Classroom donation fund (Chromebooks)

[Ksandra]

As some of you know, I have talked about how frustrating it is that I get 9th graders who know zero about using computers for typing. Last year I tried to do a push to start teaching them how to use google docs, but it was hard because we have one computer lab for the whole school (and no computer class). Equally, I am one of the few teachers who seems qualified in teaching google docs because most are not computer-oriented and only know Word.

Yes, they are very similar, but if anyone has worked in any kind of IT field, you can only imagine the kinds of questions I get as I slowly teach both students and teachers how to use it. The most common being, "But how do I save it?"

Equally, I am in charge of doing the yearbook club, and that was a nightmare with the computers we have that are very slow.


So, I am trying to slowly build a classroom laptop set. My boss has said if I can get the 13 laptops from this fund, she will try and convince the admin board to get me another 13 and a laptop cart (very likely she will convince them).

If I get these laptops I plan on doing Drive lessons at least every other Friday. They will be practicing typing and memorizing shortcut keys, as well as learning how to write papers in MLA format. Ideally, I will expand it to teaching how to use photos, sheets, and slides.

My vision is to eventually offer scholarships to students to fund them their own Chromebook for college.


Keep in mind my students are in a high poverty area and Windows now charges per year to use Word. I think it's of utmost importance I teach both teachers and students how to use Drive because it's free, and it's becoming the standard.

If you would like to donate please go here:

https://www.donorschoose.org/project...ngeid=20655881

If you would like to help, but can't afford to donate, please post the link on any social media site. Spreading the word will help a ton, and it really isn't a high amount I'm trying to reach.

[BaneTheBrawler]

i booked my face at it, best i can do right now, sorry

[Modoru]

I'd like to point out, which may or may not be useful for you:
Microsoft has an online version of Office 365 that they do provide for free for education purposes (namely teachers + their students).

Comparison table between paid/free can be seen here — worth mentioning also includes a e-mail and a onedrive account w/ 1TB of storage.

Google also offers education pricing on chromebooks as well as some services, but you may have known this, idk (alternately check this too from google)

[Ksandra]

i booked my face at it, best i can do right now, sorry

That's a big help, thanks!

I'd like to point out, which may or may not be useful for you:
Microsoft has an online version of Office 365 that they do provide for free for education purposes (namely teachers + their students).

Comparison table between paid/free can be seen here — worth mentioning also includes a e-mail and a onedrive account w/ 1TB of storage.

Google also offers education pricing on chromebooks as well as some services, but you may have known this, idk (alternately check this too from google)

To your first bit: The idea is to teach them something they will use in the real world. Why teach them windows that's only free as a student, when you can teach them something that will forever be free? As well, more and more college professors are using Drive for sharing materials with students.

As to the other part, Donorschoose is supposed to help find funders, but you have to pick your products through their partners. It does so happen the books I selected were through bestbuy education which is a partner of theirs.

I do greatly appreciate the info, though. I don't want you thinking I am putting you down. I did a lot of research on this.

[Greatguardian]

I love classroom technology in theory. It teaches super important life skills and there are tons of apps out there to gameize secondary ed. In practice be prepared to regularly scan for students watching bootleg movies with chinese subtitles on youtube. That shit was the bane of my existence this past year when our school went digital.

[Ksandra]

I love classroom technology in theory. It teaches super important life skills and there are tons of apps out there to gameize secondary ed. In practice be prepared to regularly scan for students watching bootleg movies with chinese subtitles on youtube.

More like Spanish videos of bullfighting, but yeah. There are always going to be those kids that abuse to slack off, but it's worth it to the other 85% that will get something out of it.

[Fiye]

Donated and will try to spread. Hope it helps, computer labs at my high school helped me learn a number of basic skills.

[Modoru]

To your first bit: The idea is to teach them something they will use in the real world. Why teach them windows that's only free as a student, when you can teach them something that will forever be free? As well, more and more college professors are using Drive for sharing materials with students.

I understand what you mean — that said, I do believe Office is also worth knowing since the MS Software is the standard for most places (workplace, college? -- at least mine had office on the pc's in public areas). I'd suggest looking into Volume Licensing, but I honestly don't know enough about their VLSC/terms/what-have-you. Since you're going thru best buy as well, they probably also have their own things.

Either way, best of luck to you

[Ksandra]

Donated and will try to spread. Hope it helps, computer labs at my high school helped me learn a number of basic skills.

Thank you so much!

