Recent visitors  to Roger Bacon  may have had a cart full of tablets rush past them as they walked the halls.

Well those tablets aren’t any ordinary tablets, they’re the new Cotter Chromebooks.

Around mid-August, Cotter purchased about 130 Google Chromebooks for the students to have greater access to technology in their classrooms.

“They can do so much as far as tablets go.” said Dave Soblewski, one of Cotter’s newest additions to the technology team. “They’re like a web browser with a key board, really a great little gadget to have here.”

A Chromebook is a laptop thin client that stores most of its information in the cloud and can be purchased directly through Google or one of its retail partners.

As of right now, the Chromebooks are only in the Roger Bacon building and only being used by the students in 7th and 8th grades.

The tech. team hopes to expand the use of the Chromebooks, though. “The next step is to use them in all classes, but just in the RB at first” Sobolewski said “It will take time for the network to adjust to the daily use of the Chromebooks, so until then we are keeping them where they are.”

A big reason why Cotter chose Chromebooks over something like an iPad is because it can produce so much. “Chromebooks are great for education because they’re so great at producing.” Greg Treharne, leader of Cotter’s tech. department, said. “The students can go from one Chromebook to another in seconds. They also don’t need to use the server, which is a nice plus.”

Treharne said that from prior experience with outtfitting schools with the proper number of mobile carts that starting with a few carts and monitoring use should give the school a good idea if more are needed or not.

Cotter has purchased 60 more Chromebooks since getting the original 130 in August, giving them a grand total of 190 Chromebooks. The carts they using are all labeled either “A”, “B”, or “C’. Junior high teachers reserve the carts and bring them to their classrooms, which is also a benefit in terms of using classtime more efficiently and having other class resources at hand.

“We’re hoping to get more Chromebooks as more students get to use them.” Sobolewski said. “This is a great opportunity for the students, we’re all very excited and grateful that we have them.”