Zoomin’ and Glitchin’

   As this worldwide pandemic came in, back in late March, many people assumed that this virus would pass on through, and we would be back in the brick and mortar set up for the 2020-2021 school year. Yet this was not the case as proper precautions were not taken, leaving us starting up the new school year the way we ended last year, in a way never seen before: virtually. 

   Students and staff all around the nation are finding ways to adapt to new virtual learning platforms, including apps like Microsoft Teams, Skype, and the one we use here at Charter, Zoom. With anything new, problems and errors are bound to come up. 

  One freshman, Karina Claros, expressed, “No matter how hard the teachers try and work, mistakes happen one way or another. Zoom would repeatedly shut down on me and kick me out of my conferences with my teacher for the first couple classes of this year.” 

  Karina is one of many students discovering flaws in Zoom’s system, but these issues will continue to occur until students become normalized with the system. It could take days, weeks or even months to get completely adjusted to this new way of schooling. 

   It appeared that not too many issues occurred for big groups of students during the first week, with individual students usually feeling the struggle. Yet on Monday, August 25th, all students were experiencing technical difficulties to the point where Zoom completely crashed and some students’ classes were completely canceled. 

  Sophomore Joel Enriquez stated, “ [Monday] was a hectic day, that’s for sure. I continued to panic throughout the day and questioned [myself] about what to do today. I was worried about a ton of things such as attendance and falling behind. Fortunately in my second hour, Mr. Lawrence was able to get the class up and running. After that class however, I was not able to attend any other classes for the day. Thankfully, as time went on my teachers were very forgiving and understanding about the situation and hopefully Zoom will not continuously have errors.” 

   In order for this new process to be fully adjusted to, problems and issues will constantly occur. Bumps in the road are normal for new systems and especially with the predicament we are in now, nothing is out of the ordinary and glitches are bound to happen. It seems that nothing is ever guaranteed in this crazy year that is 2020. 

  One thing’s left to still believe in, however. As long as students and staff have patience and understanding, hopefully all the problems will just “zoom” away.