On the first day at Goffstown High School this year, you may have noticed that teachers received a tech upgrade with the new Promethean boards officially replacing the older SMART boards. Promethean boards have been put in basically every classroom that formerly had a SMART board. Although this may sound like an upgrade, if you ask around, it’s evident that there is some student controversy.

GHS freshman Philip King stated “It’s only a matter of time; we have to be patient and let the teachers get comfortable with the Promethean boards.” Then he argued, “people never like change, but change is inevitable.” Phil agrees that class pace does sometimes slow down and says, “think about it, back in some teachers’ day they used chalkboards and had not as much technology. They used pen and paper for everything, now we use giant TVs.”

When Phil took money into consideration he altered his opinion. He began arguing that the school should’ve spent the money on something like air conditioning in classrooms. Phil stated, “I can’t focus in class sometimes on hot days because I’m sweating immensely and I’m uncomfortable due to the hot classrooms.” However, he wants to make it clear that he did think the new Promethean boards were an upgrade and were a good choice overall. “When you involve the money and think about what it could’ve potentially went into, I’m slightly disappointed,” he said. Phil also claims that compared to SMART boards, Promethean boards are overall better. “Who cares that the screens are smaller, because they are HD and they have a remote. Other than that, and a couple other features, they’re identical”. One thing Philip did like most about SMART boards was the fact that they were stationary where every student could clearly see them. One negative comment about Promethean boards is that he didn’t like how they are on a cart. He complained about how teachers sometimes move the board around to spots where it’s challenging to see.

Zander Adams is also a GHS freshman who’s been a part of the Goffstown School District for his entire schooling career. His opinion on Promethean boards is that he doesn’t like them as much as SMART boards. His complaint was about the calibration. He stated “Some of my teachers always try to use [the boards] and they spaz out. Then they have to be re-calibrated in the middle of class. It slows down the class and annoys me.” Zander doesn’t mind the Promethean boards and even claimed, “They’re literally the same thing as SMART boards with worse programming.” He hasn’t formed an opinion on what else the school could’ve spent the money on. “I mean, the school did a good job, it’s just that older technology can sometimes tend to be better,” he said.