Haris Durrani ’11 & Liv Heil ’10
Opinions Editor & Staff Writer

This school year, 408 new laptops replaced their older counterparts. Though the computers were supposed to an improvement, there have been several setbacks.

Director of Instructional Technology Natalie Carrignan, and Reinaldo Santana, head technician, explained that the new Computers on Wheels (COWs) malfunctioned at the beginning of this year because laptops failed to image properly, needed driver updates, or got confused between two authentication certificates. These problems are why students had trouble logging on.

According to Frances Evan, the social studies and English department secretary, 50 laptops broke in a two week period.

“They’re fixed,” Evan said, “but then there’s another run of them that break.”

Barbara Robbins, an English teacher, said that while the COWs are definitely working better, students were still spending 15 to 45 minutes logging into the network as of Oct. 7. Nevertheless, she was optimistic about the laptop problems.

“We are lucky to have the technology,” Robbins said.

According to Joanne Klouda, a physics teacher who uses the laptops to help record more accurate data using lab sensors, she was hesitant to use the new COWs in class as she didn’t know how many would be functioning at any given time.

Werner Liepolt, who teaches English, said it is upsetting to him that in an era of technology, we cannot depend on technology.

Liepolt had to file three or four tech requests whenever he used the laptops in class.

“That’s like 20 percent of my job I can’t do,” Liepolt said.

Robbins said laptops may not be durable enough to deal with hundreds of different students using them, and that this is “just the nature of using Computers on Wheels.” According to James Farnen, assistant principal, the laptops have small life cycles.

However, by Oct. 9 all laptops had been reimaged. Carrignan said the technology staff is “in the process of collecting feedback on the effectiveness of the fixes.”

In one of Liepolt’s classes, students applauded when the computers finally logged on properly.

“I think now we can depend on them [laptops] a whole lot more,” Maddy Mann ’13, a student in Liepolt’s period six freshman English 1A class said. Klouda also said that while there are still a few problems here and there, it is nice to seen the computers functioning well again.

Farnen hopes to improve technology to 100 percent quality in the near future. He also said the school system has a “great tech department.”

“Log-in efficiency should be measured in seconds, not minutes, and that’s where we should be and will be,” Farnen said.

Furthermore, according to Santana, technology problems always make their way into the start of each school year.

Carrignan said problems are inherent to many technologies outside of school, so tech issues are unavoidable. She added that students and teachers will have to pull through laptop problems together.

“There have been issues in the past when updates happen and the updates fix some things and break others,” Carrignan said. “ It is not considered abnormal to have issues. It is not acceptable to us, however, to have unresolved issues continue over an extended period of time.”

K-12 English Department Coordinator Lis Comm cited another reason for the technology breakdowns.

“The problem is they [technicians] are understaffed,” Comm said. “They have only three or four tech guys for the whole school system. They work as hard as they can.”

Carrignan agreed, but said that with a struggling economy it is difficult to tackle such a dilemma.

She plans to hire more technicians in the future.

“We have had approximately 3,000 pieces of electronic equipment added to our supported list of equipment since 2006,” Carrignan said. “We have also increased the number of parents and students we support on multiple software programs since 2006. And since 2006 we have had no increase in staffing.”

Santana did not give solid confirmation that he believes more technicians should be hired or not. “I wouldn’t say that we need more [tech staff], but a help is a plus,” Santana said.