KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
Story by Taylor Villanueva, SCV News.
Saugus Union School District board members will vote in early January on whether to place Chromebooks and laptops in classrooms.
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This comes following a nationwide push to utilize technology in classrooms and to give students a greater variety of learning opportunities.
“The district wants to incorporate all sorts of technology because that is what students will use in the real world,” said Lee Morrell, public information officer for the Saugus Union School District.
“We want to make sure the education kids are getting provides the best opportunities they can possibly get, and that includes using technology to give them the best tools to learn.”
Board members will vote on the action on Jan. 5, 2016 at 7 p.m. at the Saugus Union School District, located at 24930 Avenue Stanford.
Utilizing technology in a classroom setting is nothing new for the school district, Morrell said.
SMART Boards are already in place in some of the elementary school district’s classrooms. The SMART Boards are electronic versions of whiteboards that also serve as a “collaborative learning software,” according to the SMART Technology company website.
“We’ve been rolling out the SMART Board program for several years now,” Morrell said.
Funding for SMART Boards came with the passing of Measure EE in November 2014, which granted a $148 million bond to improve district facilities.
Saugus Union School District employees plan to implement studies in the future to see if technology in the classroom is, in fact, helping students learn and retain more information.
“We have received anecdotal evidence from teachers saying kids are paying more attention in classes with the use of SMART Boards,” Morrell said.
“We won’t be doing studies until SMART Boards are in all of the classrooms.”
Due to funding issues, a limited number of classrooms in some of the Saugus Union schools have electronics for educational purposes.
Morrell said that he has not heard any opposition to adding electronics to all classrooms.
“Saugus Union School District is known to be very progressive in terms of giving students an advanced education.”
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I hope they vote this down, and here’s why …
Chromebooks were mandated at Einstein Academy where I am the parent of a student – so I had to purchase this item that I did not support or want. Not only are you forced in Google’s ecosystem of accounts, apps and file handling, but the students prefer to spend 90% of their time playing games. Additionally, Chromebooks are not like a traditional laptops – there is no local storage for one (no hard drive), everything is stored in Google’s cloud. Just getting a text doc to another “real” computer, or printing something out at home practically requires an IT degree. Students are only able to email students and faculty, there is no white-list system that would allow emails between parent and child for example.
Locking down your child’s Google account (child safety settings) is also not foolproof and as a parent you have no control of what the other parents are doing (or not doing). So despite your own in-home family rules, you’ll learn very quickly that the students love to “Google” stuff, if you know what I mean. Things quickly spread amongst the kids even if you’ve done everything to protect your own child.
I feel that it is important for students to learn tech and to have all the tools necessary available to them if it means more efficient learning. The Chromebook in particular absolutely does not provide this.
Eric, your concerns are valid but not necessarily a reason to avoid the use of technology in the classroom. GoGuardian is one example of a secondary filtering protection that district Admins will use to keep your child safe online. Also, there are companies like Digital Promise that help provide grants for those who are having difficulty purchasing devices for students.
Eric brings up some interesting points. Luckily, GoGuardian solves all of the problems he mentioned. Most districts going 1:1 with laptops (especially Chromebooks) have some kind of filtering software in place.