink account and thus being unable to access any of their school accounts, preventing them from doing online homework and assignments.
“Interestingly enough, there seems to be a different array of problems every year,” said NS librarian Kandy Beebe. “There was a little problem this year–we got the new Classlink app and everyone was really excited about it, and I don”t know if it crashed or whatever the reason was but it wasn’t working when school started. So we had to work out the kinks of the new Classlink app, and we’re still working on them on a regular basis.”
One change that went smoothly however, was the transition from older 2013 Intel iMacs, to newer, more powerful 2021 Apple M1 iMacs. This upgrade was due to the fact that after this year, the older computers would no longer receive support from Apple, potentially creating network security threats for the school.
“It’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to have a computer that can’t receive updates,” Brown said. “It’s a threat to everyone on our network if we were to allow that. An important part of what we do is just get rid of old technology.”
With the baseline model retailing at $1,249 for education pricing, these new desktop computers were installed in three separate labs at NS. The library received 33 of these new computers, with the rest going to Lane Cook’s classroom and the Cyber Corps room. The school has ordered more of these new iMacs to replace other aging desktops around the school, but they have been delayed due to complications with COVID-19.
These new computers are expected to last anywhere from 5-8 years, longer than could be expected from any older model of the iMac.
