"I think overall they were a major success - for my purposes much easier than I thought!" - Mrs. Barbara Shenkus, NCS 4th Grade Teacher

Chromebooks Successfully Deployed

Our story begins on Thursday, a day I was out of district on a technology curriculum writing project with ten other local schools. They say timing is everything, and as luck would have it, I was largely uninvolved with the efforts to finally get our Chromebooks properly confgured and online. I watched in amazement as everything unfolded via email, led by Joel Deanley of South Jersey Technology Partnership (SJTP). I've asked Joel to summarize the experience by way of a post to this blog, so that we can document the learning for everyone who's following this project. By the end of the day Thursday, we were in fantastic shape, leading me to post this status update, and to make a call to Mrs. Shenkus, asking, "can you use the Chromebooks tomorrow?"

The answer was of course "Yes!"

Last-minue deployment preparations got underway at 7am Friday, with Justin Marcinkowski relocating one of our Apple Airport Express access points into Mrs. Shenkus' room for the day. A quick, final test confirmed everything was 100% so I left the room, returning at around 10:30 with my D3100 and crossed fingers.

Mrs. Shenkus was getting ready to hand out the CBs when I arrived. The step-by-step pictures I shot of the signon steps (click here for a nifty animated .GIF) were just what she needed to guide the kids through the process. And so it began. All the units connected to the wireless AP - except one, which was easily fixed. All the students were eventually able to log on, but a few needed password resets, some needed additional directions re: the login details, and many (logging into Google Apps for the firs time) having to deal with the dreaded Google Account CAPTCHA system:

WARNING: RANT AHEAD! Why, Google, why, why, WHY do you have to make this CAPTCHA system so @#!)*$)#@!(&* difficult? I can't even COUNT the number of times I've seen users (adults and kids) stymied by this ridiculously painful process. Yes I know spambots are a scourge and must be stopped. But you're GOOGLE. IF ANYONE CAN DESIGN A CAPTCHA SYSTEM THAT JUST WORKS, YOU CAN. Please? Ok, rant over...

Our students little fourth-grade hands and fingers appear perfectly sized for the Samsung Series 5 keyboards. They quickly began expressing dislike for the touchpad, however. (We're looking at rounding up some extra USB mice laying around.) Overall the students' reactions were positive. Soon you'll be able to read them yourself on the Chromebooks at NCS class blog.

Almost Everything Works, So Let's Change a Bunch of Stuff

Flush with success, I decided to tweak the CB setup just a bit, by changing the 'Start Page' from our school website to the School Fusion Classroom we built for the project (which is empty for the moment.) That's when our troubles began. In Mrs. Shenkus' second class, two students who had logged on successfuly before started experiencing weird Chrome browser resets. Convinced this was due to the configuration change I'd made earlier, I undid that. 

The fun was just beginning.

I arrived in Mrs. Shenkus' room at 3pm to assist Justin and Chad with the swap-out of the access point they'd planned. (The Airport needed to go back to where it usually was, and our DD-WRT equipped Linksys E3000 had to be installed.) Justin and Chad were nearly finished when the CBs started having problems connecting to the AP. Worse, the odd restarting behavior had spread to other machines. Justin tried selecting the 2.4ghz SSID he'd set up (instead of the one he'd set up at 5ghz) and that seemed to help but not for long. As of this writing we do not have all the machines connecting to the AP automatically. About seven machines ultimately exhibited the odd restart behavior, requiring us to wipe them (thanks for staying late, Justin). That seemed to fix the problem, but clearly isn't a viable solution in the event of future problems, as all the student accounts have to be re-created; data is not lost, only student login credentials.

It was extremely hard for me to leave Mrs. Shenkus' room at 4:30 pm. For those that don't know, before I was a teacher, I worked as an I.T. Project Manager, helping large corporations install and configure Oracle-based Human Resource & Payroll information systems. When the HR/Payroll system is down, or, your implementation is in peril due to a technical glitch, YOU DON'T GET TO GO HOME. YOU STAY AND KEEP WORKING UNTIL IT'S FIXED, or, at the very least, until you're absolutely, positively sure that there is nothing else you can possibly do to make progress (resources or people you need to help are unavailable, etc.) I admit it's a little extreme, but that was just "business as usual" in my old life. It's been a hard attitude to shake.

Begrudgingly accepting the reality that we were done for the day, with Justin's help, I made sure the laptop cart was secured and charging for the weekend, and we called it a day. It was not the ending I'd hoped for on our first day, but, all things considered, it was a success. You can read Mrs. Shenkus' perspective here.

Instructional Focus Ahead

Assuming we can quickly address our issues from Friday, the real work can begin: designing lessons that bring out the best in our students via the CBs, with authentic, transformative learning experiences that simply wouldn't be possible without the technology. That's what this is all about. Certainly not the hardware. It should never be about the hardware. Just ask my friend and colleague Sylvia Martinez. (N.B. I always die a little inside when I see a classroom full of laptops on desks in rows,, kids working on the same project, in lockstep...that's NOT my vision for this technolgy in the classroom. More on that later.)

I am however now starting to get very excited about the projects Mrs. Shenkus, Mrs. Morales (who works with Mrs. Shenkus) and Mrs. Gibson come up with. I've asked them to focus on the learning, what the students need to know and be able to do, and let me come up with ideas for them to consider. but I don't want us to think just in terms of "projects" (and, heaven forbid, to think in terms of applications like PowerPoint.) I want us to think, or example, in terms of "gathering data, presenting information, conveying opinions, persuading others" - utilizing a variety of technologies and tools, collaborating with others (across the room or around the world) in the process.

That's why I'm excited about this project, and have been from the outset. 

LET'S GET BUSY