KENTON COUNTY, Ky. — It is crunch time for local school districts that are prepping classrooms, training staff and tuning up the technology that students and teachers use every day.
The Kenton County School District got creative this year to help set up and repair about 14,000 Chromebooks.
The school district hired nine student interns to work four days a week in the summer to unbox, tune up and repair the Chromebook fleet.
“We already knew our kids were amazing, but this is just an extra level that shows us how remarkable that they are and the talents we have within our buildings,” said Matthew Winkler, director of technology for Kenton County Schools.
Winkler said this is not only beneficial for the district but also for the students.
“They want to repair them, they want to tear down, they want to do networking stuff, programming stuff and so this is giving them the real world experience,” Winkler said.
Junior Maddie Gibson thinks she’s probably touched about 5,000 of the Chromebooks — including unboxing and starting 4,000 of them from scratch.
Other than that, the interns are repairing keyboards, replacing charging ports, fixing screens and diagnosing software problems.
The student interns work eight-hour days, four days a week for about $15 per hour.
“If I see kids… not really respect the Chromebook, it’s like, well that’s one more to the pile of 500 we have to repair next year and stuff,” Gibson said.
The goal of the summer internship wasn’t only to get the Chromebooks ready. Winkler said it's also a way to engage students in IT careers with hopes that they one day return to the district or continue a career in computer sciences in their own community.
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