On Sep. 20, a significant cyberattack on the Northshore School District servers left most school systems non-operational. Suddenly, it became much harder for students to track their progress or complete assignments they would need for the year. This attack caused setbacks in a lot of academic work, leading to the question of whether dependence on technology in school is helping us or hindering us.

When the servers went down, the school was still able to function and work with minor setbacks. Homework was still given out, Google Docs could still be used and teachers continued to use online resources in class. Clearly, the demand for technology at our school is much stronger than the actual dependency on it. We only say we depend on tech and need it for our education because of applications like StudentVue and Synergy that cannot be used when there is a server outage. Since companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are locally centered in the Puget Sound Region more than anywhere else, there seems to be a bigger demand for technology in schools because of their proximity. 

Students also use technology to routinely help them with schoolwork and help keep them on pace to graduate, but better security is needed to make sure that users are able to access all servers and applications when needed. 

Tech is a resource for all students so they can work, but when students graduate and enter a time of financial hardship, their dependency on tech may not prepare them for a time when they don’t have it readily available. 

Students should be taught how to use “old school” materials to help them, since even here, it still took a couple of days for students and staff to adapt to functioning without certain resources. 

To prepare students for the future, schools must make sure students can take advantage of certain anomalies and breaks in the system to make sure that they will be able to succeed past high school and maintain a good future for themselves. 

In this day and age, technology is everywhere, and the overreliance on technology has opened a door to more vulnerability happening to much more important files than a district server being compromised. Inglemoor should continue to use tech as a resource but with the knowledge that we are vulnerable.