When the Big Sandy School District decided to get a lot of Chromebooks for students in junior high and high school, 90 were issued to students.
How about a few more numbers. There are 177 kids in K through 12 in the Big Sandy Schools. Once Bob Nelson and others knew they wanted to invest in Chromebooks, there have been 154 of them bought in the last three years.
Before any were bought and issued, Bob Nelson did a lot of work and study as to which devices would be the best for students in the Big Sandy Schools.
One morning last week he and Superintendent Brad Moore came to the "Mountaineer" office. Nelson was lugging around a large old encyclopedia which he said was the way he produced a product for his class when he was in school.
Then the technology went to computers, then devices like the Chromebook and now who doesn't have a smart phone to do most anything that could be done on a lap top or full blown computer.
But, in Big Sandy, it took some doing to get a system up and running that would make learning in the classroom and at home so much easier than ever before.
The whole thing is to teach students how to have information at their fingertips in just seconds.
Bob Nelson will follow these words up with more of the technical aspects of what the District has done. For us at the newspaper, it is simply amazing that the school teachers and staff, administration and Board of trustees had such a depth of vision to go this route in the Big Sandy Schools.
By Bob Nelson
Big Sandy Jr. High and High School have entered the technology world of one to one. This has been a long and thoroughly thought out process. Each student has been issued an electronic device capable of internet access to use with their classes. This educational move has been part of an ever changing means for student learning. One thing has not changed in public education and that is the point that when the bell rings the door closes and a teacher is in charge of a classroom of students. What takes place within the classroom has always been to challenge the students to learn, think, and prepare for their future. Students work with information in two ways. One way is to gather information and the other is to produce something with the gathered information.
Computers for our students have been a part of their lives from the time they were born. Many adults have witnessed a transformation of writing term papers by reading both pages of the topic in an encyclopedia to today's mind boggling up to the minute online sources of exponentially increasing amounts of information. Students today are expected to compete globally and in order to compete they need to grasp and interpret this information to produce the product of their toil.
Desktops, laptops, PC's, Mac's, iPad's, Netbooks, Kindle Fire, iPhones, or Chromebooks are all choices and possibilities for devices to be used by students for gathering, producing, and distributing information. There is probably no totally correct route but every school district needs to develop a plan and advance forward. Big Sandy's school board, administration, teachers, and students have been using some of these various tools from the start of computers entering the education world.
These devices are quite expensive therefore much prudence is brought into the budgeting process. The school board and administration asked questions like: "Will this help the teacher meet expected outcomes?" "Will the student be efficient with searching for information?", "Will the student be able to produce expected results?", or "Will these devices withstand everyday student use?" The decision has been made for now. Each student in grades 7 through 12 has been issued a Chromebook much the same as being issued a text book. Their 7th period classroom teacher provides an area for the student to store and charge their Chromebook. Students are responsible for plugging in the device at the end of each day, picking it up in the morning, and taking it to each class during the day. Each Chromebook is labeled with the student name, serial number, school id number, and a nice photo of the High School.
The Chromebook's built in OS, operating system, uses the internet cloud for the heart of its work. Teachers use programs like Google Classroom with their students to issue assignments, share documents, communicate with individual students, monitor student progress, and administer tests. Many times the teacher is able to observe a student's production that requires some input. The input is given, nobody knows but the teacher and student, and the class continues without interruption.
This past summer the Board of Trustees made a major commitment to double the wireless access with in both school buildings and purchase more Chromebooks. This improved infrastructure allows for the 154 Chromebooks, 88 desktops, 76 laptops, 14 iPads, 10 iPods, 4 Kindles, and 3 Surfaces to all access the local network and the outside world internet at one time with plenty of speed. This does not include the increasing number of personal devices and smartphones that simultaneously draw information for student projects. What is next? Complete the 1:1 project in the grade school and as always more broadband and faster devices!
