Parents of our e-learners borrowed their children’s Chromebooks and passwords to become the students for our inaugural Adults-Only Bootcamp for Chromebooks evening.
The event was organised by Whangarei Intermediate School teacher Shannon Watson with the support of UIT Technology Solutions in an effort to help parents from any of our cluster’s schools to gain an insight into their child’s online learning world.
Shannon says it’s important for parents to understand the wide-ranging capabilities of Chromebooks and how they are used in their child’s learning.
Parents learned about digital planning and how they can see, through a shared calendar with their child’s teacher, what their child is learning every day.
“Same with Google Classroom; they can see what their kids are supposed to be doing and when they’re supposed to be doing it.”

Parents also learned about a new tool called Draftback, which can rewind any document to reveal anything that was typed or pasted on to it.
“It’s a literal playback of every single letter that was featured, and can highlight if something copied was plagiarised. It’s a big scary world out there and we want them to know we’re keeping them safe.”
Shannon says the feedback from parents who attended was positive and is hoping to organise another bootcamp soon.