“Good afternoon, it’s good to be back. I brought your Chromebooks,” instructional technology resource teacher Diana Flick said. “If you turned in your paperwork, yes, you get your Chromebook today. I need to go over a couple of things… and then we’ll hand them to you.”

This is the way Flick begins the talk she has given to more than 900 freshman and sophomores in the last few weeks since school started. In this particular class, the five minute talk is followed by another ten minutes of handing out Chromebooks and chargers to around twenty sophomores.

“I don’t get tired [of giving the same speech], but I forget what I’ve said,” said Flick, as she prepared to go into another classroom.

She gave the same speech to the sophomores in this classroom as well. After giving the Chromebooks out, Flick paused to make sure everyone was on the same page.

“Couple of reminders, because I know you’re excited. Who in this classroom says when, where, how, and why you’re going to use the Chromebooks? Who is the person in charge in this room,” Flick asked.

“Ourselves?” one student answered.

“Nope, that’s so wrong,” Flick said. “No, Mrs. Wilson, let’s give her our respect. I hope you enjoy using [the Chromebooks].”

“Thank you,” several students said as Flick left the classroom.

“I’m so glad, thank you guys,” Flick replied.

“Those moments make me miss the classroom,” Toni Sheets, director of technology for the city schools, said as both she and Flick headed back down to their base of operations in room 171 to restock. “I make a lot of decisions. It’s not very much fun all the time, but it’s also fun to get out and be able to see this kind of stuff. To see how the decisions I make end up impacting the students and the teachers.”

All of the current sophomores and freshman have been receiving Chromebooks since the beginning of school a few weeks ago. Many students are excited for the Chromebooks as they head into a new year. One of these is freshman Alexis Saylor.

“I feel like it will be a lot easier to be organized,” Saylor said.

Saylor knows the value of having a Chromebook from personal experience.

“I have my own Chromebook that my dad got for me for Christmas and it definitely helped out last year,” Saylor said.

Flick agrees, but also thinks that for students who might not be able to get their own computer at home, the Chromebooks allow for success, especially in an increasingly electronic school environment.

“[Chromebooks] level the playing field. No matter what your background, everyone gets the same machine, so students who have not had access before have something,” Flick said.

Sophomore Aaliyah Jordan thinks Chromebooks will help save both time and create a more equitable school.

“I think [Chromebooks] will help everybody be more responsible,” Jordan said. “I think [school is] harder for people who don’t have a laptop at home. When they have to write a paper, they have to stay after school. This is better because they can just go home.”

Besides this, Jordan thinks that it will also be nice to simply have a computer to herself. Her only concern is that she might accidentally break the Chromebook.

“I’m afraid that one day I’m going to drop my book bag and it might hurt the computer,” Jordan said.

However, the administration behind the decision to hand out Chromebooks was one step ahead of her. Included with the Chromebooks is a warranty and insurance plan. This warranty covers “liquid spilled on or in the unit, drops, falls and other collisions, and electrical surges”, but does not cover “theft, cosmetic damage, normal wear and tear, intentional damage, or damage due to fire or natural disasters” according to the Chromebook Handbook distributed to all freshman and sophomores.

In the case of theft, which is not covered by the warranty, the administration can lock down the Chromebook, rendering it a “paperweight” according to Flick.

The administration reserves the authority to filter Chromebooks and place certain restrictions on their use, which Flick hopes that most students understand.

“I hope that students realize that because of funding and because of age, we have to filter,” Flick said.

Per contra, the technology department is working on a possible way for students to access YouTube for educational uses. One possibility would be for YouTube to be unblocked after school hours so that students could use it for homework, although Flick says it will likely remain blocked during school hours. This is not only because it could cause a distraction during class, but also because of the strain it could put on the internet network, potentially making it slower.

“Probably the best teaching practice is that a teacher shows a video and then there are activities. Of course there is some value in the student at home learning. We’ll work on that,” Flick said. “This is all new to us, so we’ll address things as they come up.”

The idea to give out Chromebooks originally evolved from a program that has been in place in Harrisonburg City Schools for several years now called Transforming Classrooms. This allowed teachers to apply for electronics like Chromebooks or iPads to have in their classrooms. Looking to expand the program, administrators found a grant from the Virginia Department of Education called the eLearning Backpack Initiative that would pay 400 dollars per student for an electronic device that the students would take home. From there, the decision had to be made as to what kind of device the district would purchase.

