This school year, many students at Manitou Springs High School have been struggling to use their school computers. The computers are a lot slower, which has been affecting the students’ learning.
Over the summer the school laptops were updated to Windows 11 which may have caused some of the computers to work slowly. The computers need regular updates or else they will start to slow down more. Students have found this to be frustrating because it causes some problems with the functionality of the computers.
Brooke Ferguson, a senior at MSHS, says that she and many other students have run into problems with just getting the computer started and running. “My computer spends a long time booting up now, like a lot longer than it used to; and it’ll sometimes also get stuck on the loading screen,” Ferguson said. “It’ll take turning it back off and back on again for me to actually get into my computer.”
Maya Scott (12) feels that she gets behind in some of her classes because of how slow it takes for the school computers to start up. “It could take me like five minutes and then we’re already moving in class at that point and I’m trying to even just open my computer,” Scott said.
Ferguson feels that most students struggle with the school computers this year. “It seems like everybody that I talked to has noticed the decline in the school computers,” Ferguson said, “and I’ve talked to people who are using their personal laptops this year who say that it’s because they just can’t deal with how slow the school laptops are.”
Scott feels that the computers aren’t as useful this year given how slow they are. “I feel like last year the computers were a bit more passable, but after having updated them, they have a hard time being useful.”
Ferguson feels that getting work done on the computers now is a lot more complicated, which makes the whole process harder than it should be. “It makes the process of getting work done so much more inefficient and frustrating,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson feels that she often loses motivation to do her school work because of how much she struggles with her computer. “I have definitely procrastinated more because I know that it’s going to be a thing for me to try to do my work on the school laptop,” Ferguson said.
Gabrielle Waters, a tech consultant at MSHS feels that the main issue with the Windows 11 update is that the computers need to be restarted regularly. “One big thing that kids are not doing is restarting their computers,” said Waters. “I’ve asked kids if they’ve ever done that and they just shut the lid.”
