OPS Chromebooks and the student body: a love-hate relationship

By Addison Welborn

Picture of ClassLink extension taken by Addison Welborn

Imagine this: a journalist opens her Chromebook, excited to start typing up the first draft of a future Rampage article. This week, she is writing about the changes that have been made to the Owasso Public Schools Chromebooks this year. She then reaches the ClassLink sign in page, this school year’s new addition to the district’s devices. She types in her username and password. After typing in her username and password, she energetically clicks Sign In. She is confronted by an error message. “410: Bad Gateway.” She turns WiFi off and turns it back on, hoping that will fix the problem. “410: Bad Gateway.” She shuts the Chromebook down completely, and reattempts. “410: Bad Gateway.” She clicks “Sign in with Google,” types in her email, and is taken back to the ClassLink page, where once again, “410: Bad Gateway.” Finally, defeated, she pulls out her phone, opens the Google Docs app, and starts writing there.

Picture of “410: Bad Gateway” taken by Addison Welborn

All Owasso High School students know ClassLink, yet none use it. While that is a generalization, this journalist personally does not know a single person who uses this application that, in an attempt to be a helpful resource for students and teachers alike, has made our Chromebooks the least efficient they’ve ever been. Additionally, if a student wants to access any website immediately after opening their Chromebook, it still takes significantly longer than it did before, due to ClassLink loading. 

For example, Google took one minute and 36 seconds from the time the Chromebook turned on to provide an answer to the question “what day is it?” Tragically, though hilariously, ClassLink took longer (an additional 24 seconds) to load and open the BrainPop extension. While this was by no means a perfectly scientific test (or really scientific at all), these numbers look even worse knowing that this was not done on school WiFi; it was done on a personal home network with a maximum of two other devices using it. Add an overworked school WiFi to the mix, and the numbers are not looking good for the OPS Chromebooks.

My problems and gripes are not unique. It appears that the lovely “410: Bad Gateway” message appeared to all Owasso students at the same time that specific day. In many interviews with students, both personally and on the record, there was nothing kind to be said about ClassLink. 

However, there were many kind things to be said about our Chromebooks in general. 

When asked about his thought on the quality of our Chromebooks, senior Brighton Clifton thought for a moment and then said, “I feel like for the few thousand that OPS would have had to have bought to support the giant student body that we have I feel like these are pretty good quality for as many as they had to buy,” adding on, “I’m very thankful for them.”

Additionally, junior Mallory Sepúlveda started her answer with, “Personally, I love my Chromebook.” She went on to describe a few problems she had with it, describing ClassLink as “absolutely ridiculous.” She stated, “Not only does it slow down our Chromebooks, it's also useless. I never use it, I have bookmarks for that [and] I can't imagine how much money we are paying for [it].”  

But her main issue resides with the lack of freedom we have over these devices. 

“A lot of the problems with the Chromebooks is that we don't have any autonomy,” she explained. “The administration puts all these settings on our Chromebooks that we can't change. I can't change my profile picture, I can't change my background picture, I can't get rid of all these [extensions].” However, she smiled and added, “but I still love it.”

While many people, including this journalist, may not love the Chromebooks as much as Sepúlveda or have as much of a positive attitude as Clifton, it is still possible to have a great appreciation for them. Despite all of the issues mentioned in this article, it would be very naive not to acknowledge what a great tool these Chromebooks are. They are personal devices that students are able to use 24/7, for school and for recreational activities as well. With ClassLink and all of its causation of issues, this article is being edited on an OPS Chromebook, showing how much all OPS students, even Chromebook critics, rely on them.

However, these positives do not exactly outshine the negatives. It is important to point out these negatives in order for our school and OPS technology to be the best that it can be. But, in the worst of WiFi outages and technology troubles, students are able to find peace in the common thread throughout all these interviews. OPS Chromebooks, despite all their flaws, are wonderful resources that the students of OPS are very lucky to have. Perhaps one day they will be improved, and they will garner the love they deserve.