Peter Strawn is in his eighth year at St. Francis. He began working as the
school’s Academic Technology Specialist last summer after teaching English
for seven years. In addition to assisting with the roll-out of Chromebooks, he
coaches the FIRST Robotics team, provides training to faculty and staff, and
develops STEM curriculum. Mr. Strawn is also a Google Certified Educator.
The Power of Chrome
By Peter Strawn
Next school year, St. Francis is undergoing a tremendous shift in its 1:1 initiative.
Rather than giving students iPads, the school is going to deploy brand-new Google
Chromebooks to all four classes. While on the surface this seems like a major transition, it is truly the next step in the evolution of technology on campus.
St. Francis first adopted Google Apps for Education (GAFE) during the 2011-12
school year. GAFE gave the school an all-in-one platform that combined email, a calendar, and office programs for the creation of documents, spre adsheets, and presentations. Since that time, these tools have made a profound impact on classroom instruction and student learning.
Being in a 1:1 environment has helped both teachers and students to harness the
power of GAFE. Teachers have had the ability to share documents paperlessly and
efficiently, to provide personalized, specific feedback on student work, and to establish
a classroom culture built on the four C’s: communication, collaboration, creativity, and
critical thinking. Students, too, have been able to store their work in the cloud and access their assignments from any connected device.
With the increase in quality of Chromebooks, it has only made sense to move in this
direction. The specific model the school has chosen--Acer Chromebook R11--will
have both touch-screen and flip capabilities to mimic the feel of a tablet while harnessing the speed and power of a laptop. It is only the second Chromebook developed that
has these features and represents an impressive shift in what technology can offer our
students. Also, it will have a full physical keyboard and ports for additional memory
using USB drives and SD cards, and it is designed to work almost entirely in the cloud
with the goal of giving users a fast and efficient experience.
Pilot deployment began in January with 34 faculty and staff members and 8 student interns. After only a couple weeks of use, one English teacher remarked, “The
Chromebook is truly the best of both worlds -- the fun and ease of an iPad with the
power and performance of a laptop. I am thrilled with this new option.” One of our
math teachers also voiced a positive experience: “My ability to move between tasks in
the classroom has improved tremendously after making the switch from my iPad to
my new Chromebook.”
One student, in a manner only a student could, just said, “IT’S AWESOME!” Thanks
to the hard work of this group of pilot users; we look forward to a great next step in
our technology program.
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