Earlier this year, students were handed their own Chromebooks, which they could customize, play games, and focus on schoolwork with; however, on Tuesday, November 3, the tech department released a new update to the Chromebooks which resulted in an uproar from the whole school.

When students received their Chromebooks, they had the enjoyment of customizing it any way they wanted to, with exquisite themes to funky wallpapers. Since the new update, students haven’t been able to access any themes and some of the Web Store’s many features have been blocked by the district. Susquehannock now has its own Web Store that provides students with more educational apps.

Senior Caitlyn Rassa of the Tech S.H.E.D. has some qualms about the new update but believes it could be of some use to the Chromebooks.

“I’m not entirely happy with what they did to the App Store, but I believe it will be good for preventing students from accessing inappropriate subjects that they shouldn’t be accessing with their Chromebooks,” said Rassa.

Librarian Kayse Corrieri believes the update has helped improve the use of the Chromebooks.

“I believe that the update will provide better security for the Chromebooks,” said Corrieri. “It was something that needed to be done [because students would be getting off task a lot].”

The security was one of the positive additions to the Chromebook update. According to the Tech S.H.E.D, the new update took place in order to prevent further network outages and to prevent students from using up too much of the school’s data.

One of the cons to this new update would be the horrible condition of the school’s Wi-Fi.

“The Wi-Fi is very slow right now,” said Rassa. “Many students said they were having a lot of problems with their Wi-Fi.”

For many students, the Wi-Fi would suddenly stop while they were in the middle of working on a project using Google Docs or just looking up information on the web in general. Students have had trouble connecting to the Internet in order to get information for projects online.

Teachers have also been dealing with Wi-Fi problems and needed to schedule due dates back another day in order for their students to have enough time to complete it on the Internet.

Junior Addie Achterberg highly dislikes the new Chromebook update due to the many restrictions added to the Chromebooks.

“I don’t like how parts of Twitter [are] frequently blocked and that we can’t use our personal e-mails anymore,” said Achterberg. “I know there were some students who were abusing their Chromebooks in bad ways, but I dislike how there was a broad punishment because of that.”

One of the biggest complaints so far regarding the Chromebook updates would be the use of games and themes.

“[Tech S.H.E.D] is working on unlocking themes, but the only apps students can have access to are what’s provided to them through the district’s Web Store,” said Rassa.

Despite the complaints and problems revolving around the update, a few pros should be coming out of the update besides the enhanced security.

“The new update is providing enhanced features [including better Internet service] and preventing outages for the Chromebooks,” said Rassa. “It is also making the App Store even more filtered and [making the Chromebooks faster].”

Students view the new update as being very complicated, but in return the update should hopefully enhance the Chromebook’s features and provide the school with better web security.