Schools

First Set of Bond Technology Rolls Out for P-CEP Students

Plymouth-Canton Honors Biology Students are the only ones to receive HP Chromebooks this fall.


Plymouth-Canton Community Schools honors biology class will have a completely online textbook for the first time this year, and it makes them the perfect choice for the district's student technology pilot program.

Approximately 420 honors biology students received HP Chromebooks last Wednesday, according to Plymouth-Canton Technology Integration Specialist Eric Spicer. 

"The pilot program will help us figure out all of the policies and procedures we need to have in place - we have draft procedures that the Board approved years ago, but they weren't meant for one-to-one computing," Spicer said.  

The pilot program will help figure out how to handle details such as handling lost or damaged devices and how to offer insurance on Chromebooks.

Spicer said a parent advisory committee is being formed with several of the honors biology parents to help modify the current policies and procedures. 

Honors biology will be the only distribution of Chromebooks this fall. Sixth and ninth-grade students will receive devices second semester and kindergarteners are expected to receive iPads next fall. 

The plan is to fully implement one-to-one computing with every student at the end of three years. 

"The kids were very, very excited," Spicer said. "We took each class down to a media center, handed out the Chromebooks and had them ask questions. They were very excited to be able to use it in class and take it home and use it - kind of like it's their own."

Spicer said internet security and filtering will be in place even when students are at home. 

"We have the blacklist put into the proxy server, so it's like they're at school," he said. "They're not going to be able to access inappropriate sites."

Facebook is one of the blacklisted sites in the district, however, students will be able to log on and use other social media sites like Twitter and Instagram. 

"We didn't want to close down everything right away and keep it really strict to where the kids weren't going to use it and say 'heck with that, I'm going to go use my own computer'" Spicer said. "We want them to use this as much as they can - read a book on there, take notes and make it their own....And again this is going to help us figure out policies and procedures later on."

The first full week of school posed technical and logistics problems such as 400 students all logging in on one side of the building, wondering if there were enough IP addresses to go around and logging into Google. However, everything seems to be working out. 

"So far, so good," Spicer said. 


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