Equity in Technology

[Los Alamos STEAM Lab]

Referencing agenda item 8.2:

Please consider unlocking the chromebooks a little.  Either allowing for the use of discord, or for kids to log in to a different google account, or whitelisting* a few local domains for google access.

I understand that for schools it is a safety issue, but for me it is an equity issue.  Many, many activities have moved online and some kiddos don't have the tech at home to join them.  I'd been hoping this would change with the receipt of chromebooks, but it hasn't because they are so locked down.

I know this isn't as easy or clearcut as I make it out to be, but I worry about all of the social stuff going on outside of school that kids without another device don't have access to.

Thank you, 

Lisabeth Lueninghoener

Robot Whisperer and Math Witch
Los Alamos STEAM Lab


* Los Alamos STEAM Lab has GSuite for Education.  If the schools would whitelist our domain, I would be happy to give teacher accounts to local orgs that want them.  I'd even be happy to vet them all through an org like JJAB (if they were willing).  That way local teachers outside of the school district, (DALA, Bankens, etc.) could host classes with google meets and kiddos could join.

I think it would be even better if kids were simply allowed to use a personal account on their school computers, but I know that has complications as well.