When principal Stephen Chinosi arrived at Portsmouth High School in 2022, the Portal traveled with him. Nico Ranalli, a PHS sophomore, heard from a friend of his that The Portal needed to be built. Then, it all started to take form.

Ranalli’s friend, Noah Smith, also a sophomore, joined the group to build The Portal beginning quarter three. The pair of friends were glad to be a part of a team that was making it possible to allow people from all over the world to meet, help communicate to solve global problems, and to enhance language classes. 

The Portal is a new technology that is similar to Facetime, but bigger and upgraded. It’s a giant rectangular screen that displays real people in real time in high quality video footage where people can talk to each other from across the world through room sized live video feeds. It scans your room and the people in it to display to the group on the other side of the Portal, in whatever country or state they are in. The company that has been used for this project is Shared Studios, based out of Brooklyn, NY.

Chinosi found that the pandemic reminded us that we can’t be isolated, so using The Portal will expand and provide the true connection that we have been missing. This is why the provider of The Portal, Shared Studios was chosen for this project. Shared Studios focuses on the human connection.

The Portal has already brought PHS many connections, including: Uganda, Mexico City, Rwanda, Palestine, Gaza city, South Africa, Panama City, and Alaska. It is hoped that there will be even more diverse connections in the future.

Because of The Portal’s debut in the Global Summit, ninth grade student Sydney Ruel expressed her excitement for this technological advancement, “I am so thrilled to be able to connect with students and other people from other global countries for a diverse amount of learning experiences.”

The founder of The Portal, Amar Bakshi, is the big inspiration for why The Portal has been brought to PHS. Amar was a journalist who traveled the world and came back in the mid 2010s and he saw the best stories he found, were from strangers and meeting new people. Amar created an environment where people could talk to each other from across the world with very realistic footage. Chinosi saw former president Obama using the Portal on television. “I saw that and thought, ‘This is the future,’” said Chinosi.

Chinosi originally started out building portals in places such as Afghanistan, but then brought The Portal to his previous school, Andover. He had to reach out to the teachers, community, and parents at Andover to get support because other faculty didn’t understand the point of The Portal. He finally achieved his goal and gave the opportunity to 6,000 kids who were able to experience The Portal.

When Chinosi took the position as principal at PHS, he and The Portal were welcomed with open arms. He thought that bringing The Portal to PHS would add to the fact that PHS is already a global minded school where the community wants their students to be global leaders and actors. 

He found that The Portal could play a role in the World Awareness Week, as well as the new annual Global Summit that helped launch it. 

“The single greatest thing we can do for your generation is give you the tools to connect with other humans around the world,” said Chinosi.

Chinosi believes that everyone should be able to experience The Portal at least once. In order to do so, he plans to have a Portal connection once a week where students could flex in it. This will provide time for students to work on potential issues and create solutions collaboratively with people from all around the world. It will also give the students a lesson in empathy and understanding of the world. Chinosi calls the Portal “Library of living experience.”

Fortunately for the future generations of PHS students, The Portal will be a permanent opportunity at the school, and will be used in future Global Summit’s as well. 

The Portal is a fairly new concept, but Ruel posed the idea “For one, “I believe that schools worldwide should be able to have a portal right in their school so that the students can take time to call with other students globally and teach each other new things.” Currently PHS is the only school in North America with a permanent Portal, according to Chinosi.

There has been discussion around the multiple different ideas of how The Portal can be used, but Ruel proposed, “In school that could be for your language classes, or history or even just talking about your school and different types of improvements where we can learn what is working better and maybe even apply it to our own school lives.”

This all stems from Chinosi’s core belief that “Global education is an absolute necessity, the future will not be safe or in good hands if our students now are not navigating complex global conversations.” 

“Not only will the Portal help us to understand our home communities more, but it will also help us to have a much better understanding of other communities and how they thrive daily off of what they have accessible to them,” continued Ruel.