Technology is a major advantage for students and their learning in school. Though helpful, this technology is not always perfect. Bugs and issues come up all the time in students’ learning tools, some hurting learning more than others. Recently, a bug with the app PowerSchool, the main source that students use to check up on their grades, caused a major problem for students, leaving them anxious and worried.
“I usually check my grades on PowerSchool,” Tyson Linde (‘28) said. “Sometimes I use Canvas, but I’d say about 98% of the time I use PowerSchool.”
Most students use PowerSchool to check their grades on a daily basis. This bug that happened around spring break and lasted for over a week didn’t allow Canvas to automatically sync grades into PowerSchool. This made it so students’ grades were not able to be updated, and understandably, this provided lots of worry for students and their grades.
“I went to check my grades about a week ago, but I went to check them, and nothing showed up,” Linde said. “It made me really worried.”
Students also faced problems with their grades conflicting with their sports, considering that grades are checked weekly to confirm if students are eligible or not to play their sports.
“I’m in baseball,” Linde said. “With no grades in the grade book, I didn’t know what would’ve been considered as eligible and ineligible.”
Other students faced problems concerning their grades and their home lives with their family members and parents as well.
“I couldn’t check my grades, and my parents were pretty mad that they couldn’t see my grades,” Drew Fillyaw (‘28) said.
Technical bugs that cause students more stress on top of the stress they already carry are never ideal. It can put students in difficult positions either in their sports or regular academic lives. Even though the issue is now fixed, with parent-teacher conferences soon after its resolution, it caused lots of miscommunication and drama between students and their parents.
“There are a lot of parents and students out there who like to check their grades, and it really was a big inconvenience to them,” Fillyaw said.
