Media Center Specialists Angela Pendley (left) and Naomi Craver (right) in the Media Center on March 30. Personal learning devices were collected at the end of the 2021-22 school year and Pendley recalled the stress of the event. “I felt terrible. Collecting 2000 devices, the amount of time that it takes to do that, plus, we would scrape off all the name tags, wash each device and then power wash the devices to get them ready for summer school. Then summer school would get checked out, we would have to clean. Why redo the whole thing?” Pendley said. Photo by Cadence Schapker
CCHS will be kicking off a pilot year in which students will be able to keep their CCSD-distributed learning devices over the summer.
During Advisement on March 29, it was announced to students that they would have the option to keep their Clarke County School District-distributed personal learning devices over the coming summer.
Clarke Central High School Media Specialists Angela Pendley and Naomi Craver pitched the pilot year for students to keep their devices in May of 2022 after Pendley recognized the inequity between fall and spring semester classes. CCSD approved the plan on March 29.
“First semester, you’ve got your device all the way up until the last day of the semester to turn in any late work (and) your teachers can continue teaching and using Google Classroom,” Pendley said. “Whereas spring semester, those last two weeks of the school year you’re not going to have your device. That puts you at a disadvantage for being able to make sure that you’ve got all of your work turned in easily.”
Media Center Specialists Naomi Craver (left) and Angela Pendley (right) check out a laptop to a student. Craver and Pendley pitched the pilot year in May of 2022 in order to reduce inequities between fall and spring semester classes, as well as encourage learning throughout the summer. “We made a pros and cons list of why we thought this would be beneficial. Then, we also looked at adding the opt out component where if students don’t want to keep their device they can opt out and we can hold it for them in the Media Center,” Pendley said. “I think that that’s an important piece because we want for people to feel like this is not something that’s being forced on them.” Photo by Cadence Schapker
Craver hopes to see students take advantage of the resources and opportunities that their devices expose them to.
“Even if you’re not doing summer school, you can use it to learn a new language (or) to read tons of books on our online catalog or the (Athens-Clarke County Library) online catalog,” Craver said. “There are lots of different ways that students can use their devices over the summer to really help enrich (them) and do things they’re interested in doing outside of school.”
Senior Natalie Soper feels the change will be beneficial to students because it will add a greater sense of ownership to the computers.
“(The computer) would have (had) more of a personal learning device feel to it,” Soper said. “It also would have had more of a sense of responsibility for our own devices if they were like, ‘Okay, you’re a freshman. Here’s your computer. It’s yours to look after and take care of throughout your years of high school.’ I think that that would have probably helped.”
