With the new school year sweeping in, students and teachers have a new policy to adjust to: a Chromebook for each student. Rolla High School has recently implemented the use of a one-to-one policy. This means that instead of each classroom having a Chromebook cart of 30, every student has been issued a Chromebook they are responsible for maintaining and using throughout the year. This new policy is part of Principal Dr. Corey Ray’s plan to catch Rolla High School up with the surrounding counties’ adoption of personal devices.
“I got a request for Chromebook carts in special education classrooms that didn’t have them. So I reached out to technology and asked them about it, and they told me that we had sixteen hundred Chromebooks in the building, and we only had about fourteen hundred kids in the building, so we had two hundred more Chromebooks, really, than needed for the entire building,” Ray said.
Extra Chromebooks in the building do not benefit the student body, and one-to-one seemed like the best option. During Ray’s first year as principal, he was looking for changes to be made for the better.
“We [the administration team] started that process last year. [We] spoke with the building leadership team about it, spoke to the teachers about it, spoke to a group of parents about it, spoke to the board of education about it, and got blessings from all those groups. So we moved forward with the planning phase and how to implement it,” Ray said.
Introducing a new policy comes with new and exciting results.
“I think it provides flexibility for the students. I mean, they have their Chromebook with them all the time. You have the ability to work on Google Classroom, even if you’re not online. It will save your work if you’re working on a paper [online document] or wherever the case may be. Now, we’ve leveled the playing field for everybody, and it doesn’t matter how much money your mom or dad is making, you know you have the technology you need to be successful in a digital age,” Ray said.
Not only is the administration excited about this change, so are some students. Junior Zelda Whitehead has a big family, which can mean it’s hard to find time on the computer, let alone have a personal one. This can be difficult in such an online age of homework and assignments.
“The Chromebooks are cleaner. Other people aren’t touching them and getting them all gross. They’re pretty nice, and it’s nice to be able to take it home and just work on it all times a day,” Whitehead said.
Junior Axton Gibbs sees the pros and cons that the new Chromebook policy offers for students with different needs.
“In general, I think it’s very helpful for people that don’t have access to computers at their house, and so to have the ability to do the online work for them [students without internet access] is pretty good. It’s just frustrating that everybody else has to deal with carrying around Chromebooks every day,” Gibbs said.
In spite of the cumbersome nature of the Chromebooks, the one-to-one initiative has overall approval. This tech accessibility not only benefits students by giving them an opportunity to do online work outside of school but also the administration by setting students up to be ready for life outside of high school.
“I think there’s a balance between remote work and having a pencil in the hand and writing things out. I think there’s value in that [offline work], but there’s also value [in online work] because you’ll be using computers and being in a digital world the rest of your life. We’re trying to get kids college and career ready. I think this is part of that process to get them there,” Ray said.
