On-track for a roughly 7-year cycle, Room 303, the journalism room, was upgraded at the start of the fall semester with 32 new iMacs and peripherals, replacing the older 2014 iMacs that had replaced the 2007 iMacs before them.

Los-Gatos Saratoga Union High School District technology director Julie Grenier said the district aims for 5- to 6- year refreshes for programs like journalism, and that the computers needed to be replaced for both “security and usability reasons.”

The model of the new computers were chosen by newspaper adviser Michael Tyler, who decided to stick with iMacs because of their reliability and ability to handle the latest Adobe programs such as InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator.

While many newspaper and yearbook students tend to use their own devices, which is made possible due to the Creative Cloud subscriptions from the district, the new computers benefit students who cannot bring personal computers or have devices such as Chromebooks that cannot run the Adobe suite.

“The in-class computers are really fast now — and they’re always just there, so if you need to use them, you can just go [to the journalism room to use them],” yearbook editor-in-chief Isabella Marty said.

District senior computer specialist Larry Jens has been working to resolve a few software and setup problems this fall such as connecting the machines to older printers in the room and adding the Walsworth yearbook software add-on to InDesign. 

Currently, three classes are taught in Room 303: periods 3 and 4 newspaper and period 6 yearbook. According to Tyler, he and yearbook adviser Megan Laws are happy to have other English classes and students use the room’s computers and printers during the periods the room isn’t in use and during tutorial.

“It was a lot of years that we made do with the old lab, so it was really overdue,” Tyler said. “But I was really happy that the district was able to make this a usable lab again, and hopefully it’ll last a good number of years.”