Chromebook Update

Wow, this year has definitely gone by fast. I just finished putting in my 3 week grades for progress reports, and it only feels like I have been back at school for a week. Even the kids thought math class has gone by quickly! I guess that is a positive response that I am doing something right! :-) Anyway, I thought I would share an update regarding the Samsung Chromebook that I am trying out for the school. The experience has been up and down, to say the least.

Positives

I LOVE THE CHROMEBOOK! It is small, lightweight, and user friendly. I can have it sitting out on my lecture podium so that I can complete our attendance, without having to turn off my Promethean Board. I can have students completing their daily warm-up, using the Promethean Board, while I am taking attendance on the Chromebook.

The Chromebook uses the Google applications, and they have an amazing feature where it AUTOMATICALLY saves periodically. Instead of having to ensure that I am pushing the save button when I am working on something, the program will automatically do this for me.

The variety of Google applications is very extensive. Our school district is looking to implement Google products throughout our classrooms, and I have found a couple of them that work great for myself.

• Google Voice: I set up a different phone number that links directly to my cellphone that I can give out to students for them to contact me in case of emergencies. They don't receive my actual cellphone number, but they can still contact me like it was a cellphone. Plus, when voicemails are left through this phone number, Google Voice will create an email with a transcript of that voicemail and send it to my email. This will be great if I have parent's contacting me, and I look forward to seeing how this feature works out.

• Google Translate: I don't use this feature myself, but I have a teacher that I mentor that has a large number of Spanish Speaking students in her classroom. She is teaching in Pre-K, and these students are unable to read. She does not speak spanish, so I found this application from Google helpful. I recommended that she take a look at it. How it works: The user has the ability to select what languages to translate between. So, as a teacher, we can type in a direction to give a student in English. Select Spanish as the language to translate into, and hit enter. The phrase will be translated to Spanish, and will appear in a separate window. But, since these small kids don't read, there is a great feature to this program. Not only will it convert the phrase into written word, but it can also speak the phrase for you! There is a small speaker looking button that can be pressed, and the computer will say that phrase in Spanish for the teacher! I haven't heard how it has been working for her yet, but she was extremely excited to have another resource to help her students.

Negatives

While I love this little computer, I have had some issues. Well, I might as well get this out, I no longer have the Chromebook. :-( We have sent them back, and I am hoping to receive a replacement soon.

• Power Problems: Three teachers at our school have been demoing the computers, and we have all had a problem with the Chromebook turning on. We don't really know what happened, but there was a few days where the computers would not turn on for us. We would plug them in, and the computer would not take a charge. For myself, the computer would work when it was plugged in, but it wouldn't accept a charge and would turn off once unplugged. For another teacher, her computer wouldn't even turn on when it was plugged in. The battery life of the Chromebook is around 8 hours, which is more than enough to last an entire school day. Remember, we are looking at these for our students. Also, these computers would be plugged in for extended periods of time, so we would need them to work regardless on how long they were plugged in. Not exactly sure if we will receive another Chromebook back. The vendor that we purchased these through said to send everything back, and I am hoping to receive a replacement soon.

• Working Offline: Since we are demoing the Chromebooks for use by a student, I have been attempting to take it everywhere that a student would take. I even took it to a professional development training and a UIL meeting hoping that I could take notes. However, you cannot pull up a Google Doc form to take notes UNLESS you are connected to the internet. The training was not at our school, and they did not have internet available at the location, so I was unable to take notes on the Chromebook. Also, we were having some internet set-up glitches during the time we met for the UIL meeting, and I was unable to take notes then either. I have been researching how to use it offline, but the computers were sent back before I could look into trying some of the things that were mentioned. 

Overall, the Chromebook is a great addition for a teacher. I am still looking on how to implement it into my math classroom for student use, so I'm not totally convinced that it is a great option for the math classroom. However, I love it for teacher use! Hopefully I get a replacement soon!