By Zoe London

Volume 67, Issue I

This year ar Briarcliff High School, every student was provided with a MacBook to help them with their studies. The laptop holds an in nite amount of possibilities for usage, ranging from creating presentations, typing up notes, and connecting to your teachers through the student email. While the Macs are known for being very user-friendly, sometimes issues with the software or hardware get in the way of the Macs running at their full potential. So, with the new Macs, come the newly organized Student Help Desk, made up entirely of students trained to address problems as they arise with the laptops. There are two types of technicians on the Student Help Desk: the Student Technician and the Apple Technician. Being on the Student Help Desk counts for half a credit for year while the students work for around 2 hours a week to ensure that everything runs smoothly with the Macs. However, all technicians helped with the very im- portant job of laptop preparation and distribution. Student help desk techni- cians will help technology users inside the school with issues involving smart- boards and printers, as well as they also keep track of technology issues and common questions. Students who wanted to become an Apple Certified Mac Technician were required to take a seven-day course, taught by instructors from Apple. A lot of training occurred in a very short amount of time, Student Help Desk member Sydney Zhang described the training as “difficult, because the concepts were foreign.” Apple technicians were trained to physically repair the laptops, such as a hardware problem with a cracked screen, or a software problem with the OS X system. The requirements for becoming an Apple Certified Mac Technician was taking this course as well as passing the two tests that followed the course. One test consisted of an evaluation of the hardware information and the other tested the students’ knowledge of software. Ms. Erica Beasley, the director of technology in the high school, described the tests as very “analytical”, with “less memorization and more logic.” The system to contact a Student Help Desk technician is still in the works, but soon it will be up and running. When you have an issue with a laptop you can ll out a re- quest for help on the online Help Desk normally, but you will be paired with either an adult or student on the Help Desk. From here, you and the technician assigned to the issue can organize a time to get the problem solved. Therefore, the entire system of laptops at BHS is always running smoothly.