Toolkits & Training to Help Your School Adopt Chromebooks

There is a myriad of reasons why you should transition your school to Chromebooks, including strengthened security, improved collaboration, and simplified classroom management.

However, introducing new technology to your school community can create a number of challenges. It’s important to educate students, teachers, and admin on what is changing and help them acquire the skills they need to thrive with the new technology.

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How to Adopt Chromebooks for Your School Community

The Google for Education team has created several educational resources so you can help your community adapt, adopt, and sustain a productive environment for education.

Among these is their EDU in 90 video series, with each short episode focusing on an important topic for educators, administrators, and school leaders. Topics include product updates, new programs, and helpful resources for the classroom.

To ensure your staff, educators, and students can easily adopt this new technology, Google has created a proven process called the Chromebook Adoption Framework. The three-step process helps you clearly communicate with your community, educates them on the skills they need to take on the change, and teaches them about other valuable resources.

Chromebook Adoption Framework

Excite – Make sure they understand what’s changing and why they should be part of it.

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Get Your Team Excited About Chromebooks

Before introducing the new technology to your students and staff, create a transition plan. Make a list of everyone who will be using Chromebooks, how this will impact their day-to-day activities, and what skills would most benefit them. Come up with a clear communication plan to generate excitement and to let those impacted know about the change beforehand.

You’ll need to tailor each device with apps and features that meet the needs of each user group, so starting this process with plenty of time to plan is critical. Think through staff, educators, and students to determine which users will require Chromebooks and which will be allowed to choose their devices.

Enable – Help them acquire the skills required to take on the change.

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Enable Your Teams to Get Up & Running

Keeping your teams up to date with best practices and advice that will help familiarise them with their new device is a great way for them to get started. Google for Education has created content such as a Getting Started Guide, Tips & Tricks Guide, and Educator’s Toolkit that can help set your team up for success.

These tools will allow your school community to be more efficient on their devices by learning various shortcuts and quick how-tos. Be sure to offer the one-page toolkit with your teams so they can access training courses and share FAQs with their own students.

Extend – Teach them about other Chromebook programs and get up to speed using additional resources.

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Arm Your Teams With Helpful Resources

Give your teachers everything they need to do in-house repairs to devices in their classroom so there’s never any down time. This also helps the devices stay in service longer, minimising the amount of e-waste.

Teaching your educators about other Chromebook programs is another way to help them succeed with their new devices.

Not sure Chromebooks are the right choice for your institution? We want to ensure that you can make an informed decision about your EdTech investment. Contact us to learn more about available test drive options as well as ChromeOS Flex, the free-to-download operating system that allows users to modernise their existing devices and experience the benefits of Chrome OS on PCs and Macs.

Between getting their classrooms ready, finalising lesson plans, and getting a head start learning all the incoming students’ names, teachers have a steep back-to-school ramp-up period. Throw in a gruelling, days-long professional development event and it’s likely to put them over the top.

But what if the £260 million the UK spends annually on staff development could be concentrated into short, digestible training for skills that educators would actually use in their day-to-day life?

That’s the goal of these micro-learning resources. They hyperfocus on the tech skills teachers need in our modern, hybrid learning-era classrooms.

Where Conventional Teacher Training Falls Short

Given how quickly teachers were expected to digitise the learning day, it’s understandable some of them may have different levels of comfort with the technologies that emerged.

The problem is that most professional development programmes were created pre-pandemic. They’re long, monotonous, and don’t reliably move the needle on the tech skills teachers need to be practising. Particularly if they’re going to be expected to help students improve their own digital literacy.

Is it really any surprise experts at Improving Teaching warn that only 45% of teachers believe their school’s professional development provision is helping them improve?

How Micro-Credentialing is Different

“A style of learning that is typically less than 3 minutes, content dense, and engaging, microlearning covers just one or two learning objectives. This style of learning comes in many formats including text, video and audio, or a combination of all three. Micro-learning can be incredibly powerful, providing concise, focussed and just-in-time content,” explains eLearning platform Academii.

