William Gruwell ’21 and David Albelais ’22
THE ROUNDUP
Roughly 1200 students, according to Mr. Pete Burr ’07, participated virtually from their home through ThriveCast on Brophy’s Day of Democracy to become further educated on democracy in the United States.
ThriveCast is an innovative online platform with the goal of informing students on certain topics through reading, quizzing and reacting to different political issues such as climate change, the combination of politics and social media, voting rights and more hot button issues in today’s political climate.
The program focuses on interaction to educate those participating on the platform, and in Brophy’s case, is this year’s election.
“Students had 9 different modules that asked them to think about democracy in a different way. They had to complete three of the nine modules and write some stories,” Mr. Burr said. “In the program, there were some really cool thoughts from students about how they feel about democracy, how they can engage in democracy and they had a chance to discuss many more topics on democracy.”
For a portion of Brophy students, the virtual option went well with a few hiccups along the way.
“ThriveCast worked perfectly fine aside from a [technical] glitch, and I was still able to get my work done and learn, which is what mattered most,” said Alec Von Borris ’23.
Mr. Burr was aware of these slight technical issues.
“We absolutely overwhelmed the system and it absolutely had some lags early on, but it should be getting updated to fix the point tallying system,” Mr. Burr said.
Not all students’ efforts were as fruitful as Von Borries’.
Robert Meszaros ’21 struggled accessing the ThriveCast after joining the initial Google Meet to introduce the day’s activities.
“After the Google Meet with all of my fellow participants, I tried to join the program with the Brophy email, and it gave me an error explaining that my access code had already been redeemed,” Meszaros said.
Meszaros was disappointed with the outcome of the day plagued by technical difficulties.
“I wish I would’ve been able to participate in this year’s Day of Democracy, but these technical issues prevented me from doing so,” Meszaros said.
To combat the disappointment for those whose days did not move as seamlessly, Mr. Burr came up with an alternative.
“For any online student who was not able to complete the ThriveCast program, they will have an opportunity throughout the week to complete the certification if they did not today,” Mr. Burr said.