Throughout the past school year, Mayfair has been expanding its campus in a variety of ways. Recently, Mr. Diaz and the rest of the high school administration have announced the new, tech-savvy add-on for staff members: the Minga app. As teachers are just learning about how the app is planning to make its way into campus life and questioning its effectiveness, students are conspiring just as many questions about the app. As your Editor in Chief and a member of Mayfair’s Student Cabinet, I’m here to fill you in on my knowledge of the new app coming to our campus.
Minga is not a Mayfair developed app, but only a source that Mayfair is adopting into its daily schedule. Minga is advertised as “A Student Engagement Platform that integrates many student and school tools and resources into one place such as Student ID Cards, Hall Passes, School Communication, Tickets and Event Management and more.”
Our lovely administration wants to incorporate Minga into students' lives to solve a recurring issue we have on campus: traveling during class time. Teachers already have systems where students are expected to sign in and out on a sheet stating their name, period, time stamps and their destination when leaving a class during instructions. However, not every teacher is seeing the accurate results that are needed to keep track of where students are and how long they’re out for. This is where Minga is intended to come into play.
Minga will be put into effect within the next few weeks to act as a students virtual hall pass. Students and staff members are allowed to create virtual hall passes for a student to exit their class and give them a location and time stamp with just a few clicks on their computer, which will also be sent to specific staff members (security, counselors, administration, etc) around campus to see how many students are out at a time. This feature can help track down students who are abusing bathroom privileges to meet up with their friends and walk around campus or for those choosing to use the bathroom for other uses aside from using the bathroom. It can also help gain analytics as to which students are meeting up frequently and create “Party Groups”, a ban list of certain students that will prevent friends from meeting up every other period to hang out when they should be in class.
The idea of Minga has been a topic of discussion since returning to school after Winter Break, and seeing it begin to roll out this March is a step in the right direction for Mayfair and its consistent issue of students being out and about during class time. In the first weeks, Minga will be used primarily for hall passes, but administration hopes to explore the other usages of Minga. The app includes many different features, such as a new communication source for teachers and staff with students, as well as announcement features that can give students without social media access to school activities. The app will also introduce a “point system” to students in the near future; points will be given out for active participants who are following the SOON motto and overall being a great leader both in and out of the classroom.
All in all, Minga is just as new to staff as it is to everyone else, and Mayfair’s team hopes to use the app to bring our community more in touch with each other. Families will be receiving an email with a small overview of the app, containing information about privacy, purpose and the positive effects Minga will have on everyone. Teachers will be heading into their first training session in regards to how to utilize the app this upcoming Monday, and from there, Minga will be pushed out to our students within the next few weeks! The grounding of the app will demonstrate the new future of Mayfair, one small step at a time.
Courtesy of Minga