Bit of a conundrum here. I have four Chromebooks in my classroom. All year long there hasn't been a problem and they've been treated well by the students until today. Two kids fought over one, dropping it and cracking the screen. Another kid, and this is still a mystery, colored all over another screen. These are 2nd graders. My first reaction is to prohibit Chromebooks and other technology for the remainder of the year. But that seems counter-educational. What's the way to go?
I'd certainly consider restricting them the rest of the year. Maybe not all the tech, just the Chromebooks. They need to understand that their actions have consequences. At the very least I'd restrict them for a couple of weeks or so.
The two kids who dropped the Chromeboom should definitely have restricted access. I would try hard to figure out who did the coloring.
I agree with this. My class got a lot better about what they do on the iPads after they saw four of my boys lose iPad access for a month for inappropriate use. Banning them for the rest of the year is excessive, but a very serious talk and cutting them off for a short period will likely do the trick.
What's your district's policy for if a student damages district property? The parents of the two who fought over it should at least get a phone call - since the screen would have to get replaced, or it might be cheaper for the district to just buy a new one
I would consider a shorter ban like other posters have said, and have the parents pay for the repairs. Do you know who did the coloring? I wasn't sure from your post. Could you possibly assign different numbers? At my high school they had laptop carts and each computer was numbered. We were assigned a number to use every time, so that if there were damages we would be responsible for that numbered computer.
Restricting the technology only punishes the good kids who have done nothing wrong. But try speaking to the kids who did the wrong thing that fighting or vandalism is not only wrong but they have been unfair to the other students who now have 2 less to share. I would give them a consequence of having to use the technology seated right next to you and not with their friends. Ringing up their parents is a must as well. Support from home will help ensure this is not repeated.
I agree, and the kids have been written up and their parents informed. The two kids in question have great, supportive parents. Unfortunately, both boys struggled with very severe, almost autism-spectrum level, ADHD and impulse prevention is difficult. They simply don't respond to all of the usual prevention strategies.
Perhaps the technology is an overstimulation? You'll know the kids best. The general behaviour management strategies are not usually quite as successful with ADHD kids because physiologically they can't distinguish that the behaviour is inappropriate. But they do see the world in black and white. I taught an ADHD (middle school kid) last year and it was a pretty severe case not to mention he had anger issues too. But I used his love for Nintendo DS to make deals with him in terms of behaviour and work output. I modified work for him so he only had to do really simple tasks, even though he was much more capable. I wanted him to stay seated and not call out more than three times. So he brought his Nintendo with him to class every lesson and it worked pretty well. He did something rather than nothing and the rest of the class learnt something too, because he was calm enough that I could actually teach. But getting him to that point took a long time of constantly keeping in touch with parents to give both positive and negative feedback and getting us into a routine. At the beginning he slammed doors and walked out but I stuck with it.
Most schools have some sort of technology policy. Check to see if one exists on your district. With only 4 Chromebooks, how are you monitoring how they are being used/handled? It would be fairly difficult to not see and not have any kid witnesses to a student coloring all over a computer screen.
What is has been is they pick a computer and writer their name on a board to signify they have said computer. The problem the other day were two boys racing to get the same computer. The difficulty with the crayon is that it seems no one noticed it for long enough it's now confusing who would have done it. No one who signed out that computer is admitting to it. What's happened so far is that I have locked up the remaining computers while the tech guy is handling the broken screen. We have a grade-level set of iPads I can check out, and this is becoming my technology use. Since the iPads belong to all of 2nd grade rather than "our" Chromebooks, there's this knowledge they can be taken away to be used by the other classes at any time (per teacher scheduling/need/communication, of course).
I would have them come to you to check them out. They need to sign their name next to the Chromebook number they checked out (so number the Chromebooks). You have to inspect it before they take it and after they return it. Any damage done to it in between is the responsibility of the checker outer (even if they didn't do the damage -- they are responsible for watching and protecting it, maybe they would lose the privilege of using them if one gets damaged, I would have older kids pay for it). You can tell the entire class that because they were being irresponsible with the Chromebooks that this policy now has to be in place. That will send a message. And definitely suspend tech use (all tech use) for those two who fought over it and damaged it, for at least a few weeks.
Forgive me for not sitting over the computers during my language arts time. Are you saying you've never had a student do something while you were momentarily distracted?
Coloring on a screen is true damage? I get what you're saying, that I should have been proactive and tweaked my computer monitoring system when I learned I had students with severe behavior problems. But this is also a system that has worked flawlessly for four years, all year with these kids until this point. If a kid seems to be using a computer, I don't think to hover and look for a crayon. I don't have access to an assistant who can focus on computer monitoring only. I teach computer use protocol, and it has worked every year with no problems. If you're referring to the computer dropping, we are talking about an incident that covered the span of two seconds. Yes, I probably dropped the ball here by allowing this to get to that point, but I can't think of a better monitoring system than what I have.
I have had kids break Chromebook screens, and even Chromebooks walking away while in a kid's backpack. No need to feel ashamed about it happening. Kids are going to do things like that, but I would use those incidents to make changes to my policies about how technology is handled. Your current policy is obviously not working well enough to prevent damage, so put some brainstorming into making it better. We learn through trial and error. And as I'm learning this year, what worked for four years is not always going to work for year 5. I often need to adapt to my students, and I'm still changing all kinds of things that worked really well for me before.
You caught them after you made the new system, or catching them made you implement the new system? Either way, it sounds like there needs to be a little cool off period from tech for the class. It sucks for the kids who weren't doing anything wrong, but there need to be consequences.
...or just those two pairs of students. Natural consequence: those students have not shown responsibility, so they're unable to use the computers for the time being (or longer), until they can better show that responsibility. Why should their actions affect others' ability to use the computers?
