What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? You go onto your phone and look online. Our society has evolved from using textbooks to using online resources, from keeping in touch through letters to using social media. Technology and computer science play a significant role in all of our lives and we need to learn about them to keep up. At UNIS, students use computers, phones, and smart boards on a daily basis. Yet students face issues with the school’s technology, and as a result, their work is disrupted. It has never been more important to teach computer science and programming, and there should be a bigger emphasis on teaching at UNIS.

The technology available at UNIS has multiple issues that are not only an annoyance to students and teachers, but also limits their work abilities. For instance, the servers at UNIS sometimes crash, causing the wifi to not work. A possible solution to the wifi crashing would be to expand the server’s capacity to support a larger number of people. Luke Serrano, a Tut 2 student at UNIS said, “Sometimes the wifi crashes and as a result, our work gets disrupted.”

In addition, there have been complaints about the UNIS board’s choice of Chromebooks instead of Macs for the Tut 1 and Tut 2 students. Alex Photakis, a Tut 2 student said, “The Chromebooks are okay computers, but MacBooks can do a lot of more.”

Students prefer the greater functionality of MacBooks, but Chromebooks have better battery lives and are cheaper for the school. MacBooks can power through demanding tasks like photo editing or gaming. However, the average price of a Chromebook is around $500, while a MacBook costs around $2000. In addition, a Chromebook can get 10 hours of battery life, while a MacBook gets around only five hours of battery life.

Furthermore, the printers around the school don’t work sometimes. In fact, this has been a common issue for many of the faculty and students in UNIS. Students or teachers have to constantly fix the printer to print their work, and as a result, it affects their ability to get work done. Finally, the UNIS website shows outdated pictures and outdated web pages that could be updated to reflect the new school year. UNIS should make sure that their website is up to date since many users visit the website daily. If all of the technological issues at UNIS could be solved, teachers and students would work more efficiently with tech that could improve their work and they would have an easier time teaching their students. Students would also see benefits in terms of better work and fewer IT issues at the school.

Teaching coding and computer science education is another field that UNIS needs to improve its resources for. Technology has become increasingly relevant, and it is important for everyone to at least some basic coding. According to Code.org, only 40 percent of schools in the United States teach computer science, and 500,000 job offerings are left open because not enough people learn about computer science in the United States. It’s important to teach more people programming because it gives them the opportunity to work in a world that is highly technical and technological and it improves their problem-solving skills. UNIS Students are offered certain computer science classes, however, none are mandatory. The Tut 1s and Tut 2s can opt-in for electives in Robotics and Java while the Tut 3s and Tut 4s can pursue IB computer science. UNIS Clubs such as Teen Tech NY,  Girls in Tech and Computer Science Club also contribute to educating students about computer science and programming.

Technology improves our lives greatly, whether by performing calculations, educating people, or allowing us to organize and share information. We must understand and adapt to the highly technological 21st century. For these reasons, we should improve our technology resources at UNIS and learn more programming and computer science.