SCSD1 students repair 40 Chromebooks, overcome supply bottleneck and learn valuable skills
Pine Cove Consulting services Sheridan County School District #1 with various IT products and services. Facing Chromebook shortages, Pine Cove partnered with students in the district to repair 40 Chromebooks that had keyboard failures and were no longer covered by the warranty. These repairs helped the district overcome supply issues, allowed students to have access to critical equipment during the pandemic and taught the students valuable life skills.
“The demand for Chromebooks has never been greater, with the pandemic requiring students across the world to have easy access to coursework from home,” said Ronda Groteluschen (pictured above), Pine Cove Consulting systems engineer. “After running a test sample repairing some of these broken Chromebooks, we found that most Chromebooks could be recovered by cleaning and resetting the keyboard connection. We provided initial instruction to the students of Andrew Marcure’s computer science class, and then the students were able to repair 40 Chromebooks.”
“Working on computers, both the hardware and software, has always been a passion of mine,” said Isaac Adsit, Big Horn High School student who worked on the Chromebooks. “I was excited to both help our district with our Chromebooks and learn more about working with these devices that I don’t have much experience with. To be a part of saving money for other areas in education and still do what I love, was a win-win for me. I really liked helping our district technology department prevent e-waste that would have resulted from these failed Chromebooks. It’s been a fun experience, and I hope to be able to continue doing it in the future.”
Currently the wait time for ordering new Chromebooks is six months, at a minimum. Sheridan County School District #1 had Chromebook inventory issues and needed Chromebooks as soon as possible. Pine Cove Consulting and the students were able to work together to fill that need and ensure that students continue to have access to these critical devices.
