Recently I saw another teacher's picture/post on Instagram, I think, on the frustration of storing Chromebooks and their cords in a way that they won't become tangled mess. I too have been dealing with this frustration. Up until now I had a Chromebook table where they lived and were plugged into a power strip. At the beginning of the year the power strip was on the floor and I had the cords running up against the wall and sitting on the top of the table which I thought would be fine. Boy was I wrong. Here was the problem with that idea. My 9th graders are 1:1 with Chromebooks and often show up with them not charged. Thus they would need to charge them to use them and would plug into the power strip with their own charging cords because they have different models than I do. The problem with that was that they would pull the strip out away from the wall to plug in their cords and not push it back against the wall or my charging cords would fall down from on top of the table and it was a struggle to get them back up alone. My next solution, which I unfortunately/surprisingly do not have a picture of, was to put the power strip on top of the table and then cover up the charging cords with a box. That kind of worked except for it took away a lot of table work space and often looked messy, especially after students had been sitting there using the Chromebooks. My new solution is... ...to place the student Chromebooks in my dish drying rack. I was, and still am, using it to store original copies of papers I make copies of a lot, bell schedules, etc. in file folders and my teacher Chromebook. I wasn't using the whole thing so I moved the files forward and added the student Chromebooks to the back three slots. They fit snug but not too tight! I then velcroed the charging cords to the drying rack so that when students unplug them to use them the cords don't accidentally fall behind the storage cabinets. In this area I already had a power strip plugged in so I plugged the charging cords into that (+ I still have one charging spot left over) and ran the cords along the back side where NO ONE CAN SEE THEM!! As for the former Chromebook table, I asked the janitor to zip-tie the power cord to the table leg so now it's easy to plug things in but also stays in place and the top is a clutter free work space!
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AuthorI teach 7-9 Health Education & Computer 7 in rural southwestern Minnesota. I love using technology in my classroom and teaching students about how to live healthy and informed lives.
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