By Alaura Schuler

Mrs. Hartwig, the English teacher at AHS, has gotten something new in her classroom! Chromebooks is their name! She was able to get these through the Atlantic School Foundation. They first had to approve her request of $10,000 grant before she could get these. She wanted these Chromebooks because “of the online curriculum I have designed and am using with my classes.” Mrs. Hartwig had “originally considered requested either MacBooks or iPads with keyboards but Jessica Fincel introduced me to the Chomebooks as a great, affordable, and cutting-edge technology to use with Google Docs.”

She has received 25 Chromebooks thats cost around $400 each. The Atlantic School Foundation gave her approximately $10,000 total for the Chromebooks. The Atlantic School Foundation “granted the money from their Blanche Rowe – Innovative Instruction funds.”

Hartwig plans to use the Chromebooks in all four of her classes, English Core 1, American Lit, English Core 3, and Pre-College Composition. “Much of our cirriculum is facilitated online, so students will log into their Google accounts each day as they come into class. On any given day, students’ online curriculum, might consist of readings, grammar or vocabulary exercises, Google Docs creation and/or editing, annotating texts that are either online or being read in class, taking quizzes, or joining in on online discussion groups”. Chromebooks do not have the capacity for MS Word, PowerPoint, or DVD players. But they do “access to storage on “the cloud”, Google Docs, YouTube, or any other programs, applications or extentions available on the web”.

Unfortunately, students will not be able to take Chromebooks home with them because there are only 25 Chromebooks. And they are to not leave Mrs. Hartwig’s classroom.

When asked how the first day went with the Chromebooks, Hartwig said, “It was amazing, and we were all very excited to finally have them in hand. These are some nuances to the Chromebook (like no caps locks key) they we’ll all have to get used to, but it’s so user friendly that I don’t think any of the students are going to have problems with it”.

Click here to see the slideshow.