Every Warwick public school student from grades 6 to 12 now has access to their very own Chromebook – an essential tool to the technology-ingrained curriculum of the district and a progressive step towards education equality in Rhode Island – free of charge, as the “Chromebook Carnival” went off without a hitch on Saturday.

In total, 1,540 Chromebooks shuffled from school staff to students, at a rate of about four Chromebooks per minute, inside the gymnasium of the Gorton Administration Building between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. What could have been a logistical nightmare was efficiently managed by various school staff and a little help from the Warwick Police Department to direct traffic flow.

Along with providing the laptops, students also got a protective sleeve and instructions on how to access their Google accounts, which will give them access to a host of classroom tools that are utilized within the district to enhance the learning experience. The laptops not only provide educational tools for going to school throughout their junior high and high school careers, they help prepare the kids for a future beyond primary school as well.

“We don’t know what jobs are going to be available to these kids when they’re graduating. In 12 years, what work are they going to have and what skills are they going to need,” said Warwick Public Schools Director of Technology, Douglas Alexander. “We don’t know exactly, but we know it’s going to involve technology.”

With the Chromebooks, students will be able to access the internet in class to access notes and other materials via the updated high speed wireless network that is being installed at each junior high and high school, which Alexander said was superior to or on par with any other such network in the state. The laptops cost about $200 per unit.

“The best technology we can give them is today’s technology and give them the foundational skills to incorporate that into their lives and into their learning,” said Alexander. “We’re incorporating something that, to you and I, is essential to our lives – work, personal, everything. Seven years ago, there wasn’t a Chromebook. It didn’t exist. They’ve come a long way in the few years it’s been out.”

The Chromebooks are set up specifically to filter and track explicit or inappropriate content during school hours. When the student takes the laptop home that control stops, with only a few exceptions. A “smart alarm” system set up within the GoGuardian software utilized by the school will automatically report to school personnel if the student accesses explicit content or searches for information on self-harm.

“Now our devices are raising these alarms, I see it as a shared responsibility of ours to work with the parents,” Alexander said. “Maybe the parents will say, ‘No I don’t want to do anything about that,’ but it’s on us to at least keep them aware.

“The community expects us to put a certain amount of restrictions, especially the content,” Alexander continued. “If they go home, or off campus, they’re not monitored, but they’re still filtered. Even then, I’ve turned on filtering for [sites like] Netflix and Hulu and HBO when they’re at school, but that turns off at 3 [pm]. This could be the families’ only device.”

That last acknowledgement from Alexander shows a healthy understanding for exactly what these devices might mean to a low-income family who, apart from certainly not being able to afford a laptop or internet streaming device as is mandated by the school district, may not even be able to afford a high-functioning computer for the family as a whole.

“The biggest [benefit of the Chromebook program] that comes to mind is equity,” Alexander said. “We talked about kids that have different levels of access at home. Different budgets, different socioeconomic situations. This guarantees us that every child, regardless of their resources, has a good device to work on at school.”

For some parents at the carnival, the Chromebooks simply represent an added responsibility for their children to take care of, but most of the students who spoke were excited about getting their own device to use for school.

“It’s a responsibility but it’s a good responsibility,” said Marie Balemion, an incoming junior at Pilgrim High School. Her father, Bruce, deadpanned that it was nice that Warwick schools were getting more modern with their curriculum. “It’s almost like living in modern times instead of the Stone Age,” he said.

Alexander said that he felt the event went better than expected, and that it was very beneficial to have such an event prior to the beginning of school to give students and parents a chance to mingle and meet with the school staff that they may not otherwise ever interact with.

“The community all got together and got to talk to each other and be humans,” he said, adding that he hopes that there could be similar events not involving Chromebooks, but more general gatherings such as enrollment fairs in the future. “It was nice to feel like a community. I really liked the energy in the room.”