Google launches a Chromebook repair program for schools
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This seems too narrowly focused to be worth its own class. "Building and repairing computing devices" would make a lot more sense if the goal was for students to learn something instead of using them as free labor.
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LOL. It's like donating junker cars to the school auto shop. Except the donations are "in house"...and they might or might not have been junk to begin with.
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My son has a tech ed class that includes some repair stuff.
But it's a bit of a curious thing to encourage the kids to repair chromebooks. I suspect most schools would rather encourage they open up some OTHER device other than teach them to work on the device they need to do their work on...
Particularly with chromebooks and spare parts in short supply right now. My son's chromebok is held together with tape.
But it's a bit of a curious thing to encourage the kids to repair chromebooks. I suspect most schools would rather encourage they open up some OTHER device other than teach them to work on the device they need to do their work on...
Particularly with chromebooks and spare parts in short supply right now. My son's chromebok is held together with tape.
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Yeah, this is like, a single assignment. If this is part C in a 10-step program that teaches soldering and continuity tracing and Hello World electronics ‘engineering’, that’d be a different thing…
Though I don’t know that encouraging kids to take apart their expensive electronics is going to be an easy sell to a school board…
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The skill a child is going to learn on taking apart a laptop is lefty loosy righty tighty and how to swear.
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They're eating Tide pods because they're not being challenged mentally, causing some of them to regress mentally into the realm of mentally challenged. Others... well, are just idiots (who should not be allowed near a firearm.)
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Nice.
Modern electronics: built, maintained, and eventually to be dismantled for recycling by children.
Modern electronics: built, maintained, and eventually to be dismantled for recycling by children.
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This doesn't seem like a terrible idea, especially for poor school districts that can't afford a dedicated IT department. Years ago, in the WinNT days, me and my friends joined a "class" where we set up and maintained the school's computer network. Now it's my career.
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If they’re anything like me (and I thought this was a great idea when I read it) then the answer is a resounding no.
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Of course I don't think that the idea would be to have it be a class for every single student. All those many moons ago when I was in school, there were classes only available to a small portion of the student body, based on aptitude and interest.
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Google is teaching people to not utilize the full extend of the warranty services they have is more like it. Google isn't supplying the hardware though are they? Seems this would be coming from the manufacturer, or is Google in the school tablet hardware business?
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So a total of 10 parts they could possibly repair by replacement.
1) Keyboard
2) Motherboard CPU/Memory all soldered to one board.
3) Network card.
4) That USB board.
5) Speakers
6) Screen
7) Touchpad
8) Battery
9) Shell
10) Power supply
But by the time the laptop gets to that point of repair. None of those parts will be available to be repaired. Unless the school gets a Pallet of broken laptops.
1) Keyboard
2) Motherboard CPU/Memory all soldered to one board.
3) Network card.
4) That USB board.
5) Speakers
6) Screen
7) Touchpad
8) Battery
9) Shell
10) Power supply
But by the time the laptop gets to that point of repair. None of those parts will be available to be repaired. Unless the school gets a Pallet of broken laptops.
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Replace "Chromebooks" with "computers in general" and I'm totally onboard with this. It'd be handy if basic computer repair knowledge became more commonplace, like common automobile maintenance knowledge.
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Or, one laptop with a single fault can be used to repair nine others that have one of the other faults?
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This could be a good thing... following directions, critical thinking, and in the end, self-satisfaction are all things leading a child to a more successful existence. But as it's described, not so much.
And I could use an easy to find, and 'authorized' repair guide from a trusted source. The 'T' key on my keyboard is sticking.
And I could use an easy to find, and 'authorized' repair guide from a trusted source. The 'T' key on my keyboard is sticking.
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Maybe Radio Shack will be relevant again!? All things considered - like most peoples rough treatment of electronic devices, negative view of NOT getting a new device every year, etc - it's nice to think kids will actually learn to repair their devices! That can't be bad?
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They are getting a new harder to open lid. With lots of lots of warning ai labels reminding not to eat. And I hear the outer coating is now bitter tasting. Although I haven’t verified that myself I’ll take their word on it.
