Here is how the majority of classes have gone this year: TV or Smartboard not connecting to the Wi-Fi, teachers not knowing which Wi-Fi they should be connected to, students not being able to do their work due to the large amount of websites being blocked.

During summer the Technology Department made some changes and the transition was immediately noticeable to teachers and students.

“It’s like everything when it’s a work in progress, we try to fix it. And hopefully by the end of this year, calendaristic year, we’ll have it fixed,” Technology Specialist Cami Finley said.

One of the most noticeable issues regarding technology is all of the blocked websites.

“Nearly all of the newspaper websites are blocked. And this makes it really difficult to research. And so for a lot of projects, I’ve had to just completely abandon my computer and use my phone instead,” senior Lydia Dexter said.

The technology department has been working to resolve the issue of the blocked websites by giving teachers access to a request form where they can request certain websites to be approved so they can be unblocked for class use.

This has changed certain classes significantly. 

“It has certainly affected the pacing of the class, how quickly I’ve moved through stuff, because it delayed us a lot at the beginning of the semester,” teacher Matt VanBoeining said.

It has also become noticeable to students how the amount of websites blocked affects them with their school work compared to in the past.

“I was looking through some of my bookmarks for stuff that I used for my junior project last year, and like half of the websites are blocked. I could not use them. If it was this year, I would not have been able to use them for research. It’s ridiculous how many blocked websites there are,” Dexter said.

Another one of the main issues people have been struggling with is the Wi-Fi not connecting, and not being certain if they should be connected to the Derby Wi-Fi or the USD260 Wi-Fi.

“I’m in an accounting class. So we use a software called Citrix. Citrix is regularly down,” junior Zachary Mounts said. “We go multiple days without doing classwork, because simply our program is down. We can’t do it.”

Technology continues to deal with this problem but it is clear that the issue is getting better.

“We identify the issues and we fix it. We still encounter some, but not as much is at the beginning of the school year,” Finley said.