Imagine my excitement when I first received a shiny, new MacBook Pro. I felt clean and posh, typing my notes away, my folders organized into the corners of the screen. Now imagine my excitement slowly falling away as I attempt to log into a Kahoot! for my Anatomy class, as it loads and loads and loads. That’s fine! I’ll just connect to the school’s WiFi. No big deal, right? Wrong.

I connect and use my school email, thinking it will be all fine and dandy, since the host is nilesk12. Oh, but of course not! Instead, I am sent a code to my email and asked to input the code. Alright, a little annoying, but nothing I can’t handle. I reach for my phone– wait, where is it? My eyes snap to the bane of most student’s hatred: the phone caddy. The despised jail cell has my phone, and now I must walk across the room, ask for my teacher’s permission to use my phone (at my ripe age of 18, mind you) and hastily make my way to grab my phone and find the email that has the code. Of course, that simple task proves to be Mission Impossible, because the school’s WiFi generally sucks, and now I am looking like a fool, in need of WiFi for this email to load, so that I can then access WiFi for my computer. Mind you, the entire class is waiting for me to join the Kahoot! so that they may start.

This dilemma is known to many students at Niles West, frustrated by the lack of ability to connect to the school’s WiFi with ease from personal devices. While I’m certainly thankful for the Chromebooks that are provided by the school, I also find them restricting. I’m already familiar with my own device, why would I need to use a Chromebook from the year 1755? Not to mention the lag that occurs when I have more than six tabs open.

Now that I’m a senior, I need to keep tabs open for college applications, scholarships, schoolwork, 20 different emails I need to send and a music source to keep myself sane. My MacBook allows me to switch between them with no difficulties, but none of this can be done without WiFi. A Chromebook simply can’t keep up with my academic demands.

Using personal devices generally encourages creativity and personalized learning that caters to individual preferences. Not being able to use a device that allows students to choose tools that work best for their learning style solely because of the irritating and time-consuming way to access the WiFi is constricting and suffocating. It also can waste class time and direct attention away from learning.

While I can see why it could be dangerous to provide WiFi access to any personal device that enters the school, I propose a solution where if the user has an account associated with the school, they are able to connect immediately on their personal devices. This reduces the time wasted in class waiting for an email to pop up to input the code that expires every 24 hours, as well as allowing students to use devices themselves or their parents paid for.