“We could either get a really cheap, lousy laptop, or we could get the best Chromebook money could buy at this time,” Flick said.

So, the district went with the Chromebooks. Other advantages of the Chromebooks included ease of management for the technology staff (Chromebooks automatically update and are connected to the network all the time), and the fact that Chromebooks had a keyboard while other devices such as iPads or tablets did not.

All in all, the state grant covers the cost for 400 dollar Chromebooks to all of the more than 900 students currently sophomores or freshmen, and each rising freshman when they enter high school for the next two years. However, the state did not cover the cost of insurance, from 18 to 25 dollars per Chromebook, which the district decided to add itself.

“We have two more years that the freshman class will get them, so by the time [the sophomore] class are seniors, everybody will have them, but that’s it. That’s all the DOE money we have,” Sheets said. “Four years from now we have to decide whether we’re going to fund it ourselves.”

With the influx of Chromebooks also comes an increased workload for the technology staff. It takes work by the technology department to keep the school network running at peak performance with so many new devices while still managing other electronics like projectors, document cameras, the main servers for the whole district, which are located at HHS, and all the other computers in the building that are not Chromebooks. Even with all this, Flick praises the district for maintaining one of the fastest networks around.

“We probably have the fastest network of any school in the area right now,” Flick said.

The technology department has already moved some employees to the high school specifically to deal with Chromebooks. In addition to this, a new position has been created, known as a quarter time instructional technology resource teacher (ITRT).

Quarter time ITRT’s are teachers already within the school who take on the responsibilities of a member of the technology staff for one block of the day. One of these is teacher Nathan Hissong.

“[Being an ITRT] is a whole different world of chaos… You’re day comes to you a little bit more and you’ve got to be able to respond to whatever pops up and you don’t know what that’s going to be,” Hissong said.

Even before this year, when Hissong became an ITRT, he was a big fan of technology in the classroom.

“In terms of my class I don’t think [each student having a Chromebook] will affect me that much because I have been using them throughout the last year very enthusiastically. I’m all in on the Chromebooks and looking to help other people get all in on them too,” Hissong said.

Hissong likes the organizational aspects of the Chromebooks, like the ability for students to not have as many papers, the best. Flick thinks that the collaboration aspect is also important, but thinks that how they will ultimately be used is very open ended.

“How they will be used is wide open… No one’s dictating [what teachers should do],” Flick said.

The only concern that Hissong has is that an over reliance on Chromebooks, like what happened when the internet was first beginning to be used in the classroom, will begin to occur.

“My concern is that we’re going to become so dependent on Chromebooks that when a student doesn’t have a Chromebook or the network goes down, it will be a tough day instructionally,” Hissong said.

However, the simple solution to this problem, Hissong thinks, is to have a backup plan, similar to what he would do when he first started using the internet as a tool for teaching. Flick thinks that because of an increasingly digital world, having tools like the Chromebooks are necessary to allow students to succeed.

“That’s our world now, it’s how we learn, it’s how we get information,” Flick said.

Administrators like Sheets also see this as a reason for the work they do behind the scenes.

“Working on grants like what we did here, doing all the paperwork, talking to the department of education, making sure we follow all their rules, that’s not the easy part, but it has to happen for all this to happen,” Sheets said.

While the district has the funding for the Chromebooks for now, it will be up to the school board in three years to decide if the district itself wants to continue the program and start paying out of their own pocket, or if they want to go back to a more moderate plan like individual classroom Chromebook sets.

“This gives us an opportunity at the end of the three year grant to say as teachers, do we like this better or do we like when the set is in the room?” Flick said.

Sheets agrees.

“This was just a way for us to see what it would be like without us spending our local money,” Sheets said.

Sophomore Da-Sean Deloatch thinks that when the time comes, the money would be well spent if invested in Chromebooks.

“[Chromebooks are] about the homework and how you have access to school online more,” Deloatch said.

From the perspective of the school district, Deloatch thinks that this is what school is all about.
“There’s nothing better than homework, schoolwork, studying,” Deloatch said.