Ice Cream and Chromebooks

The CHSD 128 Board of Education is supporting an expanded Chromebook initiative for the second semester. These are exciting times in the realms of curriculum, digital learning, and educational technology at Vernon Hills High School.

Today we hosted an event to give VHHS teachers and staff an opportunity to get up close with the devices that nearly 450 of our students will have in their hands over the next few weeks.  We celebrated this event with ice cream sundaes in the staff cafeteria (an idea I borrowed from my colleague Ray Albin at LHS). Dozens of teachers stopped by and got hands-on with the Lenovo Yoga 11e Thinkpads.

The timing of this event was perfect. A group of highly energized teachers from VHHS had just returned the previous day from the Midwest Google Summit. I asked those teachers to come down during their lunch and show their colleagues the functions of the Chromebook. What ensued was so much more. I may have underestimated the carryover in enthusiasm from the Google Summit. Instead of showing off the Chromebook alone the teachers walked their colleagues through some of the tools, tips, tricks, and strategies they learned at the Midwest Google Summit. The ice cream event turned into a mini workshop on Google Apps for Education. It was very cool to watch.

My thanks to the teachers who came down to participate in the event. I also want to extend a very special thanks to the teachers who volunteered their time and made the event much more than I was anticipating! It was a great day!