School district trading iPads for Chromebooks
VANCOUVER, Wash. — After four years of giving most high school students who walk in its doors an Apple iPad, Vancouver Public Schools is set to spend $2,652,800 over the next four years to replace them.
Advanced students, as it turns out, need keyboards.
The Vancouver School Board approved a four-year lease with California-based TEQLEASE, Inc. to buy 8,000 Acer R752TN Chromebooks for high school campuses, as well as at Vancouver iTech Preparatory School and Vancouver School of Arts and Academics. The Acer Chromebooks, which have a touch screen and can be flipped into a tablet, retail for about $430. The lease ends up costing the district about $300 per device. The replacements will arrive this fall.
The district will pay for the contract using its technology levy, which voters approved in February. The six-year levy, which kicks in next year, will collect about 31 cents per $1,000 in assessed property value.
Christina Iremonger, chief digital officer for the school district, said it was time to replace high school devices anyway; the iPads are soon to be out-of-date. Vancouver Public Schools purchased 6,100 iPads in 2015. With interest and fees, that contract cost the district $2,872,360.60, according to a 2015 school board agenda.
Iremonger said it was time for the district to re-examine what type of computing device will best suit its students. Teachers and staff who were surveyed consistently said they liked how iPads let their students collaborate, especially on creative projects. But, “they wanted a keyboard, for sure.”
Kids have fast thumbs these days. In Linda Wilson’s pottery class at Columbia River High School recently, students were building slide shows reflecting on the semester’s work, primarily using their thumbs or pecking at letters on the touch screen.
But Iremonger said teachers wanted a device that would make writing and communicating easier.
“You can add a keyboard case (to the iPads) at an extra cost,” Iremonger said. “We had some of those keyboards available, but our students felt they were a little too fragile so they didn’t want to check them out.”
