By Danielle Smith

Leader Staff Writer

New Chromebooks will soon be gracing classrooms throughout the Oxford school district thanks to the members of the school board. At the Oct. 8 school board meeting, members voted unanimously in favor of purchasing Google Chromebooks for the elementary and secondary levels.

The elementary level will be receiving 560 Chromebooks with 20 carts to store them. Total cost at the elementary level is $195,400 with the funds coming from the district’s general fund. The secondary level is looking at a total of $291,695 for 850 Chromebooks and 25 carts with the majority of those funds coming from the district’s sinking fund.

Inacomp TSG was awarded the bid.

“It’s been in the works for quite some time. Many school districts across Michigan have one-to-one initiatives and the use of technology throughout the district has increased tremendously,” said Ken Weaver, deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction. “When we passed the sinking fund just about two years ago, that’s what the purpose was stated for.”

Weaver and the rest of the school board heard from the elementary level that they needed the carts quicker than the district could get them through the sinking fund. “Every year, we get a certain percentage of the sinking fund and part of that is spent for technology and the other part is for some construction projects,” Weaver said. “We only get a portion of the sinking fund, about $300,000, so we have been concentrating on (grades) six through 12 because that’s where the majority of the use for one-to-one would be…although the elementary definitely has an increased need for them.” With that in mind, it was decided to purchase the carts at the elementary level via the general fund to address both needs.

Since technology is constantly evolving, Weaver said the district tries to keep up but it proves to be difficult and what they currently have is outdated. “Most of our technology is quite a bit older. We had bought notebooks and other smaller devices probably eight or 10 years ago and those have been pretty much phased out,” he said.

According to Weaver, the shelf life for a new Chromebook is roughly five or six years, so the district is trying to obtain enough devices where teachers won’t have to sign up to check out a cart weeks in advance and can become more of a common item in the classroom.

“Obviously, society is just getting more dependent on technology and its use,” Weaver said. “Our kids have grown up with these devices and we need to be able to teach in that manner and also help create authentic projects through them as well.”

Weaver anticipates that the elementary level will be using the Chromebooks to complete certain projects and for cooperative learning since there is a plethora of software and other applications that have been developed for these purposes in recent years.

“In my day, we used to have to call up and either see (classmates) in person or had to use the phone. Nowadays, they text all the time, so communication has just changed and this is part of that,” Weaver said. “Now they do cooperative projects through technology…and then when you’re in class, you can work more on projects and cooperative learning and trying to develop that authentic learning that happens in those settings.”

However, there will be one elementary school that will not be receiving any Chromebooks and that is Daniel Axford. Since DA is a school for pre-kindergarten through second grade, Weaver said the district will be looking at a touchscreen route for the younger Wildcats next year.

To help preserve the Chromebooks and get the longest possible shelf life out of them, the district is going to try their best to have these devices not leave their respective buildings but instead, have a cart in all of the core classes: english, math, science, social studies and world language.

“We are looking at trying to have every one of those (secondary level) classrooms have a cart. And then elementary; we are trying for roughly every two classrooms have a cart,” Weaver said.

With the approval from the school board last week, the Chromebooks can now be ordered and teachers can expect their arrival in roughly two months.