Features

Sanaa Scott-Wheeler

Staff Writer

 

It’s a typical ride home for me. I slide down the red, dirt covered steps of 15th street station to the running tin train covered in orange.

 

As the train pulls to a stop in front of the platform, herds of middle schoolers, high schoolers and adults dressed in business casual attire shuffle into linked cars on tracks. I rush to find a seat for my journey, pull out my earphones and turn my volume on high, and music notes flood from my earbuds.

 

I scroll through my Instagram to see what I missed throughout the day. Only memes, Shade Room tea and several birthday posts appear.

 

Then, a surprise: an airdrop from an unknown sender, ¨iphone¨ pops up on my screen.

Although this is not the first time this has happened, I´m still amazed when strangers interact with me.

 

Time for some anonymous airdropping.

 

What is airdropping?

 

This feature was added to the iPhone in 2011 available on iPhone 5 and up.  It allows the user to send pictures and videos to anyone around them who has feature turned on. Most of the time, the airdrops I receive contain sexual content, a few fight videos, some twerk videos, then others that are neither sexual nor funny but just disruptive.

 

Sometimes people are aware who is being Airdropped or airdropping because there is a name, sometimes the airdrop is sent under an anonymous name of ¨iPhone¨.

 

I first learned about aidropping when I got an iphone in 7th grade. While using our phones as calculators some of my classmates would randomly send pictures to the class. Although some of it is annoying, I enjoyed it because no one ever really knew what they would get as it was never expected. The content I have saved in a folder to airdrop others contains memes and pictures I have from previous finsta posts.

 

That day on the train, I accepted the airdrop from the unknown sender. Why? Well why not. The video loads, then I see a girl in a minimal amount of clothing fixing the camera then backing away.

 

NOPE. DELETE! Does no one have wholesome memes??

 

I open my airdropped folder and scroll over the countless memes then I decide. I select one of my favorites, the list of every iphone near me pops up. Then BOOM sent.

 

¨ẄHO IS AIRDROPPING TURTLES?¨ screamed a woman sitting across from me. The entire train car burst into laughter. After my turtle sent those around me into confusion, I received four individual airdrops. I hit accept for each. Again. Why not? The train rides get boring.

 

Science Leadership Teacher Larissa Pahomov, was setting up a grade wide meeting for the freshman, she had her phone out ready to play music when she received an airdrop from ¨iphone¨. She declined the airdrop because we had been talking about how the airdrops sometimes have inappropriate content.

 

¨I didn’t want to deal with the potential mess of having a freshman send a teacher something she did not want to see,¨ she explained.

 

Pahomov story highlights how there is a potential danger and loss of privacy with airdropping. Anything can be airdropped to anyone with airdrop turned on, and you never know who might be on the other end of your line.

 

The ride has been fun. But I’m over it now, I’m getting an Android.

Sukainah Hasan

Staff Writer

When students at SLA are turning in assignments on Canvas, there are always different deadlines that teachers have for when things are due. The different settings for each class encourage some debate about the issue: which deadline is best? SLAMedia set out to get answers from the student body.

According to an anonymous survey that was sent to all current SLA students, the most common deadline that is on Canvas is 11:59 pm before the next day’s class. Since this is the common deadline time to turn assignments in, some students are stressed out by the fact that they have to successfully submit work for each class at the same time.

Survey participants said that teachers most will accept late work, but with some kind of late penalty. The late penalty is usually when teachers take points off of the assignment that was required of you to turn in. Since this is the case, students think teachers should take a different approach when dealing with deadlines.

That’s what deadlines are like now. How would SLA students like them to change? According to the survey, students prefer teachers to have deadlines due on Canvas the start of the class. 63.7% chose this option, compared to 35.5% for 11:59 pm and 8:15 am. 102 students completed the survey.

One survey commenter explained their reasoning for this deadline. , “If I have a particularly busy night or an obligation at home, I like having the opportunity to work on the assignment during a lab or lunch band.” Also, with labs and lunch bands, it allows students to come to their teachers if they are confused with the assignment that was assigned.

Another response from a student about assignments being due the start of class was, “Having assignments due at night stresses me out a lot because I feel like I don’t have enough time to thoroughly complete it. Assignments due in the morning allow me to be more relaxed at night, but also prevents me from doing the assignment right before class is due.”

Overall, students think that deadlines on Canvas should be due at the start of class because it’s a lot of pressure on them to get all assignments done when they’re due at the same time. From this response, it shows that teachers should use this as a way to maybe change how they have different deadlines when it comes to their assignments. By this change, it can help students when they have a lot of work coming from other teachers. It’s a lot of pressure for a student to do so much at once when teachers are assigning deadlines at the same time.

Brendan Hall

Staff Writer

Throughout the United States, there are over 2,000 accredited four-year universities. Understandably, high school students have difficulty narrowing down their selection due to an abundance of choices being thrown at them. While taking a tour of the campus is ideal, applicants may not have the ability to travel the distance due to it being out of state, or too expensive.

A solution to this problem has been college fairs. In college fairs, representatives of universities meet with interested students. Students would typically have a chance to be accepted on the spot, or without a fee. There is also an opportunity for personal questions to be asked and answered directly at these fairs. Despite these benefits, SLA’s center city campus does not have its own college fair as opposed to other schools, including SLA Beeber.

“I think access to more colleges would be really good for students, especially ones who don’t pay attention to alerts from Mrs. Hirschfield, or who aren’t very proactive on the college process…” Senior Avi Cantor stated on college fairs.

While there is not a college fair that takes place at SLA there is another opportunity to assist students in the college search.

