The 2023-2024 school year came with many new changes, the most notable being the adjustment from ipads to Chromebooks. The school-wide roll out came with both excitement and challenges, many different opinions sparking from the sudden switch.
Although some beamed at the news of updated technology, others questioned whether there were any benefits at all. Chromebooks have had more of a varying impact on the method in which both students and teachers go about school work than expected.
“For one, [the chromebooks] have more processing power than the ipads do, and there’s just more options, like now we have access to Google Docs, we have better access to Google drive; instead of doing everything through the files, and we even have different ways of doing the annotations that we do,” said Vyncent Van Atta, junior.
The positive feedback has been met with the same amount of response from students who do not think of the chromebooks as highly effective.
“I still think it’s inconvenient; I don’t have Notability; I have to do everything through Google docs or Kami, which Kami, I have to upload it twice,” said Jada Pruitt, junior.
The adjustment period of learning how to successively use the chromebooks has taken longer than most expected; a roadblock to a productive school year. Although some of which could not have been prevented, OHS’ administration tried to get a jumpstart on problem solving while they could.
“We tried to distribute all of the chromebooks before school started, to limit disruption of class time, and I think we got about 1500 chromebooks distributed in those five days before school started,” said Gregg Carroll, the Dean of Students.
The early distribution of chromebooks did in fact benefit both fans and haters of the technology alike; something to be agreed upon.
“I picked it up before school even started, so I was set. I came in, I got my parking pass and the chromebook on the same day, and then I left, forgot about it, plugged it in, and waited; so it was super easy,” Van Atta said.
Even with the effective means of chromebook and ipad replacement, there was still room left for debate when it came to the decision of switching them out entirely.
“With each incoming class, they should have introduced the laptops; like this year’s freshman would have gotten laptops, and when we graduated, we would have given back our ipads,” Pruitt said.
The divided experiences of different grade levels at OHS have contributed to various arguments, one’s own comfort level being a large contributing factor.
“Our freshman had chromebooks in middle school, so they’re 100%, so I think maybe the seniors [have been] the most like ‘These stink’, but there has not been any backlash to me,” Carroll said.
Whether one was a fan of chromebooks before entering this year or not, OHS is determined to use them for success, envisioning the potential they hold in comparison to the ipads.
“I used [chromebooks] in middle school all the time, so I knew exactly what I was getting. That’s why I was excited, I was like ‘I know what these devices can do, and how well they work for school’,” Van Atta said.
