FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

 

WHAT IS ONE-TO-ONE (1:1)?

  • An international movement in K-12 education in which every teacher and student receives a computer tablet of a single type, enabling a unified platform for online teacher/student interaction, with administrator managed content.
  • The cutting edge of technology in education, providing the possibility of powerful new forms of learning.
  • A transformational expansion of the tools and possibilities of teaching and learning that combines face-to-face instruction with computer mediated instruction.  
  • The single most effective technological resource to prepare ALL West students for the global marketplace and the world they will inhabit as citizens.

WHY ONE TO ONE?  

  • Allows teachers and every student the same opportunity to access electronic textbooks and the vast array of resources on the world-wide web.  1:1 diminishes the negative impact of economic and social disparities among students and improves learning for all.  
  • Allows every student an opportunity to become computer proficient, and to be more prepared for the world they will encounter.  West students who do not own computers and who are not proficient in even the basics of computer use are at a very real disadvantage in today’s marketplace and as citizens.  
  • Eighteen Knox County Schools are already 1:1, including five high schools:
  • Bearden High School
  • Fulton High School
  • South-Doyle High School
  • Career Magnet Academy
  • L & N Stem Academy

Bearden Middle School, WHS’s primary feeder school, is 1:1.  Sequoyah Elementary is soon to be.  Bearden Middle School and Sequoyah Elementary School kids will face a step backwards in technological resources if they come to West, and this will affect parents’ choice of schools.

State tests are increasingly administered on computers.  At West, there are 1400 students, and only 175 aging desktops and 185 laptops.  

DOES MY DONATION DIRECTLY PURCHASE MY STUDENT’S CHROMEBOOK?

No, not precisely.  Your donation contributes to a general fund.  The school plans to deploy laptops grade by grade as enough money is raised for each grade.  Deployment for Seniors has already begun.  When the necessary funds are raised, deployment will proceed to the 11th, 10th, and 9th grades.  Approximately $200,000 still needs to be raised to provide devices for all students and faculty.

The central purpose of 1:1 is to improve equity of resources for all the students.  If West provides Chromebooks only for those students whose families can afford to donate the full cost of a device, it would actually foster inequity of resources for all the students, and also negate all the benefits of a single, unified computing platform for all classrooms and the school.

WILL MY STUDENT BE ABLE TO TAKE THE LAPTOP HOME?

Yes.  The devices will be for use at school and at home while your child is a student at West.

WILL MY STUDENT GET TO KEEP THE CHROMEBOOK AT THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR?

No.  Chromebooks will be collected for the summer and redeployed each fall.

OUR STUDENT ALREADY HAS A LAPTOP COMPUTER.  IS IT NECESSARY TO PURCHASE A CHROMEBOOK ALSO OR CAN THEY USE THEIR EXISTING EQUIPMENT?    

The Chromebook is the required 1:1 device.  It ensures an all-school unified platform, allows West administration to monitor student use at school, and to push out applications that students will use for course work.

DID WEST CONSIDER USING APPLE BASED PRODUCTS?  BEARDEN MIDDLE HAS iPADS, WHY THE INCONSISTENCY WITH THE HIGH SCHOOL? 

Many products were evaluated, including the Apple line.  However, the affordability of Chromebooks, the integration with Google Apps for Education, the management tools, ease of maintenance, consistency with the Knox County Schools 1:1 plan, and so on, were all factors in selecting Chromebooks for West.

WILL STUDENTS BE EXPECTED TO USE THIS ONLY FOR SCHOOL RELATED ACTIVITIES OR CAN THEY ADD OTHER CONTENT SUCH AS FACEBOOK ETC.?    

  • At school, students can access any web-based resource that is allowed through the school's internet filter. 
  • At home, they can access anything that their parents allow.

I ALREADY HAVE A CHROMEBOOK.  DO I NEED TO BUY ONE THROUGH THE SCHOOL?    

A student-owned Chromebook must:

  • Meet the requirements of a 6-8 hour battery life;
  • Be enrolled in the management console with monitoring software to be used at school.

The student would then also need:

  • To purchase the school management tools for $25 at the bookstore;
  • To fill out some paperwork so it could be managed by the school so that it can be used in testing situations.

IS THE INFORMATION ON A CHROMEBOOK OR IN GOOGLE APPS FOR EDUCATION PRIVATE – MEANING, WILL GOOGLE SELL OR SHARE OUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?    

WHAT IF WE DON'T HAVE INTERNET ACCESS AT HOME? 

Your student can download assignments at school, work on them at home, and then upload them to their teacher's Canvas account the next day.  Also, there are many places around town with free wi-fi – restaurants, public libraries, etc.

ISN’T KNOX COUNTY SCHOOLS GOING TO PROVIDE CHROMEBOOKS TO ALL THE HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE DISTRICT?

  • Yes, and this is great news, but the County plans to roll out 1:1 over the next five years.  Under the KCS plan, the teachers are receiving their Chromebooks this year, and one grade level per year will receive Chromebooks over the next four years.  This is simply too slow for our students, and for the families whose children are currently at West.  Every year that West goes without 1:1, it falls behind the resources and the actual achievement levels of peer high schools in the county.  
  • It is expected, however, that the Chromebooks provided under the Knox County Schools plan will still be allocated to West, to be distributed to each incoming 9th grade class over the next four years, while the Chromebooks of the graduating Seniors will become replacement machines for the school.

WHAT IS A CHROMEBOOK?

A Chromebook is laptop computer featuring Google software that is meant primarily for working with internet-based resources, though it also allows working off-line on a variety of tasks. 

Chromebooks are:

  • Inexpensive, providing major cost savings over other notebooks and tablets.  The current cost of a Chromebook is about $230.00/device.  Over a three-year period, Chromebooks allow cost savings of approximately $750/device (with infrastructure) over alternative devices.
  • Durable
  • Fast (including 8 second start up)
  • Light
  • Easy to use and carry
  • Have 8 hours of battery life

Chromebooks:

  • Utilize cloud based software, providing significant cost savings over traditional software purchased in apps and programs
  • Seamlessly integrate with the broad suite of Google Apps for Education via the cloud
  • Provide automatic updates and downloads through the cloud
  • Allow device management and content control through a school enterprise management console.  The filter selected and managed by the school goes with the device regardless of student and device location.
  • Have a full-featured browser for working on the internet, including support for Flash
  • Allow the school manager to lock out a lost or stolen Chromebook
  • Allow files to be stored on the device, but all student work ultimately backs up to the cloud, so that a student will rarely if ever lose their work
  • Ubiquitous access:  teachers and students can access their work from any device in the school at any time, so that lost or damaged devices does not mean loss of work 
  • Can be put into a "test mode" to comply with a variety of online-based assessment tools or upcoming online state standardized tests.
  • Can add on external storage through USB flash drives or SD cards. So students can pull in and access work done on other Windows, Mac, or Linux based systems and still store and work with large files that do not easily store on a mobile device or in the cloud.

MORE QUESTIONS? 

Please refer questions to West High School.