“I really work hard on inviting college recruiters to come meet with students… The other thing with fairs while I think it could be valuable…it could also be very limiting… depending on the school they might have a bunch of students standing around…although I think it’s good to expose kids to new schools of interest the one on one interactions” SLA college counselor Mrs. Hirschfield explained in response to why the center city campus does not have a college fair.  

While personal meetings can be an important experience some students still desired the opportunity for a fair.

“One on one meetings are definitely helpful, but having a college fair would allow you to expand your college search. And find out what you like and don’t like about a lot of schools at one time,” Cantor continued.

While SLA does not have its own college fair there are opportunities for SLA center city students to do fairs outside of the campus. There is one the junior class does each year with Masterman at their campus. There is also the opportunity for the college fair at the school district headquarters, where students throughout the city are free to participate in. Students of the senior class for 2018-2019 have been to these events.

“I was able to learn more about universities and the college process from attending the national college fair,” SLA senior Jakob Klemash-Kresge stated.

Generally, attending a college fair can only benefit a student pursuing a college education and provides a platform for those who need to be informed about college.

Zoe Kwasnicki

Staff Writer

 

The classroom was quiet except for the sound of fingers hitting keyboards and sighs of exasperation when the Wifi lagged. There was no pen on paper or squeaking erasers scratching away wrong answers because there was no paper – only laptops.

 

Even though this picture paints a normal day at SLA, student laptops are still nonexistent in the majority of high schools across America. So why does SLA have them?

 

Principal Chris Lehmann founded SLA in 2006 and expressed his belief in the importance of a 1:1 computer program between students.

 

“Fundamentally I think it’s incredibly important that we create schools that reflect the era in which we live.” He continued, “We live in a moment where the tools of inquiry, the tools of creation and publishing, the tools of networking and basically all of our core values are enhanced when kids have access to the modern tools of technology – specifically laptops as sort of the primary example of that.”

 

The laptops were always a major part of Mr. Lehmann’s vision for the school. However the laptops that would actually be used were a point of uncertainty.

 

The laptops needed to last for four years while being used extensively and also be a reasonable, fundable cost. Multiple options were considered one of which was, to Lehmann’s dismay, a Linux laptop which is a painfully basic PC laptop.

 

However, after encouragement by the School District of Philadelphia, it was decided that SLA would operate on Macbooks from Apple. This encouragement was due to the fact that the Microsoft School of the Future was going to operate on a 1:1 program. Although they would be utilizing Microsoft laptops instead – the School District was excited about the opportunity to run an Apple-based 1:1 program and a Microsoft-based 1:1 program at the same time.

 

However where the School of the Future and Microsoft had a partnership, SLA and Apple did not. SLA privately funded the cost of laptops which was roughly $180,000 annually – no small sum for a public high school in Philadelphia. Macbooks were in use at SLA from 2006 to 2013 when, due to financial issues within the School District, the fundraising money went to securing multiple faculty positions instead.

 

At that point Mr. Lehmann stated that SLA was approached by Dell, “Dell approached us, and said, ‘We want to talk to you about using the Dell Chromebook,’ and you know it was a wonderful moment in time because we needed a better solution and one that was sustainable. And not only was it more financially advantageous long term but because Dell really was so excited about what we do here, we got the partnership, which paid for multiple years of the laptops where we weren’t even worrying about that as a budget item because Dell paid for it.”

 

The partnership paid for a few years of laptops and now SLA is back to privately fundraising for the laptops which is roughly $45,000 annually – a significant price drop from fundraising for Macbooks. However, that price could drop even further with added financial support from the School District. Mr. Lehmann stated that, due to continued interest in the 1:1 learning model, the School District provided the funds for this year’s round of laptops although it has not yet been determined if that is financially sustainable for the District itself.

 

With the funding of the laptops generally secured, the next question is how the laptops are protected. The warranty is folded into the overall cost of the Chromebooks each year and covers 4-years of non-physical damages. Physical damages are, as defined by SLA’s in-house technology consultant and fix-it man Mr. Stephen Jones, a damage caused by a student either purposefully or accidentally. For example, if you accidentally spill a cup of water on your laptop that counts as a physical damage and isn’t covered by Dell’s warranty.

 

On the flip-side, a non-physical damage would be your laptop suddenly shutting down without you tampering with it. However just because a laptop is not covered by the warranty does not mean it is out of commission.

 

“I can fix anything…So there’s not any type of thing I can’t fix, but there are things I don’t fix seeing as – when it’s under warranty – I can send it back – anything else I can pretty much fix – if I have the parts I can fix it,” Mr. Jones explained.

 

After 4-years of being in constant use by a student at both school and home, the majority of laptops are out of commission. Those that are still operational are used as loaners for students whose laptops are under repair. Lehmann explained that they try to keep a quota of around 75 loaners so that students always have a laptop to work on as the lack of a laptops at SLA almost immediately excludes you from participating in class. However as the loaners are no longer covered by Dell’s warranty, when they give out and are unable to be repaired they salvaged for parts by Mr. Jones which are then used for quick repairs on other laptops. Any laptops that cannot be salvaged are determined to be obsolete and are removed from the school. What happens to the equipment after that point is unknown.

 

But while Chromebooks are operational and in-use at SLA they act as an important tool that increases efficiency by improving on the teacher-student pipeline of information. As sophomore Isabella Torres said,

 

“If we didn’t have chromebooks at SLA it would make things a lot harder and I would be a lot more disorganized than I already am,” Sophomore Isabella Torres stated. “Having a chromebook helps me be organized because everything is on my laptop already. I can just pull up docs, I can do assignments on Canvas and stuff like that whereas if I had books and papers to turn in – it would be a complete mess.”

 

Because students rely so heavily on their Chromebooks they are starkly aware of how lucky they are to have them.

 

“Not everyone has that type of opportunity to get technology of their own to help their education,” Sophomore Cameryn Roach stated.