A broken Chromebook, recently fixed, returns to the student. The Information Technology (IT) department works to provide solutions to technical problems.
“I am in charge of our Chromebooks district-wide,” IT support specialist Daniel Loewen said. “I manage them and make sure all the apps are on there for students and make sure students have a good learning experience with the Chromebooks.”
Not only does the IT department deal with all the Chromebooks within the district, the IT department also focuses on resolving technical issues throughout the school district.
“We facilitate and help teachers in our district, help resolve work orders put in for something that might be broken in their classroom,” Loewen said. “It could be a projector, or if they want a new piece of software on their computer.”
English teacher Becky Timberlake appreciates how fast the IT department resolves issues.
“I’ve had add-ons that I’ve wanted students to be able to use through Google Chrome, and the IT department has helped make it really easy to go through that process,” Timberlake said. “Grammarly used to not be there for students, so I went through and said, ‘This should be an add-on every student should have’ and then the IT department helped set up the add-on onto the Chromebooks.”
Timberlake is not the only person satisfied with the efficiency of the IT department.
“It’s a pretty seamless work order system, that if I can’t troubleshoot and repair any of the items, then submitting a work order and getting it completed quickly, helps students continue with their work seamlessly,” librarian Megan Vittitow said.
The IT Department also helps set up new technology for different classrooms.
“The IT department has helped me set up my whole classroom,” art teacher Audrey Shelite said. “They took care of card readers, they helped me with my printer, and then most recently, they replaced a broken projector with a new TV in the art room.”
However, the IT department also manages issues while school is not in session.
“Starting new this year, we got all new Chromebooks here for the high school, so we had to take time to make sure they were updated and ready to be used,” Loewen said.
Chromebooks were not the only new change for the IT department.
“District-wide, we changed up how we did our internet, and we are still updating it,” Loewen said. “We’ve been spending a lot of our time updating the internet to make it run smoothly.”
With the amount of effort the IT department puts in, teachers understand how important they are to the school.
“The IT department is very efficient and they contribute a lot to the school,” Shelite said. “They have a lot to manage, especially with the increase in technology that we’ve had over the years.”
Overall, the IT department is ready for any new changes to technology.
“Technology changes so fast that you have to be up on those changes and be ready for those changes so that students can continue to have a good learning environment,” Loewen said.
