BY AMELIA MCMAHON

This has been a year of change. Students are bringing their own technology, Mr. Crosby has retired, and ProgressBook is on the decline. This year, teachers and students are using Blackboard, a website commonly used by universities to keep track of grades and assignments. Test, quizzes, notes, and videos, teachers can upload almost anything to their class Blackboard, and the documents are then accessible by students in the class.

“Blackboard is a good place to store and deliver documents for students. It’s a teacher website with more consistency and compatibility,” says David Wolfford, an MHS American Government teacher. “It’s a little cleaner and it’s easier to import and upload documents, but I don’t see much change in teachings.” According to Wolfford, Blackboard is “more reliable than a [teacher] website.”

“Depends. In my professional opinion, Blackboard is just a tool. It’s based on how you use it,” says Michael Becksfort, MHS English and yearbook teacher, and Blackboard front-runner. “It’s not the site, it’s the teacher.”

Becksfort has used Blackboard largely, using it to upload vocabulary tests and student forums as well as organizing the different units in an easy to use manner.

“Actually, I kinda like it, it seemed like a big hassle at first, but once you start using it, it’s easy to organize things,” says Rene Dierker, MHS science teacher. “As an organizational tool, it’s pretty easy to use.”

“From an insider standpoint, Blackboard is so much better because everything is there, as opposed to the teacher websites where everything was all over,” says MHS librarian Emily Colpi. According to her, students and teachers were frequently frustrated by the scattered and sometimes difficult to navigate teacher websites.

“I prefer Blackboard. ProgressBook is only grading. There are no online testing components, there are no interactions for the students. If we could, I would switch over to Blackboard completely.” says Becksfort.