By Peter Rathmell
Administrators at Rockbridge County schools want to give a Google Chromebook laptop to each student by the start of the 2017-2018 school year, and they want the county to help.
Such a purchase, administrators believe, would allow teachers to prepare students more effectively for the digital world.
“I think we do a good job of getting technology. We have a lot of access to it,” said Jason Kirby, the Rockbridge County supervisor of technology and training. “What I’m not sure we do as good a job of is putting it in our students’ hands and using it correctly.”
He said the laptops would cost about $60,000 per grade.
To start the process, the division is working on increasing the in-school resources students can access, said Kirby. For instance, Maury River Middle School now has four mobile laptop carts for classes to use. Last year, the school only had one laptop cart.
Additionally, students in second grade and above had to create a Google account that consolidates their work into a single workspace known as Google Drive.
“The good thing about Google Drive is it can be made available offline [for homework]. We can make the textbooks, we can make the assignments. As long as they download everything at school before they leave for the day, everything can be made available offline,” Kirby said.
Administrators are feeling the pressure to prepare teachers to use the technology in their classrooms.
“I think we have a ton of things that work really, really well, but I think it is never a terrible thing to re-evaluate what you do and try and add to it,” Kirby said. “Everybody is going to be compelled to say, ‘I’ve got a class full of kids with devices in their hands; how can I best use these devices?’”
Maury River Middle School Principal Randy Walters said the process is already underway. One of his main initiatives is to have each student complete a research project on Google Drive.
“We wanted to start with seventh grade and then continue to work it into all of our students, but this is new to us,” Walters said.
Even in the beginning stages of the plan, the school has already seen the benefits of the new technology.
“It has piqued their interest,” Walters said. “We have seen an increase in student engagement, grades, willingness to complete assignments and just an overall more student engagement in what they’re learning.”
According to Walters, the new laptops allow students and teachers to communicate as never before.
“With this, the teacher can watch them and they comment during the process, so if a student is not capitalizing correctly they can put a comment in there so the student can go back and correct it,” said Maurya Schweizer, the school’s library media specialist.
The Rockbridge County School Board is now discussing with the county Board of Supervisors how to get the funding to purchase enough computers so each student could take a laptop home.
Kirby said students would download digital books to replace paper textbooks, saving money for future students to have laptops. He said he hopes the plan will be finalized and approved by the Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors by the end of this school year.