English teachers received 448 Chromebooks this year, adding to the 480 Chromebooks that social studies began using in the 2014-2015 school year.

Social studies teacher Sandy Young said the Chromebooks really helped by “cutting down on the amount of paper [teachers] use” and that “[teachers] don’t have to rely on the unreliable copy machines.” Young added that the Chromebooks “allow [teachers] to do a lot more creative things in the classroom.”

English resource teacher Wendy Farmer was very grateful for the new Chromebooks. “I think [the new Chromebooks] will engage the [students] in a different way,” Farmer said. “It will give the teachers tools to address different learning styles… I think research becomes an easier thing to do [to] not have to go to the library [now students] can just do it right there in the classroom.”

Farmer is excited to work with the new technology and thinks the Chromebooks will “help the students by giving them the tools to learn different skills in different ways.” She hopes that every Department can eventually have a set of Chromebook carts for use in the classroom.

English teacher Scott Tarzwell likes the new Chromebooks because they provide the benefit that “teachers don’t have to spend time looking up times that they can get into the media center. They can just start in the classroom and it saves precious time.”  Tarzwell also likes them because “[the Chromebooks] get rid of the problem of what do you do if the computer labs are full and the media center is full.”

Like Farmer, Tarzwell wishes that every classroom had Chromebook carts. Tarzwell said, “English has gotten carts in every room but that doesn’t mean everyone has been taken care of. ESOL still needs some. It would be great if every classroom had their own carts.”

English teacher Ellen Stahly said, “They will help because they provide immediate access to technology while working on a writing project. A lot of students prefer to type on a keyboard rather than write by hand, and I think it’s really going to help with writing projects and the research.”

“It’s been hard in the past to organize lab time because teachers have been competing for the labs, and we haven’t always been able to get into the labs when we need to,” Stahly added. “It is really nice to have a lab in every room now.”

“If you have a teacher who knows what they are doing, they will make students engaged to learn regardless of what they have,” assistant principal Steve Orders said. “Now if you give that teacher technology, it will boost [teaching] to a whole new level and it will let the [students] do things collaboratively that they could not have done otherwise.”

“You can have all of the Chromebooks in the world but it’s really about the teacher making the connections for [students] and helping them to do what they need to do,” Orders added.