By Brian Ramon-Miron

Chromebooks! These small devices we students always carry during our school hours. Currently, our school allows most students to use these devices as they wish during free time homeroom, recess and lunch. During these free periods, many students can download games or files and have fun, which isn’t a bad thing, but playing games has to be monitored and used in moderation.

In some ways, using Chromebooks for gaming is good. Many people enjoy playing games instead of playing sports or hanging around.  This is okay because many students aren’t involved in sports.

In other ways, using Chromebooks for gaming is bad. First of all, if you bring a Chromebook outside, the computer could get damaged and potentially break. So, let’s get into the stats. The school currently has 278 in total. Each year, we break around 30 of them, which is about 11% of our total number of chromebooks. According to Dr. W, “Kids can pop off keys or the screen only breaks. Google can sometimes get corrupted but that happens very rarely.” Another thing I have asked is that can the Chromebooks’ hardware get messed up or corrupted? Dr W. responded, “The current Firewall is protecting the chromebooks, and to this date no students have corrupted any software.”

I believe that Chromebooks should be used for games but in moderation. Many students do play games in moderation, which is good and respectful. On the other hand, some students download software to the Chromebook or physically break it, which costs a lot of money to repair it. What do you believe? Should Chromebooks be used for games or other non-educational purposes?