Hooked on Chromebooks
Lodi school board gets update on take-home program
The Lodi Unified School District Board of Education on Tuesday received an update on the 1:1 Home-to-School Connection pilot program, which allows students to take Chromebooks home with them after class during the school year.
Edith Holbert, director of technical services for the district, said that 2,800 students at 14 schools opted to participate in the program since it began on July 30, and with 83 students deciding not to participate.
“The biggest reason I’ve heard was because they had their own devices at home, and they didn’t want to take devices home from school,” Holbert said.
Of the students participating in the program, Holbert said 681 parents purchased the $35 insurance plan, with two claims filed for broken screens.
The district has received 196 requests for repairs so far — many of them involving battery or power issues — with an average of seven requests per day, Holbert said.
“I do expect that number to go down,” Holbert said. “I think we’re just seeing a lot of issues at the start of the program. Overall, teachers are reporting that students are taking pride in their ownership of the devices.”
Kelly Hansston, a sixthgrade teacher at Julia Morgan Elementary School in Stockton, said that approximately 23 of her 29 students take their Chromebooks home after school.
“I think it’s working better than I expected,” Hansston said. “The kids really love having the responsibility, and they’re taking better care of them than I thought they would.”
Hansston has three spare devices in her classroom, she said, plus an additional two as her class does not have full enrollment this year, which she said have come in handy when a student forgets to charge their Chromebook at home.
“We had one screen break and one student pulled a key off of one device, but repairs were done very quickly, so that worked out nicely,” Hansston said.
Hansston said the program has made the biggest impact on students who previously did not have access to any device besides maybe a parent’s smartphone.
“They can do more research and access some of the programs we have at school from their homes,” Hansston said.
Erin Lenzi, principal of Millswood Middle School in Lodi, said that out of approximately 856 students in the entire school, less than 1 percent chose not to take their Chromebooks home with them.
With many of Millswood’s teachers using Google Classroom, and some even going totally paperless, Lenzi feels the program has brought numerous benefits to her school.
“Most of our curriculum is online, so now all of our students have access,” Lenzi said. “Even if a student is absent, they can still get their lectures from home.”
Although some parents have voiced concerns that the Chromebooks give their children more access to video games and websites such as YouTube, Lenzi believes the benefits outweigh the procrastination risks and said her school has experienced relatively few incidents where the devices were damaged or stopped working.
Teachers even keep spare chargers in their classrooms, Lenzi said, although most students have been diligent about charging their Chromebooks.
“I think we were expecting more hurdles than we actually experienced, because the kids are so good with technology,” Lenzi said. “They’ve been doing a great job of taking care of their devices.”
School board president George Neely is excited for the program to roll out district-wide next school year, and suggested that more schools start adopting the program now to give the district time to work out any other issues that may arise.
“Everybody I’ve talked to spoke highly of (the program) and the impact it has had on our students,” Neely said. “Any time you deal with technology, you’re going to have issues, and we take care of them as we go along. Schools can start any time and then next year, when the entire district goes to this program, they’ll be ready.”
With approximately 40,000 Chromebooks already in the district’s inventory, schools would not need to purchase any more devices, according to Leonard Kahn, the district’s chief business officer, although replacing them would cost between $2 million and $2.5 million.
“The Chromebook cost would be budgeted at approximately $375 per device, and that includes the cost of pre-programming the device to work with our network,” Kahn said.