On Nov. 18, teachers received an email from Charles Velschow, an Administrative Vice Principal, announcing that classroom Chromebooks would soon be removed from their classrooms. For many, this came as a surprise. While some teachers thought this was a much-needed improvement, others saw it as the removal of a valuable tool for their classroom.
All students receive school-provided Chromebooks when they start at Woodside, typically at freshman orientation. However, students are often also allowed to bring a personal device, such as a laptop, to use in their classes instead. In the past, if a student forgot to bring their computer or forgot to charge it, they could borrow one of the extra Chromebooks kept inside a classroom cart. These classroom Chromebooks, however, were often slow, outdated or had other issues. Additionally, these Chromebooks often went missing, resulting in a cost for the school. English I teacher Darcy Book said that when she was on jury duty for three months last year, she returned to all six of her classroom Chromebooks missing.
“Before [classroom Chromebooks] were removed, I had an up and down experience,” Book said. “I love having Chromebooks in my classroom, but as a freshman teacher, I can never retain them.”
Still, Book said she was disappointed that the Chromebooks had been removed from the classrooms. Velschow said that the technology team came to him and requested that the classroom Chromebooks be removed.
“Their rationale was pretty straightforward,” Velschow said. “It’s very difficult to keep track of the Chromebooks when they’re kept in the teacher’s classrooms … It becomes a logistical nightmare to inventory them and keep track of everything.”
According to Velschow, this sets the expectation that students bring their fully charged Chromebooks to class. English and AVID teacher Jordan Filerman said he thinks this is a positive change, as it will keep students more accountable.
“Now that every student has [received Chromebooks] one-to-one, it’s been a little bit of a frustrating experience,” Filerman said. “Students know that they can rely on this ChromeCart, so they stop bringing their stuff.”
Filerman said that when every student does this, he runs out of classroom Chromebooks quickly, and so his students have to go to the library to get loaner Chromebooks. He said that this eats up instructional time.
Book said she can see this perspective, but said this “tough love” approach doesn’t work for her. Book said that her students often do not come to school with a charged Chromebook, especially freshmen, students with IEPs or students in her intensive and intervention classes. According to Book, “life happens”, so there will always be a need for at least a couple of charged classroom Chromebooks.
“I know that even within our department, we are divided,” Book said. “I guess it’s just a difference in opinion of what we think will be most effective for students. And in my experience, for the particular populations of students that I teach, [removing Chromebooks] won’t necessarily be effective [even though] I think that that strategy could be effective for other populations of students, for example, students in Advanced Placement (AP).”
This decision was initially made without the input of teachers or students.
“I don’t think it was fair that nobody told us before they made this rule,” freshman Jeremy Flomenberg said. “I need time to adjust to changes, and a lot of other students probably do too.”
Velschow said he was open to suggestions on the new system. According to him, specific programs that would benefit from classroom Chromebooks will still have them. He said he is open to adding Chromebooks back to certain classrooms if that student population “just isn’t getting it,” according to teachers.
“We could have done a big survey and done all that stuff,” Velschow said. “But at the end of the day, I’m kind of doing that anyway. [We] let them know we’re taking out the Chromebooks. Some people pushed back and gave a rational reason why they should be allowed to keep them. Sounds good to me, and we’ll take it from there. And if we do this the rest of the year and it’s a disaster, we can always reevaluate.”
According to Velschow, he is listening to feedback and is already finding ways to work around issues that some teachers have presented.
“Always listen, right?” Velschow said. “There’s no [such thing as an absolute]. This isn’t a hard line, so to speak. And like I said, we already are going to accommodate some classrooms, and we can always do more.”
Staff writer Ishaan Srivatsav contributed reporting to this article.
