This year, all of the 6th graders have Chromebooks and all other middle school students have iPads. 

“We chose to switch to Chromebooks this year because there were some struggles with the iPads,” science teacher and sixth grade dean Quynh Tu said.

One of the major struggles of the iPads was the amount of distractions. There are now stricter guidelines against texting and gaming.  

“It is not hard for me to focus on the iPad unless I start texting or playing games, then it’s difficult,” seventh grader Will Madrid said. 

But, there were some very helpful parts of the iPad that Chromebooks couldn’t replace. 

“The iPad was doing a great job doing AirPlay, picture and video making, and those are things that are much harder to do with Chromebooks,” Tu said. 

According to Tu, the Chromebooks can still take photos and video, but cannot AirPlay because they are not  Apple products. 

There were also some major academic shortcomings for the iPads. 

“Word processing was a major struggle on the iPad. It was also really hard to use Zoom on the iPads,” Tu said. 

But the administration did not switch to Chromebooks without proving they would work first.

“We actually tested the Chromebooks with a few students first, and we got some really positive remarks about the Chromebooks,” Tu said. 

Sixth grader Cole Waterman believes the school made the right decision.

“When you are drawing on the Chromebooks in class, then it is hard to use, but then it is pretty good using them besides that,” Waterman said.

“I have had an iPad before and I would say I prefer the Chromebooks because I feel I can work on the Chromebooks better. I also think there are less technical problems on the Chromebooks than on the iPads,” Waterman said. 

Madrid’s answer was different 

“I prefer the iPads because you can communicate more on iPads. But I think Chromebooks are probably better for schoolwork,” Madrid said.