And, because many of these micro-learning mini-lessons, like those in the Google Workspace Certification programme, are self-paced, teachers are better able to fit professional development into their already hectic back-to-school schedules.

It also gives educators ownership of what they learn and where they put their focus.

Some teachers may already understand the fundamentals of using Google Workspace, but want to finetune those skills with a bit of advanced practise. Others may be struggling with how to keep the creative spark ignited in remote learning environments. Just a few short hours spent on a handful of focused units could help them learn how digital tools can support creativity, promote students’ voices, and increase engagement.

Post-Certification Potential

Once educators earn their Educator Certifications, it opens up numerous more opportunities to share that knowledge with their academic communities.

The three most defined paths include becoming a:

• Certified Trainer. Certified Trainers empower educators to learn and use Google for Education products to make their classrooms more efficient, improve student outcomes, and foster leadership skills. The trainers themselves get an impressive addition to their resumes as well as a secondary income stream.
• Certified Coach. The Certified Coach program empowers instructional coaches to work 1:1 with educators and drive impactful technology use in their schools. Coaches get access to research-backed strategies and tools – so that new and veteran educators alike can transform instruction across every classroom.
• Certified Innovator. The Google for Education Certified Innovator Program recognises and supports top educators who are excited to grow professionally, advocate for impactful technology, and innovate to improve classrooms, schools, and local communities. This track helps educators launch unique passion projects using technology to solve challenges in education.

Educators instinctively know they need a particular set of tech skills to help students excel in a rapidly digital world. What’s less instinctive is which resources and training lessons are most essential from year to year. That’s where schools can help. By developing a rotating list of tools, they can help their educators master modern classroom concepts to drive digital and academic excellence.

The best teachers are the most attuned ones. Without them saying a word, they can tell when a student is close to working out a new concept or just plain stuck. And they instinctively know how to tailor their instruction accordingly: throwing out clues to lead learners to the right answer or slowing down the pace to provide a little extra process time. They may even change up tasks partway through to refocus a neurodiverse student or ensure an advanced learner doesn’t get bored.

Educators are nothing if not adaptable, but it’s a huge ask for them to simultaneously give every learner in a classroom their full focus. For that, classrooms need adaptive technologies that centre the student experience.

What is Adaptive Learning?

Global Digital Learning defines adaptive learning as “the delivery of education or training that utilizes technology and data to provide an individually customized learning program to students, intelligently adapting to their learning needs.” Basically, it’s the opposite of a one-size-fits-all educational model.

With classroom sizes and educator burnout rates both increasing, schools are having to get creative in how they meet student needs. Adaptive technologies act as the ultimate teacher’s assistant. They make sure every learner gets the benefit of individual instruction, even when teachers can’t give them their immediate or undivided attention.

Designed vs. Algorithmic Adaptivity

The best learning tools still follow the best teaching methods. Adaptive learning technologies simply take what teachers already do well and help them scale it.

There are two ways adaptive teaching tech helps students connect with new material:

• Designed adaptivity tools rely heavily on teacher planning. Instructors sequence the lessons based on experience. Real-time feedback is provided by the technology based on an “if this, then that” methodology. The model works well for educators who want more say in how the student learns.
• Algorithmic adaptivity approaches use rulesets to curate content as a student learns. It takes into account what they show an understanding of and what tasks are most appropriate to follow up others.

What Does Assisted Learning Look Like in the Classroom?

Imagine you’re a student stuck on a math problem. With 25 other students in your class, you can’t always get immediate help, leaving you frustrated and diminishing your confidence to complete future problems. Now imagine a different scenario. You’re stuck on a problem, but instead of growing frustrated, you receive a helpful hint or video that gives you exactly what you need to unblock you. You realise what you need to do differently, complete the math problem correctly, and feel more confident in your ability to learn.

From there, the reinforced learner becomes reengaged, sparking their intrinsic motivation to master even the most difficult concepts.

All students deserve continuous access to customised educational resources that can meet them where they’re at. Adaptive learning tech satisfies this need without putting an undue burden on teachers and uplifting everyone.

