By the end of this school year, Southern Lehigh School District will have completely eliminated its network drives in favor of the Spartandocs servers.

“The switch has been in place for some time,” coordinator of network and information services Erik Malmberg said. “Students have been collaborating with Google Docs for some time now, and we feel that using Google Drive gives them a chance to stay better organized and have everything in one location.”

Malmberg says that students will simply no longer have access to the network drives, something that will benefit students and the district as a whole.

“Students get up to 25gb of storage available with [Google] Drive, and with drive space becoming expensive, this is also a huge cost savings for the district as far as drive infrastructure is concerned,” Malmberg said. “This will also make for ease of use for students when they are off our network and at home, or anywhere they can access the cloud.”

A major adjustment in the transition will be seen in the CTA classes, which in the past have relied heavily on the network drive to save important files.

“The software programs in Spartan Docs are limited and are not the full versions, so formatting features have been lost,” business teacher Mrs. JoAnn Peralta said. “I do understand that the decision to save to Spartan Docs is not the same as creating documents in Spartan Docs, but I think that students will confuse the two.”

Peralta also believes that for some students, it will be difficult to decide which files to save and which to keep. She feels that it will require effort from students to keep the transition smooth.

“Some students are not that organized, so storing files in an organized way may be a challenge for some,” Peralta said, “Students need to take time to delete old files and do the move itself.”

There are also mixed reviews among students over the file migration. Some feel that a complete transition to Spartandocs will be a new experience, though others feel that Spartandocs’ preexistence in the classroom will allow for a smooth transition.

“Google Drive is helpful because it eliminates the need for emailing,” freshman Jason Moreira said.

“I dont think it will affect me because I save all of my documents in folders on my desktop,” junior Gabriela Silva said.

To some, however, the network drive was a safe alternative when Spartandocs failed to meet their expectations.

“With the network drive I can access files at home and edit and save them from wherever,” junior Tomias Peoples said.

The district-wide file migration will be an adjustment, but Peralta feels that adaptation is key to the process.

“In CTA, we will address this change and help students with the migration and organization of file storing,” Peralta said. “One thing about change: it will always happen, so it’s how we deal with it that matters.”