On April 4, Tamalpais Union School District (TUHSD) sent out an email regarding students’ personal computers. Starting next school year, TUHSD plans on prohibiting personal computers from being used during class by removing their access to the schools wifi network. This new policy limits students’ learning abilities due to the inadequate alternative of school issued Chromebooks. TUHSD needs to repeal their ban on personal laptop use during school.
The prohibition of school laptops is being led by the Senior Director of IT for TUHSD, Rose Chavira.
“There’s a lot of different factors that entered into that decision,” Chavira said. “First and foremost is that it’s smoother for instruction to happen in a classroom [with only Chromebooks] it makes for a standardized experience for the students as well.”
Although it may seem easier for instruction at school, a March Bark survey concluded that 50 percent of students that currently use chromebooks have self-reported experiencing five or more issues with the devices within the past five months.
Currently, Redwood has been upgrading their laptop carts to the Lenovo 14e. The district chose to upgrade to these devices due to their larger screens and faster computing power. Although the 14e is faster than past models, it’s still a lackluster device with a subpar processing unit. When measured on Geekbench, a platform used to benchmark computer and device speeds and efficiency, the 14e’s processor scored just under 1400, a score well below the average for most computers. In comparison, a Macbook Air from 2020 scores over 2300 in the same test. However, Chavira feels that Chromebooks have one extremely important feature that makes them a much better option for school.
“Security is really, really important. Chromebooks don’t get viruses and they don’t get malware installed on them because they’re what are called a closed system,” Chavira said.
The Chromebooks run on a system known as ChromeOS, a web based operating system that uses minimal resources. As a result of using little resources, the system is secure. However, the cost of having high security on a Chromebook sacrifices performance greatly.
TUHSD has cited that personal computers have caused high stress to school wifi. TUHSD, while also prohibiting personal computers, is planning to upgrade every classroom with a new Wifi antenna for greater internet speeds. Despite this upgrade, TUHSD still believes that personal devices will cause stress to the school’s internet.
“A personal MacBook that somebody brings in is taking up resources on that classroom’s [Wifi], and so if the personal devices are no longer allowed to join, it frees up a lot more bandwidth for the classroom Chromebooks,” Chavira said. Bandwidth denotes the amount of information transferred between a device and the Wi-Fi network. However, while performing simple tasks, a macbook sends and receives the same amount of bandwidth as a Chromebook, about 20kbps.
Furthermore, overall bandwidth usage won’t have a significant decrease due to students switching to Chromebooks. Students will still be taking up resources on different devices which rely heavily on the internet to properly function; whereas other personal computers and devices, such as macbooks, do not rely as heavily on the internet.
A March Bark survey reported that around 22 percent of students at Redwood use their own personal computers at school. This large percentage of students will have to halt their current habits and learn how to adapt to a completely new device.
‘Bring your own device’ (BYOD) has many beneficial effects for schools. Cybersecurity Insiders cited that BYOD helped boost employee productivity by 68 percent,
employees prefer their own personal devices due to having more familiarity with them in contrast to items issued by their company. BYOD also leads to lower usage of Chromebooks which leads to less money being spent on replacing or fixing laptops. Personal devices not only help students save time, but it also helps the district save money.
The prohibition of personal devices is unnecessary
, they work faster than currently provided computers, help students stay more efficient and have a minimal negative impact at school. TUHSD must reverse the prohibition of personal devices to better the everyday lives of students in school.
