By: Alena Farber ’13, Feature Editor, & Cynthia Yang ’13, Staff Writer

For a set of articles centered on technology, it only made sense to go to two of the school’s experts. So we sat down with Mr. Harris and Mr. Scott to figure out where, exactly, Newark Academy technology is heading, especially in light of the new wing of classrooms about to be attached.

This year was the pilot program for the school’s iPads: there are twenty right now, and you might have noticed teachers like Madame Obydol, Ms. Dixler, or Mr. Hawk carrying them around. If you stop to ask one of them, they will rave about all the things they can do with it and immediately pull up an app to show you something. Next year, the iPads are going into classrooms, so students will have more chances to explore the different features. And when iPads came up, we had to ask about one of the ideas that has been floating around a lot lately: digital textbooks.

The average Newark Academy backpack is enormous, and there has been a lot of talk about getting iPads or Kindles to reduce some of the weight and back pain. Many of you will be happy to hear that we are going in that direction. Another pilot program next year will be giving Kindles to several teachers’ classes, but it will not be as widespread as the student body might hope. The technology department definitely will not be giving every student an iPad; a key problem with that would be apps. NA certainly would not fund an iTunes accounts for every individual student to buy games with, so students would have to handle the apps themselves. So while certain lucky students will be receiving Kindles next year, mass digital textbooks are not so close. As Mr. Scott explained, “they can’t be managed…yet.”

We also do not have a need to go completely 1-to-1, or give each student an iPad or laptop. This would put teachers in a bad position when they look out at their class and see their students on iPads. In addition, going 1-to-1 has to be “extremely institutionalized”, explains Mr. Harris. Without a doubt 1-to-1 is a huge monetary investment that we at NA just aren’t ready for, yet.

Part of the reason we are able to make all these innovations–iPads, Kindles, new laptops–is the technology fee that every student includes in their tuition. With over 500 students paying $220 every year in technology fees, the technology department receives around $119,000. A lot of that money goes to Microsoft, to pay for software licenses. The rest of the money is spent on laptop carts and the laptops in the library for student use. Our computers are updated every three years just so that we can work with the new technology and the new hardware. This may seem like an overwhelming cost, but, as Mr. Scott explained, at NA the technology department “does so much behind the scenes”. Instead of hiring an outside vendor like many schools do, Mr. Harris installs every projector, SmartBoard, and computer in-house. Without a doubt, this saves us a great deal of money, which then in turn allows us to purchase more iPads and other great technological tools.

Even though our tech department’s finances are carefully managed, there have been complaints that the SmartBoards or projectors in certain rooms not working, or the Wi-Fi not reaching certain places of the campus. When we asked Mr. Scott and Mr. Harris about this, their explanation was simple: user error. Yes, even though teachers repeatedly remind us to log out of laptops before putting them back into the laptop cart, many students still forget or simply neglect to do so. While taking out a random laptop from a cart, Mr. Scott has had the battery simply fall onto the floor. If it had been a student instead of Mr. Scott who had chosen that laptop, their first reaction would probably have been to blame the technology. In reality, the students are the only ones to use these, so only they can be blamed for problems with wireless. As for issues with SmartBoards or A/V systems, that can be explained by user error as well. It’s things like forgetting to turn off projectors, not restarting our laptops, and then trying to connect to multiple projectors in one day that make it difficult for teachers or students to open presentations.

The new wing of classrooms is going to be all SmartBoards, according to Mr. Harris. The new generation of these is going to be much more advanced than the versions we have now: 72 inches across, with multitouch capabilities. Even though we might love picking up the eraser while someone is writing, with the new SmartBoards it will truly be a digital whiteboard that can be used by multiple students at once.

According to Mr. Harris, our server a few years ago was just “two PowerMac G4s” sitting in a room. Now, in the next few years we’ll be opening up iPads and Kindles to the student body, setting up SmartBoards in every room of the new wing, and even getting our own dedicated fiber for the internet. As Newark Academy moves forward with the Master Plan and other advancements, it’s amazing to notice the technological advances that are happening at the same time.