Last year, CHS gave students Macbook Airs to learn and use daily. This year, they decided to switch things up by giving students Chromebooks instead. It has been almost two months since we received the Chromebooks and I already have some sour thoughts about them.

These last few weeks have been difficult to get school assignments done with this thing. Right before I start typing, my screen sometimes goes blank for 30 seconds. Not cool.

It can be difficult to click on the mouse pad as well. If you are clicking on a tab or dragging something, it does not work well. Have you tried playing Kahoot with a stubborn mouse pad before? It is so easy to click on the wrong answer and end up going from first place to tenth place.

Uploading or refreshing things can become slow and poky too. Sometimes, the internet slugs on my laptop and feels like assignments take forever to load, especially when trying to load something for class quickly. Life can become pretty rough.

If you are trying to type on Google Docs or search something on a new tab, the dark ages are felt for high schoolers all around. I don’t know how it happens, but when typing, my laptop freezes for a few seconds, then finally the word or letters appear, but sometimes randomly deletes.

There are a lot of glitches, a ton of weird clicking noises, etc.  For example, my computer just refreshed automatically and I had my hand on the desk! To summarize, there are a lot of problems when it comes to our new Chromebooks.

Maybe choosing these computers over the Macbook Airs was not such a good idea. If teachers want us to finish assignments on time then computers that work smoothly would be best for all of us. Not everyone has the patience to endure the inconvenient problems it has been giving us.

To us, these seem like a  waste but there are some pros that come with the Chromebooks. Unlike the Macbook Air, the Chromebook 11 G6 EE (what a fancy name for a hogwash computer) battery life lasts a bit longer than the Macbook. The Chromebook is also more flexible to bend compared to our old computers.

We recently received durable clear plastic covers to protect our valuable devices. It may not win “All Time Best Chromebook Cover” but at least you won’t get in trouble if you get a dent in it. Hopefully you won’t have to pay one thousand dollars for dropping it either.

In the end, we are instructed to accept it and move on. Yes, not all students will “move on” but they will still have to deal with it. As I am exercising my freedom of speech, I would like to say something to the school district:

One of the main jobs of school departments is to care for our learning environment. We should have a more useful computer then one that is dysfunctional. What I am trying to say is there should be considerable time put into  carefully choosing a computer that will best benefit our learning because…

The better the computer, the fewer complaints you get from students (like me!)

Have a good day!