So now you gotta be at least clever enough to get the lid off to eat one.
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Have you not worked in school IT?
I only say this because I've done so at just about every level including university, and school-issued hardware pretty much never lasts as long as you'd think. The real impetus would be on the OEMs to provide spare parts, but given how quickly kids seem to ruin tech, it's not like it would take long to see returns.
And worst comes to worst, the class would probably at least get them halfway to an A+ cert.
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I think this is more "We've seen a lot of people are already teaching these classes and we've got a lot of good documentation, you have to repair these things anyway, why not both?" situation.
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My school had that too, and it was pretty awesome. It was called "Applied Technology" and involved doing a lot of the lower level work with the two IT staff at the school (smaller school) essentially supervising. It involved basic troubleshooting, replacing components, and doing things like reinstalling operating systems. A lot of it was physically moving computers to and from classrooms, not easy with heavy all in one Macs.
The IT staff still did the actual systems administration.
I had already been tinkering with PCs at home for years, but not everyone had/has those kind of resources or encouragement so I imagine it helped out a lot of students. Though it did expose me to how Macs work (classic Mac OS days).
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Expanding the future labor pool supply.
Bonus: with people too young to be union members.
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Kids are rough on electronics. A lot of Chromebooks get drinks spilled on them, left in unzipped backpacks or balanced precariously on places they should not be and take one too many hard falls.
I volunteer at my local elementary school and during the lockdown we had a couple of Chromebooks comeback with cracked screens, split shells, or keyboards stick with soda. I think all of them could be brought back into complete working order with 1-2 part replacements.
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This would make a tremendous amount of sense if Google teamed up with iFixit.com to create a real, workable, vocational-technical school course syllabus on the subject of device repair. The students in the IT course would learn a lot and get some self-sufficiency.
I wonder how much of this self-repair initiative is driven by schools realizing they can stop paying Google the $20 per month fee for damaged chromebooks?
Plus, in my experience with kiddos and chromebooks, chargers (frayed or cut cables, bent / broken / stuck connectors, lost chargers) are a big failure mode. The after-school program where I volunteer had a bunch of 3-year-old chromebooks in a closet. I asked the lead staff member why they ordered new ones, and I was told the chargers for the old ones were lost/broken and it was easier to get budget to buy new ones than to replace the chargers. I sprung for replacement chargers ($12 apiece, ebay, you know the drill) and they're back in action.
Every 20-unit bulk pack of chromebooks delivered to schools oughta have three or four spare chargers in it.
https://static.googleusercontent.com/me ... cation.pdf
I wonder how much of this self-repair initiative is driven by schools realizing they can stop paying Google the $20 per month fee for damaged chromebooks?
Plus, in my experience with kiddos and chromebooks, chargers (frayed or cut cables, bent / broken / stuck connectors, lost chargers) are a big failure mode. The after-school program where I volunteer had a bunch of 3-year-old chromebooks in a closet. I asked the lead staff member why they ordered new ones, and I was told the chargers for the old ones were lost/broken and it was easier to get budget to buy new ones than to replace the chargers. I sprung for replacement chargers ($12 apiece, ebay, you know the drill) and they're back in action.
Every 20-unit bulk pack of chromebooks delivered to schools oughta have three or four spare chargers in it.
https://static.googleusercontent.com/me ... cation.pdf
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OMG dude, i'm sorry to hear you've had to work in education related IT.
I used to work support for some networking equipment. Schools were the worst, low budgets, not great talent (i'm sure that doesn't apply to you...) and low pay.
One very prominent university built a multi million dollar microscope (something similar to electron scanning microscope, but different ... it was its own building ... the microscope itself) and they called us and told us our networking equipment didn't work when they dumped 100s of gigs of data in a few microseconds on what was ... really low end networking equipment.... then they dumped that problem on that university's IT team (who had no role in the broken by design design)...
There was a lot of "Bro..." type conversations.
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I mean if you want to go there, we could start on why we allow the group of people who think there ever was an epidemic of kids eating tide pods onto the internet, because they're obviously far too gullable and prone to believing whatever nonsense is put in front of them.
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