High School Students get Chromebooks in SDOC

This week, high school students in the School District of Oconee County (SDOC) received Chromebooks for the new academic year, explains Assistant Superintendent of Operations Steve Hanvey. “We’re excited about the initiative. We gave them out on Tuesday at Seneca High, on Wednesday at West-Oak High and on Thursday at Walhalla High. So, we gave out over 3,200 Chromebooks to each of our high school students. Of course, we are now working with our with One to One Initiative at the high school level; it is something that is very exciting for our students and our staff and hopefully our families. I know our Technology Department along with the Technology Folks in Instruction have put a lot of time, energy and effort into getting this ready to roll out, so they are excited about it as well. We look forward to our students having another tool; technology doesn’t replace the teacher by any stretch but it is an excellent tool in today’s day and time to have for students to keep up with their assignments, to have access to their books online and to be able to work at home on certain projects and things.” Hanvey continues that the Chromebooks will function like traditional textbooks. “Each Chromebook is bar coded and out folks did a great job with help from the schools. At each school we have anywhere between 900 and almost 1,100 students, so they did them in about an hour or so each with our technology staff scanning them and giving them to the students. Now the teachers will work with them. The students have a specific log in that they use. One thing that will be helpful for parents to know is that as the student logs in at home, it still runs through our district filtering system. So, it doesn’t allow them to access things that they could not access at school. they can’t go home and access anything they shouldn’t access because it still runs through our filtering services. Not all textbooks are online at this time but we are working to get as many of them as we can online and we hope that that continues to grow so that they can use that as their textbook as well as their laptop.” The Chromebooks are part of the SDOC’s One to One Technology Initiative. The SDOC hopes to grow this a grade level or two each year until all students have their own device that they can use both at school and at home.