Chromebooks a necessity for new class
FISD’s 1-1 initiative is bringing many changes to the classroom, including all freshmen now owning their own Chromebook for their high school career. This change brings many learning curves for both teachers and students alike.
October 25, 2016
The school is providing more Chromebooks than ever before with nearly 500 of the devices on campus. Some classes may never use them, others only some of the time, but in AP Seminar, they are used all of the time.
“Mr. (Krishna) Chetty, who is the head of the academics curriculum in the district, he is in charge of AP seminar and the whole AP research program,” AP seminar teacher Jennifer Whiffin said. “The program actually requires that you have access to computers at all times because it’s all research based.”
The school added 160 new Chromebooks this year at a cost of approximately $30,000. For Whiffin, the cost is worth it.
“I can’t guarantee that most kids have their own and sometimes issues happen where they might break at home so this gives them consistency,” Whiffin said. “It gives them the less stress to not have to worry about where do I get my device from. I can tell you that every day they’ve been in classes, they used them so it’s not just once a week or only when it’s time to write an essay because it’s constant research and so they need that access.”
With many teachers allow the use of personal devices in class, the Chromebooks offer some built in advantages.
“They use Chromebooks for, like I said it’s a research based class, so they’re constantly looking up scholarly journals, articles, using the library data base, they’re watching videos,” Whiffin said. “In fact, as part of their AP seminar tasks that they have to do for the college core grade that they receive, is that they have to make a presentation and it’s videotaped and submitted digitally and they have to watch them and edit and revise their presentations and kind of make it better each time. They’re watching themselves present and perfecting each time so they need YouTube for that too.”
For the students, the Chromebooks are a necessity.
“It kind of gives it a personalized experience and most importantly it allows us to do research independently without having to bring my own computer at school because there’s also complications with it getting stolen,” sophomore Jimmy Qian said. “Most importantly a Chromebook does really help us with AP seminar considering that the class is full of research.”
