[quote]By Nikki Roberts
Online Writer
Photo by Drew Danko[/quote]

The sound of pencil sharpeners, rigorous erasing, and  frantic writing are all being replaced by soft electronic clicks from a keyboard in classrooms throughout Metea Valley. It’s been official, but this school year, it’s more prevalent than ever: Metea is a Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) school.  

This year, many teachers are choosing to implement online discussion boards, smartphone review games, or other online activities opposed to traditional written worksheets. An increasing amount of assignments are now turned in via Google Classroom, which allows teachers to strictly enforce deadlines for assignments such as essays or PowerPoint presentations. These changes have been met with varying responses from the school’s community.

A large amount of teachers prefer online learning because it grants them the flexibility to grade assignments without hauling a stack of papers home, allows students to interact with their peers’ ideas on discussion boards, reduces excess paper waste, and keeps a permanent copy of the student’s work online.

“We’re on our phones a lot, we have apps, we have Internet at our fingertips. To me, it incorporates what [students] are doing outside of the classroom with what we’re doing in the classroom,” social studies teacher Sidney Neukirch said.

However, some students believe the benefits of online activities are minimized by the inaccessibility experienced by filtered Internet connection that fails to reach the entire school.

According to the district’s BYOT agreement, which students are required to agree to in order to use their devices, “All students must use the BYOT Guest Wireless network while using their device in the classroom…and are prohibited from connecting to a private, unfiltered network connection on their device using a data plan.” This means that using the Internet with a 3G or LTE data plan, in addition to texting, listening to music, and essentially all non-classroom approved activities, is in violation of the school’s intended use for electronic devices.

“The Wi-Fi is really slow and annoying, so all of my friends and I use data instead,” freshman Sophie Armand said.

For students, this creates an unfortunate situation where many believe they must resort to breaking school policies by either filtering the school network or using data plans in order to work on classwork rather than utilize the school Wi-Fi, which is a tool given to students solely for the purpose of completing assignments. Strict filtering, which is in compliance with federal law, is intended to keep students off of social media or other sites which may distract them from learning, also unintentionally censors educational sites which many find essential for research.

“Restricting school Wi-Fi gives students less options for resources to use when doing school work,” senior Joe Ott said.

In addition to restricted resources, students also report unreliable connection. Loss of signal is a common problem, even after a student has repeatedly signed into the network.  Recently, several Wi-Fi hotspots have been added in an attempt to strengthen the range and strength of signal throughout the school.

“We have added more wireless access points throughout the building so the student laptops and their devices can access the Internet in more locations. We have had some issues with the Wi-Fi, but with the recent addition of Wi-Fi access points, those issues should be resolved,” technology coordinator Tania Moneim said.

Teachers also must address how to handle a situation where a student does not own the devices required to complete an assignment. Under these circumstances, many teachers instruct their students to share with someone who does have access to a smartphone. However, sharing a small phone screen between two people, especially when the intended goal is for students to work independently, can be a challenge.

“I was perfectly content with my phone until BYOT became very prevalent in the classroom setting. Teachers would have us look at articles or other sites on our phones, which I couldn’t do on mine. Not once did a teacher have a hard copy to accommodate students like me. The only reason I upgraded to a smartphone was because of the rapidly increasing use of phones in the classroom,” senior Mikaela Keeney said.

The pressure to own up-to-date technology is another concern. Students deserve to feel like the school grants them the resources needed in order to fulfill their academic potential, not that their families should have to pay a large, out-of-pocket fee in order for their child to meet the school’s standards. Although laptops and tablets are available for student use, often times they are not sensible as the time it takes to leave class and check one of these devices out is a larger distraction than simply attempting to follow along without the required resources.

A happy medium must be found in order to balance the growing popularity of technology centered learning with students who wish to limit online learning and prefer traditional methods. Providing hard copies to accompany an online webquest is just one example of how the two can work together.

“If they don’t have a phone or want to leave it in their locker so it’s not a distraction, you need to respect what they have,” added Neukirch.