How to Find the Right Tech for Your Teaching Style

Whether they’ve been an educator for decades or this is their first year, every teacher has their own teaching style. Everything from the way an educator communicates with students to the subject matter being taught can impact an educator’s style.

Thanks to modern technology, there are a lot of resources now available to complement any style of teaching and allow teachers to work collaboratively with their students from anywhere. So how do educators find the right tech for their style? It’s important for teachers to know what’s available to them and then determine how it may benefit their classroom.

Digital Tools Built for Collaboration

It’s crucial that today’s students are well-versed in collaboration, especially given that educators predict that “the 2025 [higher education] learning model will be a hybrid one, combining online and in-person studies.” In order to prepare students for the future, it’s important to get them collaborating now.

Resources like Google are known for their digital tools, including tech like Sheets, Classroom, Forms, Assignments, and Slides. These Google for Education products can help teachers create classroom presentations, build surveys, manage coursework, and so much more.

And it’s not just students who benefit. Research suggests that “opportunities for teacher collaboration are a key feature of school environments where teachers have higher job satisfaction and continue to develop their effectiveness over time.”

Even more, these tools are collaborative and can be accessed from home or the classroom, making them ideal for today’s modern educational environment.

Choosing the Right Device for Teaching

Finding the perfect device that will help elevate the education experience for their students is an important task for educators. For teachers who prefer to work digitally, there are plenty of devices designed for high-performance tasks such as coding and creating content.

With many schools offering a hybrid learning environment or total remote learning, students (and teachers) are often being provided with devices by the school to ensure a cohesive learning experience. It’s important that these devices can be used both inside and outside of the classroom. This allows both students and teachers the flexibility of working when and where they want.

Online Training Opportunities for Educators

To help educators feel empowered, it’s imperative that they be fully trained on the technology being used inside the classroom. Fortunately, there are several training courses available online for learners of all levels that will help them make the most of their tech. From the basics of content creation to more detailed topics like cloud sharing, these courses were designed to support the work that educators are doing in the classroom and beyond.

Technology Training Session You Can Use Today

For teachers who are hoping to ease into introducing new technology to the classroom, there are a number of resources available that can be utilised today. These tools are meant to inspire creativity, encourage hands-on learning, and allow teachers to equip students with digital skills. From online lesson plans to an internet safety resource to apps that can be used with online products, teachers can immediately use these tools to get the most out of their technology.

Take Learning to the Next Level

If you learn best in a community environment, there are in-person groups where you meet with other educators looking to educate themselves on the right tech for their classrooms. In these groups, you can engage with fellow educators for no cost and share, collaborate, and support each other in using technology in impactful ways with students.

In the UK, educators can join GEG UK, which describes itself as “an all voluntary Google Educator Group (GEG) members helping to inspire educational communities and help young people develop vital digital skills, across the UK.”

Finding technology that complements your teaching style may feel like an overwhelming task, but there are many resources available to help. With the right tools in hand, it’s easy to elevate the education of your students and create a better learning experience for all.

Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) for education organisations.

After investing in Education Plus, organisations will experience vastly improved security and ease of IT management, as well as improved collaboration and functionality for educators.

Education Plus Benefits by the Numbers

Improved Security

Education Plus helped to strengthen security, simplify management and improve collaboration. Organisations were able to enable employees to become more efficient in administration, and consolidate legacy third-party applications and software.

Time usually spent searching for and deleting phishing emails and resolving incidents saved 35 weeks of IT time*

Increased Production

Google Workspace for Education Plus is the most comprehensive edition, incorporating advanced teaching, learning, and security capabilities. Admin staff can create administrative, educational, and security reports 80% faster.

ROI Breakdown

The study shows Education Plus delivers a strong return on investment (ROI). Over three years:

Lowering the Costs and Labour

Organisations in Europe overcome struggles with securing their environments, overseeing cumbersome IT processes, and using inefficient communication. Review the entire report here.

Forrester found the composite organization saved the team a total of 1,397 labour hours per year, which at 40 hours/week would be the equivalent of 35 weeks for one FTE.