The school I work for is now on year 2 of their take-home 1:1 program. We have over 500 Chromebooks in the hands of all the students and staff. Here are some things I learned along the way.
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Preparation
The year before:
- Prepare the school for a culture change
- Spend the year transitioning to Google Docs.
- Informing parents
- Mobile Lab & Test devices for teachers
- Improve your infrastructure's Wifi and Internet.
Purchasing and replacement schedule
- I suggest: Take-home ~ 2 years, In-School ~ 3-4 years
- Leasing
- Buyout lease (Total Cost X .53)
- Fair Market Value (FMV) lease (Total Cost X .45)
- Pay a portion of the entire cost of the device.
- Estimate 15-20% for the ones you want to keep or unable to return.
- We have no need to keep devices after the new ones arrive so why pay more.
- What else is needed ~ Bag, management, Spares, Classroom management Software
Insurance:
- Worth Ave Group (or similar) vs. Self-insure
- After 1 year we found that the Worth Ave Group was not worth the cost, and chose to self-insure.
- What to charge students
- Pre-charge everyone
- Found that students did not feel as accountable for the care of the device.
- Per-incident charge
- Cost should be a deterrent, not actual cost. (We did a $25 incident fee)
- Sense of ownership and need for responsibility.
- Rewards responsible students, and holds non-responsible students accountable.
- Lost Chromebooks, or purposely damaged chromebooks, are handled by the administration, and the family could be responsible for the full initial cost of the device.
- Expect about 15-20% screen breakage
- Parts and repair vendors: http://www.agpartsworldwide.com/, http://www.therepairdepot.com/, http://www.amazon.com/
Unboxing:
- White glove service vs in-house, and techniques.
- Option 1: Rubber Duckie, and usb to nic
- Option 2: SSID for a initializing. (minimum sites that need to be open)
- ask if distributer can do bulk packaging.
Year 1 & 2
Distribution
- Challenge: Get them in the hands of the student in the morning of Day 1.
- Year 1: Gave them out to 8th period class
- Year 2: Gave them out during TA
- Stafford students, were optional
- Paperwork vs getting them to students is still an issue.
Classroom Management
- Digital tools
- Google Classroom (previously Hapara), Omnito, GoGuardian, GAT,
- Physical change
- Move desks around so that teachers can see the screens
- Common terminology: Screens down, Screens up
- Unprepared students
- 15 Spares in the library that can be signed out.
Classroom Tools
- Google Classroom, https://omnito.net/
- Chrome Web Store
- Apps: https://www.wevideo.com/, https://getkahoot.com/, https://www.tinkercad.com/, https://pixlr.com/editor/, https://www.lucidpress.com/, https://www.lucidchart.com/, Beautiful Audio Editor, https://animoto.com/, https://mymaps.google.com,
- Extensions: Nimbus Screenshot, Screencastify, Add to Classroom, Share to Classroom
- Add-ons: Doctopus, Flubaroo, Choice Eliminator
All School Workflow
- Administration needs to lead the pack.
- No paper Faculty meetings
- Admins need to be using a Chromebook as a primary portable device (Chromebook Flip);
- We have been replacing aging projectors with TV's and Chromecast
- Become familiar with add-ons and scripts
- I personally have written many add-ons that are focused on school workflow: http://scripts.edlisten.com/, Lab Scheduler, CheckItOut, Transfer Ownership, Copy Folder
- Auto-send form data: Homework-Club, parent notification (AutoCrat, Simply Send)
- Custom scripts for distributing Budget sheets, and IEP's to teachers.
- Chromebooks don't print.
- Students can use a designated desktop in the library if they need to print.
Repairs
- About 20% screen breakage
- Incident-fee instead of prepaid insurance
- We fix and hand back to student. We complete a google form, which auto-generates an invoice which we mail home. Unpaid bills get given to the administration to deal with each month.
- We spend about 1/3rd the cost to fix in-house and just take the loss on dead ones, then when if we went with an insurance of some type.
Collecting
- Challenge: Let students have them through their last exam.
- We chose to allow students to take Chromebooks home over the summer if they got them pre-inventoried. About 1/3rd took us up on the offer.
- Take-home: They had to bring their CB to the IT office sometime during the month of June and get the device inventoried.
- Leave at school: They had to drop it off at the IT office after the last exam that they needed it for.
Other Links
- Another 1:1 Journey story: http://www.imagineeasy.com/blog/chromebook-journey-part-1/
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