The 2019 school year has had some amazing accomplishments for Ridge including a state championship for band, football being apart of the playoffs, and many academic achievements. But this year has also brought frustration with the ipads in this semester so far.

Signs of what was to come showed up before the first day of school when freshmen were  not able to access any apps from the Ridge app store.

“Each student is associated with a school and each school has its own app store.  Our freshmen were associated with a junior high or middle school so they only saw the apps from that school,” said Jon Devenney, a science teacher and leader of the technology initiative at Ridge.

Although the issue with the freshmen was worked out pretty quickly, other glitches and problems became the norm in the early months of the semester. Some students couldn’t get all their apps to show up. Others couldn’t get canvas to work on their iPAD.

Despite the constant technology struggles, Devenney works very hard to update students and provide aid on these issues.   Mr. Devenney explains the problems that have been going on with everyone at school.  There are many reasons why the ipads have been bugging out; the main reason for some of the issues is Canvas and the new update put on the app.

“In one word . . . change!  At the start of the year Canvas updated their app and with that change came a number of issues. In Arizona we start school so much sooner than other schools in the country that we ended up having to deal with the bug before it was fixed,” said Mr. Devenney

Teachers incorporate the iPADS almost every day in classes whether that involves classwork or homework. Many students rely on notability, but in October there was an issue and Notability had to be taken off and reinstalled. When this and other problems started hitting at Ridge, it was tough trying to figure out the best solutions and Devenney worked back and forth with the technology department at the district office to ensure students wouldn’t be without their apps for very long.

“iPads are a vital part of students daily work in classes so when we ran into this issue I was trying to work with the district,” said Mr. Devenney.

Devenney is hopeful that the last bug has been resolved and students and staff will not have to deal with these issues moving forward.