Bringing 21st Century Skills into the Classroom: Bright Star’s Technology Initiative

Written by Jaime Hernandez, Director of IT at Bright Star Schools

These are incredible and exciting times at Bright Star Schools. We are thrilled to announce that Bright Star was able to secure enough funds to initiate a 3-year project to purchase a Chromebook for each student across our seven schools. Having 1 to 1 Chromebooks will allow our schools to better integrate technology into the classroom.  Specifically, this technology will enhance our teachers’ curriculum, improve student engagement and help students acquire the 21st century skills that will make them successful in college and life.

A Chromebook is a laptop that runs off of Google’s web-based Chrome operating system and allows students to store and access information on the cloud (free digital storage space accessible from any internet connection). Chrome offers a very safe browsing experience. Chrome also allows us to control what information students and teachers share online. In addition, Google features such as email and Docs provide greater communication and collaboration with other students and between students and staff.

We are confident that this initiative will strengthen our students’ understanding of how important technology has become in our world. It is important that our scholars have good digital citizenship and awareness of their digital footprint as it will benefit them for decades to come.