Chromebooks changing education

THERMOPOLIS – In this day and age of technology it should be no surprise that schools are taking advantage of the resources that technology offers. Thermopolis Middle school has invested in Chromebooks for their students.

The use of Chromebooks has made it so that the school has gone basically paperless. The seventh and eighth graders do basically everything on their Chromebooks. “Seventh and eighth grade (students) do a lot of their homework and everything on them, because we use Google docs, which is one reason we went to Chromebooks. That way they can do their reports and share it with us,” Thermopolis Middle School Librarian Carol Burns, said. “They still have them do some writing for some things simply because they need that,” Burns added.

According to the whatis.com website, “(A) Google Chromebook is a thin client laptop that is configured with the Chrome operating system. Because the only software application that Chrome OS can run locally is the Google Chrome browser, a Chromebook is often described as a browser-in-a-box.

“Chromebooks are also called “cloudbooks” because the owner’s applications, videos, image files and documents are stored remotely on Google virtual servers. Files and software applications are associated with the user’s Google account so they can be accessed through a Chrome browser on any computing device. If a Chromebook is lost or destroyed, the user’s data remains secure because it was never stored on the Chromebook.”

All students have their own Gmail account provided by the school and all assignments are sent to their accounts. Mostly teachers give assignments in class, but they also send them through Gmail so that there’s no reason the children don’t have access to them, to know what they are and they can access their Gmail at home also, Burns said. She added, “Kids can’t say, ‘I didn’t know what the assignment was’ because it’s on their Gmail.”

The use of Gmail had also made it so that a student can get help at almost any time, day or night. If they have questions they are able to email their teacher or even the librarian to get assistance without having to schedule a time around everyone’s busy schedules.

The Chromebooks makes it much easier for the staff to be able to monitor what the students are doing on the Internet. “If they are in our network, we can monitor what they are doing. Including their Gmail. They know that that’s a school Gmail so district staff has access, if necessary. Even when they check them out and take them home we can see where they’ve gone on them,” Burns stated.

Thermopolis Middle School still uses textbooks but not as much as they once did, as most of the information comes through doc sharing, Internet and Gmail. “They still do have some textbooks in some classes but a lot of the stuff is via the computers,” Burns said.

“It’s nice, the kids really like them and most of the staff like them too,” Burns said.