By Bethany Pham, News Editor, & Lauren Nguyen, Staff Writer
Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) will begin issuing a Chromebook laptop computer to each student next school year in a district-wide push to supply every student with a computer in order to provide more equitable access to technology for students.
Issued to students at registration, Chromebooks will act like an educational tool in every sense of the word; students will be expected to bring Chromebooks to class every day just as they would pen and paper. But unlike the pen and paper analogy, FVHS teachers will want to do much more with the Chromebooks than simply note-taking and essay-writing.
“We don’t want Chromebooks to be used in the classroom like typewriters; that shouldn’t be the only thing you do with a Chromebook—just typing papers or taking tests,” said FVHS English teacher and technology resource coordinator David Theriault. “We’ll ask ourselves, ‘what can we do to help teachers use the Chromebooks in new and interesting ways?’”
That technologic push has already been made prominent through relatively new and widespread technologic classroom tools like Google Suite, Quizizz, Quizlet Live, PlayPosit and Pear Deck.
Students who wish to opt out of the one-to-one (1:1) Chromebook system because they have devices at home already will likely be unable to.
“Let’s say you have your own laptop, which is very few of our students,” Theriault said. “Some of the programs we have like Edulastic and Canvas that let students take tests [are usually done on] secure browsers. We can’t put secure browsers on a non-school Chromebook, nor can we use any program pushed out from the district on a non-school device. If you want to bring your device, you can, but there will be times where you need the school’s Chromebooks.”
Theriault also addressed students’ online privacy, stating that screen monitoring, filtering, and management through the app GoGuardian will be conducted only during class, if at all.
“I don’t even know if we’re going to use GoGuardian next year,” said Theriault. “It may be just a pilot to see how we like it, but even GoGuardian is turned off once school is over. What you do with your time is up to you unless you do something so illegal that the police would want to look at your device.”
He also said that the district would completely respect the physical privacy of students as well.
“There’s no monitoring because we wouldn’t want to accidentally see anything about things like your house; it would be really uncomfortable for everybody,” Theriault said. “That front-facing camera—we wouldn’t want some random person at the district office to be monitoring students. That’s really weird and wrong.”
For all of the good that these Chromebooks promise to bring students, they also promise fiscal savings for the district. Theriault said that it would cost the district at least a million more dollars to put a Chromebook set in every single classroom than if the district was to buy one Chromebook per student.
“We already have to repair and replace some,” said Theriault. “Remember when we had those silver Chromebooks? Those have all been replaced. Google requires that Chromebooks are replaced every four years anyway because they won’t update those that are older than four years, so the school district will have to replace them every four years.”
Google’s policy of replacing Chromebooks every four years is perfect for the plan to give every incoming class of freshmen brand new Chromebooks for use throughout the four years of their high school career. By the end of those freshmen students’ senior year, the school will either sell them to a recycler or offer students the ability to purchase the Chromebook at an affordable price. This also means that the seniors of next school year will receive the oldest Chromebooks while the freshmen receive the newest.
In the case of a student needing to replace a Chromebook due to student-inflicted damages, there will be different protocol to follow in replacing it.
“Just like a textbook, you’re responsible for that resource,” said Theriault. “The only thing that’s different is that you can buy insurance on it from the district that’ll probably be $40, and if anything happens to it—stolen or lost—it’ll just get replaced. And the next year, if nothing happened to your Chromebook, then [the insurance] is $35. And then the next year, it’ll be $30. And the next will be $25. Every year where nothing happens to the Chromebook, it’ll go down and down.”
This new 1:1 Chromebook system will be installed across the Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD) to remedy unequal technological access among students.
At FVHS alone, there is a sizable number of students who don’t have regular access to a computer outside of school. Common cases include having one computer that is shared among family members or none at all to use for schoolwork. So what happens when a student needs to complete a WebQuest, watch an instructional video online or conduct Internet research for an essay?
The 1:1 Chromebook system will solve this issue.
Theriault said, “We just want to make sure that there’s equity and that everybody has the same thing. Since we’re giving students the same work, we want to make sure they all have the same tools. It’s just a way to ensure that every student has their own device when they need it.”
The Chromebooks will not only ensure equity among students but teachers as well. Theriault pointed out that only English and algebra teachers had class sets of Chromebooks at FVHS, but now history teachers, science teachers, other math teachers, world language teachers and PE teachers will be able to integrate technology usage into their everyday lesson plans.
Some students feel that the 1:1 system is an unnecessary addition to school.
“I’ve had 1:1 Chromebooks in my middle school, and it was really troublesome to bring it back and forth because I always forgot stuff like my charger and sometimes my actual Chromebook,” said junior Emily Wong. “I wish we didn’t have Chromebooks next year.”
Additionally, some teachers are reluctant to integrate the Chromebooks into the classroom, concerned about students’ attention being split between learning experiences that the Chromebooks offer and the countless distractions that the Chromebooks also offer.
“In the past, when the bell would ring [to end class], students would go out and be social with each other,” said FVHS Spanish teacher Gerardo Gonzalez. “Now, I have half of my class come in and sit down and immediately look at their phone and not talk to anybody. And I think that dependency is something we shouldn’t promote as much. If they wanted to do nothing but something on a computer, I’d just tell the kids to go home and buy Rosetta Stone and do that instead of coming to class.”
Still, FVHS is hopeful that the Chromebooks will do more good than they will harm.
“It’s not easy; it’s going to be complicated, but I think that the Chromebook system is a very compassionate thing that the district has decided to do,” said Theriault. “We’re trying to do the right thing, but students and teachers are all going to sacrifice a little bit in order to make sure we’re all on the same page. We’re all going to make mistakes, both teachers and students, but we’re going to fix them as we go.”
