In July, we created a parent orientation. The team felt we needed parents to understand the cost and the value (both educationally and monetarily) so that they would help their student be more responsible. We planned to pass out the chromebooks at orientation. In August, we scheduled 5 or 6 parent orientationshoping that the Chromebook would be like a "Carrot" and get people to come. Well, the chromebooks were late, really late. So late, that we passed them out the second week of school. No chromebooks, no carrot. Therefore, we needed way more than 6 or 7 meetings. Personally, I did 20 chromebook orientations to get all 476 parents and students to attend them.Each parent meeting was about 90 minutes of my time. Between setting up, greeting parents and students, presenting, answering questions and collecting the technology donation, that was 1800 minutes or 30 hours. Plus, I needed a Spanish translator at all trainings and someone to help me collect the monies. (The technology donation is their insurance for first lost or broken chromebook).
Parents truly appreciated hearing why we were going 1:1 and how it was to help their student. In fact, I only had 1 student's parent out of my 476 students say their student could not bring home the Chromebook and asked for it to stay at school. I made sure they had access at home and accommodated this. I was impressed that the other 99% were on board to this "new" thing for our area.
So far, so good.
The "we" is the PCS 1:1 team of +Renee Semik (@ReneeKSemik), +Lori Deen (@lorideen), +Jane Escobedo (@jescobedo101) and me (Emily Dunnagan).
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