Update on Chromebook Pilot

Today, Dr. Pryor's tech team came to my school to meet with me.  The tech team is Dr. Pryor, Dr. Vinson, Mr. Atkins (Sys Admin), and Ms. Lee (DB Admin).  My principal also sat in on the meeting.  I learned Dr. Pryor regularly starts meetings with what he calls a "brain dump,"  Every person on the team gets a stack of sticky notes and spends the first five minutes or so writing down every question that comes to mind about whatever issue or initiative they are there to discuss.  In our case, it was the CB pilot at my school.  At the end, he collects all like topics/questions and stacks them together, and then works his way across each stack.  For example, we had stacks on parent communication, technology fees, distribution methods, feedback, cases, repair procedures, etc.  This is where we stand so far.  They have purchased 90 devices.  We are going to receive about 80 or so at our school - enough to roll out to the entire 7th-grade and have a few left over for overage/repairs.  They are going to keep a few at the district office to use in preparation for testing.  Repair procedures will remain the same.  I will replace broken CBs with the same model when possible (until we run out of devices.)  We will not allow the students to decorate/personalize the snap-on cases at this time, but kept the discussion open for when we roll-out district-wide.  As soon as the devices are received, Mr. Atkins and his team will "enroll" them and then deliver them to me.  We will collect old CBs and distribute (as randomly as I can) the new immediately using our current asset management system, 1-to1 Plus.  Mr. Hamrick, our principal, is going to take care of parent communication with a robocall.  I will create surveys.  We will interrupt class on a specified day and time for the entire 7th-grade to complete the first round of surveys after two weeks of use.  After this time, students will return to the library media center and I will swap CBs, so that every student has the opportunity to experience and review BOTH pilot devices.  After an additional two weeks of use, we will again interrupt 7th-grade classes to complete another survey.  I haven't decided if I will include additional questions on the second survey or if I will actually create a third survey for students and staff to provide their recommendations.  I'm leaning towards a third, just to keep my data collection uniform for both phases of the pilot.  Feedback data and recommendations need to be ready to send to Dr. Pryor by mid-November, as he wants to select the final product before Thanksgiving so that the devices can be ordered for the entire district and delivered in time for distribution in January 2020.  This is very exciting for our school and for me.  Though it will entail a generous amount of extra work on my part, it will be well worth the effort to have had a voice in this decision (and to let my students know that they had a voice in it as well!)