Lincoln Junior High School transitions to use of Chromebooks

 

[October 11, 2016]  LINCOLN - On Friday, October 7, teachers and staff of Lincoln Junior High School received training on how to use various features on Google Chromebooks, which are being used in schools around District 27.

Curriculum Coordinator Marsha Dallas said some teachers will soon be using Google Classroom, a blended learning platform that makes creating assignments easier.

Lincoln Junior High School is transitioning to 1:1 Chromebooks for all students this year and started with the sixth grade students. District 27 Technology Coordinator Barb Coffey said within three weeks of the school year, sixth graders were ready to use the devices and begin taking them home.

Central School Principal Kelly Bogdanic said the elementary schools in the district will have Chromebook labs to use in their classrooms later this year.

Coffey said by next year, they are hoping to have students do more engaged writing. Teachers are building curriculum to give students at every grade level experience with keyboarding.

District 27 Superintendent Kent Froebe said the use of the Chromebooks enhances instruction.

Coffey said teachers can do a lot of sharing and collaborating using Google drive.

Dallas said students can also share their documents and projects through the drive, which helps when doing group projects.

Description of training

Coffey said the teachers did summer training on the Chromebooks. At Friday's training, four sessions were offered and there were 35 sections to choose from. She said teachers chose the sections they wanted to attend after rating themselves; whether they were emerging, able to teach using the technology, or able to lead sessions using technology.

Those on the district's technology committee led the training.

During the second session of the day, there were six different sections of training.



Danielle Lora showed teachers how to organize the materials they want to use for instruction purposes.



Marsha Dallas showed teachers how to organize folders on Google drive.

Leslie Singleton showed teachers how to convert files from other formats and clean up their drives.

Barb Coffey showed teachers how to create flash cards, tags, badges, templates, and clip art using Google drawing.

Joyce Jones provided step by step instruction for those who wanted to learn some of the basic features.



Bev Wunderlin showed teachers how to design newsletters using Google slides.

After receiving instruction, teachers and staff then had some time to practice using some of the features they had learned and were worked intently.

[Angela Reiners]