[Ksandra]

that said, I do believe Office is also worth knowing since the MS Software is the standard for most places (workplace, college? -- at least mine had office on the pc's in public areas). I'd suggest looking into Volume Licensing, but I honestly don't know enough about their VLSC/terms/what-have-you. Since you're going thru best buy as well, they probably also have their own things.

Oh it is absolutely worth knowing. However, I think it's easier to transition from Drive to MS software than MS to Drive (no stats to back that up, just guts based on interface). Keep in mind I have to prioritize since I am not a computer teacher and integrating it into the English classroom. In a perfect world, the school would have an actual computer class to teach both. That's not going to happen. I only have time in my curriculum (that I'm willing to donate at any rate) to choose one or the other, and I am more knowledgeable about Drive and my personal thoughts are eventually that would replace MS applications because of it's cloud sharing.

[bluefan]

This is something that I can get behind. It boggles me how classrooms today don't have computer labs to teach basic typing skills. I had typing classes for 3 grades on old Macintosh's back in the 90s.

Tomorrow is payday so I'll put up whatever I have left after bills.

[Isiolia]

I only have time in my curriculum (that I'm willing to donate at any rate) to choose one or the other, and I am more knowledgeable about Drive and my personal thoughts are eventually that would replace MS applications because of it's cloud sharing.

MS has their own cloud storage/sharing with OneDrive, and has been doing things like that for professional use (SharePoint) for over a decade prior to Google Drive even existing.

I expect MS Office will remain the standard for professional use, and in turn a lot of academia. It certainly still is where I work, despite the standard email account we give out now being Gmail based. Everyone also gets Office365 access, and that's what work gets done in.

The flip side is, students will find a way to screw up whatever you hand them, but the Chromebook model is probably the most resilient out there. Especially with (presumably) minimal IT support. So, I think your plan there makes sense anyway.

As an aside, MS does give a lot away to students. Their DreamSpark program pretty much hands development and server tools out to them too. If you have students interested in that sort of thing.

[Ksandra]

MS has their own cloud storage/sharing with OneDrive, and has been doing things like that for professional use (SharePoint) for over a decade prior to Google Drive even existing.

I expect MS Office will remain the standard for professional use, and in turn a lot of academia. It certainly still is where I work, despite the standard email account we give out now being Gmail based. Everyone also gets Office365 access, and that's what work gets done in.

The flip side is, students will find a way to screw up whatever you hand them, but the Chromebook model is probably the most resilient out there. Especially with (presumably) minimal IT support. So, I think your plan there makes sense anyway.

As an aside, MS does give a lot away to students. Their DreamSpark program pretty much hands development and server tools out to them too. If you have students interested in that sort of thing.

But I wouldn't know how to teach them any of that stuff. That's the point. I'm not a computer teacher. D: I have never even heard of OneDrive.


Because of Google Classroom, Drive is becoming pretty standard in a lot of schools. I wish I could show you guys the workshops n' such regarding technology in the classroom, and google is way up there. I had a coworker who was going to school to get her special ed cert, and we both laughed when we found out her teachers were doing Drive exactly the way I had been teaching them.

Really, the only difference between docs and word as far as I remember is the columns. For the most part, if you can do one, you can do the other.

Let me just be clear, as I don't really want to be a part of an argument in my donation thread: I will teach them Drive because that's what I am comfortable with and know it's usefulness. The way you tab, double space, center align, etc. to create an MLA paper in Docs and Word are almost exactly the same. Any student will easily be able to do it in either program no matter what I teach them. If you don't want to donate because I am teaching Docs and not Word, I completely respect that. But you are not going to convince me to teach Word because I am not comfortable with MS products and their fees for students when they are no longer students, and I want to utilize Drive with Google Classroom.

I am probably not going to respond to anymore "Docs vs. Word" posts, because it's pointless.

[Ksandra]

I should mention to those reading, my students do not own computers at home, but most have smartphones. Docs has a free app for them to type on their phones at home.

The app itself is not great, but many would type it on their phone, then when we went to the computer lab they formatted it there. Allowing to have laptops in my classroom means they could do this for any teacher, not just myself, when needed. I am very open to having students come to my room before/after school to help with papers.

[Isiolia]

If you don't want to donate because I am teaching Docs and not Word, I completely respect that. But you are not going to convince me to teach Word because I am not comfortable with MS products and their fees for students when they are no longer students, and I want to utilize Drive with Google Classroom.

