Dear Sixth Grade Families,

As part of the exciting sixth grade program, each student will be given a chromebook that s/he will use throughout the day to support inquiry and learning. Please read the information below, to get a sense of the context within which students will be using these devices.
First, it is important to contextualize how we think about the role of technology in the middle school program. As our primary focus is on learning, we regularly make decisions about the appropriateness and relevance of technology to deepen and enrich the learning experience. Sometimes the most appropriate technology tools are a pencil and paper. Other times it may be a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone or cloud-based app. Figuring out what technology to use, when to use it and in the service of what learning goal is crucial. It is something that we think about all the time and a skill that we want to develop in our students.

So what is a chromebook?

From wikipedia: A Chromebook is a personal computer running Chrome OS as its operating system. The devices are designed to be used while connected to the Internet and support applications that reside on the Web, rather than traditional applications that reside on the machine itself.

Chromebooks load fast, have a long battery life and provide easy access to the suite of google apps for education that have become an important tool for us in the learning and collaboration workflow. Through our managed system, students can also access the growing collection of learning tools available through the chrome browser. What this means is that work produced by students in school is easily accessible outside of school on any device that has an Internet connection. This has huge advantages for organization and collaboration with classmates and teachers both in and out of school. Teachers and peers can also easily comment on work as it is in process and multiple versions of documents can be accessed to explore how a work has changed overtime.

Each morning students check out their personal chromebook and use it throughout the day. Students use their chromebooks to engage with, capture, and produce work that is connected to the given learning tasks being carried out in their class (e.g., recording observations in science class, doing a creative free write in core, preparing a presentation in world language class, researching a topic on the Internet for math, etc.). Throughout the day, they use their google calendar to record homework assignments. In the next few weeks, they will learn how to have assignments posted to LREI Connect automatically appear on their calendars. While this is helpful, we will continue to work with students on the more important task of using their calendar to organize how and when they will complete their assignments (i.e., what specifically will the student do each night for an assignment assigned over three days?).

For technology dependent tasks in school that require additional computing power that are not best served by the chromebook, students will still have access to desktops, laptops and tablet computers. The task/challenge at hand will determine what is the best tool to support ongoing inquiry into the problem. Making this choice will sometimes be done by the teacher, but is also equally likely to be made by students.

At the end of the day, students go over work that has been assigned, update their calendars and return their chromebook to the charging stations in the classroom. Because the work that was completed during the day in google apps is saved to the cloud, they can access it from home on a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. In addition, apps and resources saved on their google chrome browser can also be accessed from home by logging into a chrome browser on any device.

Student email addresses, google chrome accounts and google apps accounts are all managed by the school. Proper use of these resources in support of learning is an ongoing conversation as we are also interested in developing each student’s skills as a digital citizen.

In addition to the above, students will continue to work on and develop their digital portfolios. Last year in d.lab, students began the process of investigating how digital portfolios can best serve their personal learning needs and those of their teachers and the school. Students will continue to develop their portfolios and will share them with you at our fall Family Conferences. It is also likely that you will be asked to interact with us in these new digital spaces before the conferences. We see the portfolios as one more tool that can help to narrow the gap between you and your child’s school experience. Regular access to the chromebook will help students to maintain and curate their portfolios.

We hope that this provides some clarification about our technology goals for sixth graders. If you have additional questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us as it is important that we provide you with the best possible information about the program.