It has been a while, too long in fact, since my last update, but it's for good reason.
Our Chromebook Pilot has been a resounding success. We were too busy using them (and preparing to send them back) to post here. :)
As Ryan Bretag points out in his recent reflection, Chromebooks: No One Even Notices the Tech, we quickly got to the point where the Chromebooks were being used with little fanfare or worry. They just worked.
They worked so well, in fact, that we are planning to have at least two Chromebook carts in our school next year. (Possibly three.)
I will gather my thoughts and get them here soon. We've had our share of issues - but all were all either resolved or workarounds were identified quickly so that teaching & learning could continue.
There are many thank-you's owed, and this isn't the place for an exhaustive list, but I'll start with the two most important: the NCS PTO, and, the classroom teachers who made Chromebooks MATTER in the CLASSROOM - Barb Shenkus, Lauren Morales and Ruth Gibson.
It's a nice way in fact to kick off Teacher Appreciation Week - we appreciate your help and contribution!
Just came across this blog post by Brian Weinert. The images show how Chromebooks will look once the new user interface is released into the "stable" channel. No idea when that might be.
It does a great job explaining "collections," sharing and simultaneous editing for anyone new to Google Docs. Also covered: using revision history. Good stuff! This could be useful for students and staff at a district implementing Google Apps.
There's a free Chromebook Classroom webinar coming up on Wednesday, April 18th at 2:00 pm EDT. Interested in Chromebooks? Don't miss it! Click here to register.
At this weekend's ASCD conference, I was unable to attend session 1429 -- Chromebook Beta Testing Nets Interesting Results, but, thankfully, the good folks at Council Bluffs Community Schools have presented on this topic before and have RECORDED them for all to see. Check them out below!
Implementing Google Chromebooks in the Council Bluffs Schools - click here
Using Google Chromebooks in the Classroom - click here
I had the privilige of spending the weekend (including today, Monday, March 26th) at the American Society for Curriculum Development [ASCD] annual conference in Philadelphia. (I attended for FREE as a member of the educational blogging community press.) Part of my day on Sunday was spent at the Google booth on the exhibit floor where I spoke to convention attendees (principals, supervisors, technology directors, and a few teachers) about our Chromebook project. They were thrilled to hear about our experience! It was great fun to be able to show what our kids are up to!
It's been too long since my last update, but that's a good thing.
I haven't had much to write about because students and our teachers have been busy USING the Chromebooks in class. Everything is working. Logins. Printing. Wireless. Everything. Batteries are lasting forever, give or take a week or two. External mice have eased some students' dislike of the trackpad. The missing DELETE key is puzzling some people (yes, we know, press alt-backspace) but overall, things are going very, very well.
Had an interesting conversation with Jenna, a 4th grade student working on a research project on black holes. It gave me a lot of insight into how the Chromebooks are helping our students learn.
Jenna, a student in one of our pilot classrooms, was in my computer lab with the rest of her class. Just about everyone was using PowerPoint. At first, I was crestfallen; why weren't they using Google Presentations?
A quick conversation with the classroom teacher provided the answer. Our intial problems (understandably) scared her away from taking on a major project relying 100% on the Chromebooks and Google Docs. (See my most recent post below for evidence why.) She DID however have the students do their RESEARCH via the web and use Google Docs to store, organize and repurpose/paraphrase the information they gathered. THAT information was then being moved into PowerPoint for the final presentation. (She assures me they will use Google Presentations for the next project and I believe her.)
I first noticed Jenna, gesturing frantically to get my attention, dying to show me her work. She proudly explained about her research on black holes, why she found it so interesting, what facts she'd gathered, what that meant to her, etc., but she was just as excited to tell me about the black hole-esque PowerPoint theme she'd discovered and the animations she was using on the text for every page. Again, I was crestfallen.
We in the edublogosphere routinely rail against such pedestrian techniques. But hey, this is elementary school. Has anyone had success teaching Presentation Zen concepts to 4th graders?
I started to wonder how the loss of "dog and pony show" effects would impact future students' motivation. Then I remembered the amazing learning potential eliminating such gadgetry might have.
You get to focus on content!
Instead of using text animation, she could embed a video (YouTube is blocked but I can work with kids, there are ways around that):
Instead of a predefined theme, she could search NASA black hole images and use a different one for the background of each page. (Google Images is NOT BLOCKED in our district and our kids use it heavily).
Along the way, what is this student learning? They are accessing state-of-the-art primary sources in their quest for knowledge (and an "A" on the project.) By focusing on real content instead of cool effects, they have their best chance at real learning - learning that matters - developing a passion for a topic.
Jenna is still working on her project. I'll have an update later when she finishes.
Fourth graders in Mrs. Shenkus' class were greeted by this unfortunate error message using the Chromebooks today in ILA class, leading to a scramble on our end to find out the cause. Was Google Docs down? No, it seemed to be up for other users. Was it Websense, our firewall? Possibly. Or did Google (as it sometime does) make a subtle change that derailed us? We weren't (and still aren't) sure.
What we DO know is that the problem occurred on our hardwired network computers running Windows 7 as well as the Chromebooks. We also know that when the firewall was disabled, Google Docs opened up just fine. So right now, our principal suspect is the Websense firewall, but until our investigation is complete, we won't know for sure.
Meanwhile, in addition to Mrs. Shenkus' lesson being scrubbed, Mrs. Gibson's students had a project due today and kids are in a panic. Parents, too, I'm told, have called to express concern. Not a good way to end the week. :( Our consultants at SJTP are working on the problem.
Maybe the Websense firewall has become sentient and it overheard the conversations at last night's Technology Committee meeting ... conversations that centered largely on our plans to REMOVE IT.
UPDATE 3:38 pm - our SJTP consultants were able to trace the failure to a change by Google involving the redirect URL used for Google Docs. An adjustment in Websense was then necessary to resolve the problem. Two lessons were affected today, but we are back in action & ready for the new week!
So I followed the article provided by Google Support and was thoroughly impressed as to how easy it was to setup my print server to utilize Cloud Printing:
Once I signed into www.google.com/cloudprint with an administrator account and select the printer I was then able to share the printer to the specific student. I signed into the Chromebook as the user went to Google Docs and created a document and did Control P and I was prompted with the option to print. The only issue I don’t like is that in order for everyone to be able to print you will need to add all users manually to a Google Group or you can export all accounts to csv file from Google Control Panel and add 25 at a time which if you have thousands of accounts will take a long time with this limitation:
DO NOT use the radio button for “All users within [Your Domain]” when creating a Google Group
All in all I think it works fantastic and I didn’t expect it to work so easily.
