Chromebook: 8 months later

I can see definite uses for the Chromebook that I was given to test.  I haven't posted many accessibility issues because, for my students with reading disabilities or Deafness or autism, we have not had many.

The few we have had included:

• An inability to configure a visual alert for the student who is Deaf, which meant she had to keep her eyes on the screen and couldn't also watch her interpreter.  She was happy to use the Chromebook to practice math and science skills in advance of the state testing, however, and felt that it helped.

• Problems with plugins that allowed read out loud that was more appropriate for my students (as I said in my first post, I did not think my students would like Chromevox, and I was correct; they felt it was overkill since they didn't need it to read the entire screen, only the text).

•  Problems with loading MS Word and PowerPoint files so that students could use the Chromebook to view items that were too far away or to use it as a read aloud for a classroom test.

However, the biggest issue we have with the Chromebook is that for this school year, we have not been allowed to add it to the school network.  Our district is having problems with bandwidth, and has limited teachers to one personally owned device  this year.  And, without Internet access, the device is very, very limited.

In fact, without Internet access the Chromebook is really no more than an AlphaSmart; one without even word prediction because all of the apps for the device require Internet access.  So, we're using it for students to take notes.  The students save their notes to a flash drive by doing a "PDF Print".

I did have a concern that the device appears to not back the notes up when I bring the Chromebook home.  I need to explore this more thoroughly, before I say anything, as I suspect this is my user error. 

I suppose the thing that I will never forget from us using the Chromebook these last few months was when a student used curse words to name a file.  Another student found it and was very upset that a peer had broken the rules.  And, because the device wasn't online, I couldn't delete the file.  I had to take it home, sync it, and then delete.  Fantastic.  But, I work with teenagers, so of course this kind of thing happens.