With the start of the new year there comes many changes. One of the biggest changes for the 2014-2015 school year is the addition of Wi-Fi to all of the schools for both teachers and students. Students and teachers can gain access to free wifi with one simple tap on their smartphone, tablet or laptop.

“I use the Wi-Fi on the tablet because my phone is broken and so far it’s been really strong for me,” junior Ali Karmabash said.

Other students however are more sceptical of how well the Wi-Fi works.

    “The Wi-Fi runs slow in some areas of the school and there’s a rumour that you can be tracked on it,” junior Roosevelt Jones said.

This Wi-Fi however was not intended to be used just for recreation.

“It is to support the new 21st century learning that is the county’s new initiative that was presented to the Board of Ed last month. It involves more individualized learning, more  Chromebooks in the classroom, kids working in Google, more collaborative work the teacher using Google Apps for Education. It’s just to support the more mobile environment that we are kind of moving towards, we need to go wireless,” said IT Systems Specialist John Garrett.

21st Century incorporates the ideas of collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving into our schools today. With new advances in technology, it is now possible to transfer files photos and especially textbooks out of backpacks and on to the Internet.

    With this new technology and the addition of Wi-Fi to our schools , teachers are able to introduce more technology in classes then ever had before.

    “When you think about phones now-a-days they are more of a computer than a phone. So there are instructional uses that teachers can implement in classes. If a teacher, for example, needs you to do a little bit of research on the spot, a vocabulary word on the spot and you can use your phone to do it there is no reason not to do it,” Assistant Principal Daniel Garcia said.