Some students in rural schools have bus commutes of more than an hour and when they get home, they don’t have internet access. Enter Google’s “Rolling Study Halls” program, which provides Wi-Fi and devices on school buses. After a pilot effort, the program today expands to include 16 more school districts.
This brief video shows how Rolling Study Halls have improved grades for some students.
The concept here is brilliant because it provides web access for students who may otherwise be limited to just during time in the classroom. Having ridden a G-Bus when I worked for Google, I can definitely appreciate this. I had my own device of course, but the ability to easily connect to the web without worrying about phone plans and tethering was a huge productivity boost.
Using Chromebooks for the Rolling Study Halls makes good sense too, particularly if the school districts use GSuite for student accounts. Kids can hop on the bus, fire up a Chromebook in seconds and have full access to their docs, assignments and email. Sure, not every student will take advantage of this setup — most of my school bus time was social — but just providing the additional learning opportunity has to be appealing to some students.
