How We Use Aspen to Help Us Reissue Our Student Chromebooks Each September & Collect Them In June
Each September the technology department in our district is responsible to reissue approximately 3,800 Chromebooks to our students across 6 schools. Our district uses Aspen to assist us with our management of over 4,200 Chromebooks for students, and every staff member. This blog post will explain how we use Aspen's Assessment tool to manage communication between classroom teachers, and the help desk. As you can well imagine it is a tremendous task to move each student's Chromebook from their previous year's classroom to their new classroom in time for the new school year. What makes it even more difficult is that in the last weeks of August it's not uncommon for student to be shuffled from classroom to classroom, and sometimes moved to another school within the district.
Why Use the Assessment Definition
All of this movement demands that we have an easy way for teachers to communicate with the helpdesk in an easy and efficient manner. It is essential that we have a quick way to communicate with classroom teachers to ensure that Chromebooks are in place within the first few days of the new school year. Aspen solves that problem for our district. We use Aspen Assessments to ensure that every student has their Chromebook as soon as possible in September. A previous blog post, Creating the September Re-Issue Assessment Definition in Aspen, explicitly shows the process for creating the Aspen Assessment Definition.
The Process - What a Teacher Does in September
In September teachers simply go into the Assessment Entry tool in Aspen, and select the Chromebook September Issue assessment definition. Once the teacher selects the appropriate definition they can fill-in the correct information regarding their students. In this example the teacher left a comment, that their students didn't get a new replacement Chromebook. This information is immediately available to the help desk technicians, teachers, and administrators in the building.
 |
| Completed Assessment Entry - September Chromebook Reissue |
Once teachers fill-in the appropriate information it can be reviewed and acted upon by the Help Desk. The video below helps illustrate the process for the teacher.
The Process - What a Technician Does in September
In September members of the technology department simply go into the Assessment History tool in Aspen, and select the Chromebook September Issue assessment definition. Once the appropriate definition is selected the technician can review the data for the entire school, a grade level, a single classroom, or an individual student. The illustration below is what a technician sees in the Assessment History tab in Aspen.
 |
| Assessment History for a Single Classroom |
The video below helps illustrate the process for the reviewing the Assessment History data. This data can be reviewed by help desk staff, teachers or administrators in the building. It is helpful for teachers to be able to see all students in the grade level, because they often have "an extra" Chromebook in their classroom. They can review the Assessment History information, and find out that the student has been rescheduled in a colleague's classroom.
The Process - What a Teacher Does in June
The process for collecting Chromebooks is a simple one. You can review the printed directions teachers receive towards the end of each school year. We provide our teachers with three separate return crates. Each crate is labeled with the teacher's name, homeroom, and school. Teachers use one crate for Chromebooks that need repairs, and the other two to collect the Chromebooks, and the AC adapters. We keep track of the "paperwork" by using the Assessment Definitions in Aspen once again. In June teachers simply go into the Assessment Entry tool in Aspen, and select the Chromebook Return assessment definition. Once the teacher selects the appropriate definition they can fill-in the correct information regarding their students. This process allows administrators, secretaries, and the help desk staff to immediately identify students that didn't return their Chromebook at the end of the year. We can call parents, and disable the Chromebook ensuring a quick return of the hardware. This process also allows us to quickly identify Chromebooks that need to be repaired during the summer months.
Using the Assessment Definition tool in Aspen allows our district an easy way to track the distribution, and collection process of our Chromebooks. We'd be lost without these easy to use tools.
Comments
Post a Comment