BBCHS is a school of functionality and opportunities, offering some of the most up-to-date educational tools there are. However, as technology spreads through schools and their classrooms, the more it affects educators and students; including Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School, and the beloved Boilermakers.

Throughout recent years at BBCHS their students and staff had to make adjustments to new and improved technology, teaching curriculum, and newly instituted rules and regulations. Some of the most recent installations has been that all students gets their own individual Chromebook to use throughout their classes and at home for homework. With this switch comes room for improvement and adjustments that staff and educators have to make in syllabi and ways to teach the subject material. Students also have to adapt to the changes as well as reworking their means of working and studying around the given tools and provided materials.

While administration and teachers decide what to do with newly acquired tools and how to use them, students have to roll with the punches. Taking each change and freshly added responsibilities that come with chromebooks and their uses, they’ve run into problems. Students are sometimes unable to connect to internet outside of school, limiting what they can and cannot work on. Some students have expressed their concerns for their education due to the new ways teachers are relaying subject material. Teachers have to deal with the common misuse of Chromebooks during class due to easily accessible websites that could distract students from crucial work. “I feel like it’s more of a distraction to be on a chromebook. Like, when you are writing on paper, you have to focus on what you’re writing.” Faith Dahn, a BBCHS senior explained. Other students agreed that Chromebooks become distractions and at times, are difficult to work with.

Though teachers and students have faced complications with the current devices, there are many advantages, both for those within and outside of BBCHS. The Chromebooks, in many ways, simplify a teacher’s means of getting information and assignments out to students without the worry of them misplacing papers or needing another copy. Chromebooks also provide students with another way to find resources for papers, research, and projects. “They have quick access to a huge variety of sources,” a BBCHS junior, Cody Crane admitted. Chromebooks also improve simple things like book loads, being able to condense pounds of paper and binding into a light electronic device, and as Crane added, “They also cut down on the load of books and paper students need to carry”.

With every advantage and disadvantage that technology in educational environments entails, Students, teachers, and administrators alike are finding the place to use the luxury that BBCHS has afforded its students. As they continue to supplement change and solutions to those who still have complications, there will never be permanent or general solutions to specific problems or concerns. Luckily, as BBCHS and it’s community evolves, grows, and changes, technology will be doing the same.