by Kevin McLaughlin
As COVID-19 is still a threat across the United States, students and teachers will have to make adjustments to their normal school days, depending on where they live. With New York being a hotspot for coronavirus this past spring, it is not a surprise that Governor Andrew Cuomo is being cautious about the reopening of schools. Irvington is opting to go hybrid to start the school year with some students home and some in person.
This raises the question of technology for this school year.
The need for less physical contact calls for the need of more technology. As Irvington students do not have district issued Chromebooks for themselves, many students need to request a Chromebook for online learning, or use a personal one.
Director of technology Jason Strumwasser says that Irvington has distributed over a thousand Chromebooks to staff and students, while having “contact-free distributions over the past few weeks at the Maher Gym.”
Even with a thousand already distributed, many students are still on a waiting list. Chromebooks have never been in higher demand, as schools around the world are in need of more. Strumwasser says that the school has been in close contact with our vendors, and they like many other companies are experiencing shipping delays worldwide.
The first week of in-person learning has resulted in some wifi problems throughout the school. Strumwasser said that Irvington is working on “adding a secondary line of internet to ensure stability with the increased usage across our four buildings.”
This is great news for students, as even before hybrid learning there have been connection and wifi problems at school.
Strumwasser also explained how Irvington will be introducing a new platform called Classlink, which will be used in school for staff and students. He further described it as somewhere you can “login once and be able to access all your educational technology tools and applications.” This should be a good complement to Google Classroom, as we head into a school year like never before.