I already did donate =P

My response was more to the "eventually replace MS applications" part of it. I just doubt that. I don't disagree with teaching Docs, and I doubt others do either. However, just be aware that a lot of the arguments you've given for Google technically apply to MS as well, except the no-longer-student price, and that could change too. Office365 has web based apps, cloud storage, app versions on mobile, etc.

[BerenTebogo]

To be honest, if you really want to do well as a teacher - don't teach them explicitly Google drive stuff or MS stuff. Even if you, as an adult on a forum, know very little computer stuff it would take you less than 8(?) hours of cumulative time to learn enough about the abstract concepts underlying both Google/MS/openoffice/stupidmacshit and that would let you teach them that.

Your smarter kids will take what you teach them and expand on it and adapt. Your average students are gonna take what you teach them, then when sitting in front of Microsoft Excel, completely break down the first time they go to the file menu and some option isn't 6th on the list like they are used to. That means they didn't learn anything that you couldn't have taught a dog to do.

Your initiative is good and your heart is in the right place, but the fact that there is even quibbling over "which office program and cloud storage to teach" means that both sides of the argument don't understand the average target audience for the lesson. If you explicitly teach them one way to do it, they will think that is the only way (I see this a lot in math).

Edit: And for clarification on what you should be teaching, you should be teaching them the holy grail of the technological age: How to fucking google properly.

1) Identify the problem or task you want to do and phrase it in a clear and concise way
2) use google
3) compare answers from multiple sources to identify conflicting/agreeing responses
4) try solutions -> proceed to step 1 if failure

[Ksandra]

I already did donate =P

My response was more to the "eventually replace MS applications" part of it. I just doubt that. I don't disagree with teaching Docs, and I doubt others do either. However, just be aware that a lot of the arguments you've given for Google technically apply to MS as well, except the no-longer-student price, and that could change too. Office365 has web based apps, cloud storage, app versions on mobile, etc.

Thank you for your donation. @.@; I do appreciate it, I promise.

[Ksandra]

If you explicitly teach them one way to do it, they will think that is the only way (I see this a lot in math).

Well, part of what I am teaching them technically there IS only one way for English. (MLA, I do tell them they need to ask teachers MLA or APA in other subject areas.)

Edit: And for clarification on what you should be teaching, you should be teaching them the holy grail of the technological age: How to fucking google properly.

1) Identify the problem or task you want to do and phrase it in a clear and concise way
2) use google
3) compare answers from multiple sources to identify conflicting/agreeing responses
4) try solutions -> proceed to step 1 if failure

I 100% agree. And my vision for this school is to slowly work this into a unified plan for all grade levels.

If you think of your field, you don't jump into probability and statistics before someone learns 2+2=4. 9th grade has to start with the foundation because they have zero prior knowledge. As I said, these kids don't have comptuers at home, and had limited experience with computers at elementary school. I'm starting with almost blank slates.

My goal is to teach them how to format using a system, that way in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade teachers can just focus on how to research to put it into that format.


There is nothing more frustrating to a 12th grade teacher to have their kids research and create a good paper only to have it handed in with the whole thing in center aligned and in comic sans 14p font. (Yes, that happens a lot.) I am trying to correct that.

[BerenTebogo]

Well, part of what I am teaching them technically there IS only one way for English. (MLA, I do tell them they need to ask teachers MLA or APA in other subject areas.)



I 100% agree. And my vision for this school is to slowly work this into a unified plan for all grade levels.

If you think of your field, you don't jump into probability and statistics before someone learns 2+2=4. 9th grade has to start with the foundation because they have zero prior knowledge. As I said, these kids don't have comptuers at home, and had limited experience with computers at elementary school. I'm starting with almost blank slates.

My goal is to teach them how to format using a system, that way in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade teachers can just focus on how to research to put it into that format.


There is nothing more frustrating to a 12th grade teacher to have their kids research and create a good paper only to have it handed in with the whole thing in center aligned and in comic sans 14p font. (Yes, that happens a lot.) I am trying to correct that.

To be fair, I'm not sure that should really be as frustrating as you are making it out to be. Would take like literally 7 seconds to write "change the font and don't use center alignment" on a returned piece of work.

But hey, you do you.

[Ksandra]

To be fair, I'm not sure that should really be as frustrating as you are making it out to be. Would take like literally 7 seconds to write "change the font and don't use center alignment" on a returned piece of work.

But hey, you do you.

Not when they don't know what the word "alignment" means. But I can tell I won't convince you.