Students needing tech service on a school-issued device at Nacogdoches High School will likely have the Chromebook repaired by… a fellow student.
Six NHS seniors in the Practicum of IT are spending a couple hours a week working on the Chromebooks of fellow students, servicing both software and hardware problems in a help desk set up in the school’s library.
The students – all in their fourth year of IT classes through the NHS career and technical education department – started their program a couple months ago, launching after some training provided by Jayce Park, a mobile device specialist with NISD’s Technology Department,
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Practicum of IT students arrive in the NHS library and grab a stack of the laptop computers already waiting on them. They begin matching up the devices with work orders already entered into the district’s online ticketing system that assigns computer and technology repairs to staff.
Many of the repairs fall on the side of “hardware,” said Anna-Lisa Wanack, the class’s instructor. All of the IT students working around a table in the library agreed that some of their classmates could be a bit hard on the devices.
Here’s how it works. Students with a Chromebook requiring a repair turns in the device in the NHS library. (If there are Chromebooks available, the student will check out a loaner device.) The Chromebooks collected over a couple days are then examined by the students from the IT Practicum class.
Earlier this month, senior Kate Basa was replacing the screen on a Chromebook. While removing the screws that hold the device together, Kate said she’s interested in the technology industry as a career.
“This is definitely something I will look into,” Kate said. She already has an offer to attend engineering school at Texas A&M University next year, following graduation, and she’s also considering some out-of-state opportunities for college.
Repairs so far have been limited to student Chromebooks; Wanack’s students are also authorized to work on teacher laptops.
Mar-Keith Mergerson was inspecting a Chromebook that wouldn’t charge. The first thing to check, he said, was to open up the device and make sure the battery inside was unplugged.
After graduation next spring, Mar-Keith wants to move on to college – at Texas A&M or the University of Texas in Austin. And he has other schools as options if those two don’t work out.
“Anything to do with tech, I’ll do,” Mar-Keith said. “Hands-on or coding.”
Repairs to hardware make up the balance of service he takes care of with the Chromebooks. “The screen and keyboard repairs are really no problem,” he said.
Joining Mar-Keith and Kate in the program are Juan Morales, Yuren Ortiz, Gerson Barahona and Juan Ocon.
Wanack emphasizes to her students the importance of providing clear and easy-to-understand communication to end users.
“I really like that they can enter help tickets and edit tickets so they learn how to communicate clearly, putting into laymen’s terms what’s going on,” she said. “Learning to communicate with the customer is so important.”
This project, which is set to expand in January when juniors from Wanack’s third-year practicum class begin making repairs, benefits students, the school and NISD’s IT department, Wanack said.
And Wanack has plans to further grow the program, including introducing a business model that could allow students to take on more customers from both inside and outside the district, a move that would greatly increase the overlap of classroom instruction, IT service and the benefits of learning entrepreneurship.
They’re already receiving support from outside the district. NacSpace, the all-in-one digital service center owned and operated by Elliott Electric Supply, is donating individual tool kits. The students do have tools to work with right now, Wanack said, but must share the instruments.