Chromebook Questions

Skye had an awesome idea and it was to include parents in our Chromebook pilot project by hosting an information night for them about the devices and how we plan to use them. We talked about the options of having the teacher present, doing small student-run presentations for a group of parents or "Speed Geeking" (using a "Speed Dating" model to have students share apps, projects or ideas as parents rotate through stations). If parents are interested in an evening event to learn about Chromebook use, please get in touch with Shauna and one will be arranged!

Many students returned to school today with signed Appropriate Use of Chromebooks agreements. Some very interesting questions and issues were raised. Please remember that this is a learning process for ALL of us: admin, teachers, students and families! Please continue to raise questions and make comments as you notice issues.

Here are my thoughts on questions that were raised with the agreements.

"Students have no expectations of confidentiality or privacy with respect to any usage of a Chromebook. Teachers may use monitoring software that allows them to view the screens and activity on student Chromebook."

How will this happen? What are the consequences for students not doing what they are supposed to be doing?

For now, I will be monitoring the screens of students physically and having them live-blog/tweet or share their work on the Google Drives, so that students are accountable for their time online with the Chromebooks. Students will have clear guidelines and expectations of what they are to be working on and I will regularly check in with them to ensure they are doing so. If students are not working on approved tasks on approved sites, they will lose privileges. After an initial poor choice, the student will lose access to his/her assigned device for the remainder of the day, and have a discussion with the teacher. Next time, he or she will lose access for a full week. Finally, if it happens again, we will collaborate to find an appropriate consequence.

As we get things up and running, I've learned about some ways that I can see all student screens at once. There are a couple of possible ways to do this. NetSupportSchool and Hapara have systems that can be purchased and allow a teacher to monitor a class set of Chromebooks, by being able to view all users and what is on their screen at any time. Below is a video from NetSupportSchool showing how their system works.


"I will not download or use programs that my teacher has not approved."
What is the approval process? 
For the first several weeks using the Chromebooks, students will all be using the same online programs, websites, apps and extensions. I am doing a lot of research on which programs, apps and extensions will enhance and transform our learning and have several to train the students in. When students learn about apps/extensions of programs they would like to add to our repertoire (Clara has already shared about things like Lucidchart and Powtoon), they can share information with me and I will make a decision about how to introduce and use them in class. Students and I can work together to formally create an approval process for when it becomes necessary.

"I will log on to the school network and my Google account using only my own credentials (username and password)."
Will students be asked to only use their OCDSB Google account?
For now, yes. One of the great things about Google Chrome is you can have multiple users logged in at once. For example, I have a "teacher" account (with a ninja image) and a "home" account (with a little kitty) open in seperate tabs and don't have to log in and out several times a day. Right now, students will set up their cloud.ocdsb.ca accounts. Some students have their own gmail accounts and we MAY, in the future, add those as well. The main reason for adding a second account would be that, right now, on our cloud.ocdsb.ca accounts, we can't access Google Hangouts (Google's version of Skype, with other functionaliites), and Google Hangouts would be very helpful for us to collaborate with another 1:1 class, such as the students in Ms. Robin's class in California. We'll deal with this after all students are comfortable first using their own cloud.ocdsb.ca accounts.


I am open to input and ideas, please feel free to share comments here or send in a note or email!

Chromebook Arrival - First Unboxing

After much anticipation (Ellis was sure we'd been waiting 5 months). the 31 Chromebooks for our 1:1 pilot project arrived!

We went over our Chromebook questions from last month and then worked on a document of Chromebook Expectations. Students took a copy of this home tonight to read over with their parents and sign. This is working document which is their contract and acceptable use policy.

Some students stayed in at recess to do the very first unboxing. OC's name was drawn and she got to unbox Chromebook #31 (our "spare"). Aaron put together a little video to show our excitement.

There are still some things to discuss and look at before everyone is assigned a device. For the first few weeks of using Chromebooks, we'll be working slowly and on the same tasks. We are going to make sure that everyone can effectively use these tools before students can "take their ideas and run with them".

Some of the things we'll be doing the next few days include unboxing and labelling all the Chromebooks, setting up our charging stations, logging into them for the first time and setting up user accounts, and watching some training videos.

We'll start with Introducing the Chromebook:



We'll watch a video giving a Chromebook Education Overview:



We'll talk about how to care for and handle the Chromebooks.



Then, we'll practice how to use the Chromebooks (before we even get our hands on them!).

Finally, students will unbox Chromebooks and set them up for their first charge!

We couldn't be more excited to get started and look forward to learning with this new technology and sharing our progress and challenges!

Now, to think about screen time limits...

Huge News!

As always, we've been keeping very busy in Room 209. So busy, in fact, that this poor little blog has been rather neglected as of late. Not for long, however. This blog is about to get a whole lot more contributors, maybe before next month!

As you know, we applied for a grant from EdTechTeam after I attended the Google Apps for Education Summit in Montreal. Students worked incredibly hard, even with me out of the school, to complete an excellent application. We've been waiting, crossing fingers, toes and eyes, hoping to get news. Every day, several sentences begin with, "If we get ChromeBooks, we can...".

This evening I got wonderful news. Room 209's grant was accepted and ChromeBooks will be on their way shortly! Students and parents got the news minutes after I did and my inbox promptly filled with enthusiastic replies:
Aaron is "over the moon", as his mom says;
many students, like Millie and Mel wrote obviously enthusiastic replies in all caps;
Hannah was concerned with details and made sure that EdTechTeam knew about our new student, Philip, she also thinks we should have more cake (after two days in a row already!);
Skye's mom filled an email with more than 10 exclamation marks for only two sentences of text;
Vickie used her mom's email to say that she was speechless (for once!);
Fiona is floored that out of potentially hundreds of applications, we won;
Erika wrote a 5-line exclamation to show her excitement;
Hunter's email was completely incoherent, from excitement, I hope;
I don't think Miguel could believe the news, as he confirmed with a quick, "So, we got ChomeBooks?"reply;
Apparently both Molly and Clara nearly made their mothers deaf with their happy screams;
Gabby told her mom she couldn't believe it.
I can't really believe it either. We thought we'd be getting the news on Thursday, and after not hearing for so long after when we thought the "official" announcement was, we figured we hadn't gotten the grant.

I've never seen so many "OMG"s in one night. I feel the same way, Rainbow Eggheads. I feel the same way.

We have SO much to talk about and so many lists of Success Criteria to come up with! We have lots of work to do together before we even get the ChromeBooks (which I think will be very soon!).

Something else that I've been thinking about tonight is how we can share with others. I know that we'll be blogging and tweeting about our adventures with the ChromeBooks, but we also need to think about how to share our learning with other students in our school and be role models for the use of technology. After all, this grant is designed for for classes doing "pilot projects". How can we share our learning with our Buddies and our friends who help make up "Room 208", the other grade 5/6s in Room 207? I look forward to coming up with all kinds of generous, creative, thoughtful ideas with you!

I can't wait to see your smiling faces tomorrow!