Born in 1999, I have always cherished the era in which I grew up. One of my earliest memories of using a computer involves attempting to access Gamefaqs via a dial-up connection. However, my early addiction to computers also led me to fall victim to an online scam. I had begged my mother to enter her credit card information so that my sister and I could each purchase a laptop for $30, or so I thought. Regrettably, we never received the laptops, and it wasn't until several years later that my mother informed me of the hundreds of dollars that had been fraudulently charged to her card as a result. Growing up in a one bedroom fitting four people, those couple of hundreds could have gone a long away.
Thankfully, digital literacy has made quite the turn. Students enter Kindergarten and are immediately taught computer skills. Adding onto this, the Covid pandemic catapulted the usage of computers and cloud resources to provide remote learning. This has opened the door for many schools to fully adapt the 1:1 Chromebook to Student initiative that a minority of schools had achieved prior to the Covid pandemic. 1:1 allows for every student to have a Chromebook that they can use at home and school to complete schoolwork. The simplification of Chromebook administration, the cheap cost of devices and cloud nature of Google has made Chromebook a favorite for educators all around the world, and I agree.
At Center Moriches School District, we were one of the first school districts in Long Island to provide 1:1 Chromebooks for students in grade 6 to 12. Grades K-5 all have 1:1 Chromebooks in class as well. The benefits to educators is immense, but I will touch on the benefit for system administrators.
Google provides many tools that allow us to ensure the proper moderation, asset management, security and logging needed for admins to perform their jobs successfully. We also work with several SaaS vendors that help us further lock down Chromebooks outside of the network firewalls with tools such as Securly, which monitors student usage, blocks unauthorized sites, set rules/alerts and allow for teachers to monitor classes during class. As Chromebooks use cloud storage, the need for on-premise file servers is lowered as well. Google Cloud also allows for easy integration with Active Directory, allowing for easy pass-over of user information, with the use of Google Directory Sync.
At times, I think back to when when I was in high school not so long ago but everything was still on paper and wonder if that was more benefical and simplier. But, Chromebooks are a tool that can allow K - 12 educators provide the next generation of learning and allow K - 12 sysadmins to focus on ensuring their IT systems are secured and working as smoothly as possible. As history has thought us, we have to embrace technology and work with it.
I will touch on the topic of embracing emerging technologies when I discuss the most exciting tool many have seen in years, ChatGPT.
D.D.