Empire High School’s technology-based curriculum provides many benefits for the students, but many of those benefits can be overlooked. One of those being the service that laptops and technology provide for athletics. Athletes usually struggle with balancing their academic and sport schedule. The two commonly interfere with one another, causing eligibility issues. There are applications with which technology-enhanced curriculum come equipped that are aiding athletes to keep up with their academic work. At Empire, eligibility issues are decreasing and student laptops deserve part of the credit.

Time is the most difficult component for jocks regarding schoolwork. The athletes cannot find enough time to complete their assignments because practice takes up most of their free time. If an athlete can learn to utilize technological skills, such as typing, then schoolwork would take less time to complete. For example, typing an essay on the computer allows an athlete to use grammar and spell check, which cuts back on the time it would take to revise a handwritten essay. Also, it's common for someone to be faster at typing than at writing, and this decreases the amount of time it takes to complete homework. The educational shift toward utilizing technology enables athletes to enhance their technological skills and aid them in learning to manage their time.

Organizational skills are another key element that athletes can gain from the benefits of student laptops. Applications such as PowerPoint, Keynote, and iCal allow athletes to develop organizational skills by creating a schedule to help balance their academic and sports life.

Empire High School’s Athletic Director Jorge Mendivil said, “Laptops are just another tool, and if they learn to use it properly, they could utilize iCal that will send them alerts reminding them of deadlines for assignments, and it could help them keep up with their assignments. With managing time, work is still work regardless if you have a laptop or not, but I do believe what does increase their ability to work is the technology aspect because they have that instant access to an actual computer that allows them to type and enhance their skills in that area, and once they properly learn to type, it will increase the speed of their work.” Mendivil said he noticed a decrease in eligibility issues, and part of that reasoning can be rooted back to the school’s focus on improving student’s technological skills.

There are positive and negative effects of a technological curriculum embedded in a regular high school. This curriculum and technological tools have developed student’s organizational and time management skills at a faster pace than others. Empire’s athletics have benefited from these developed skills by the reduction of eligibility issues. For the athletic department, the technology benefits outweigh the risks.

Shaylyn Grow
Senior
Empire High School