Rolling Study Halls is a fantastic new initiative from Google that equips school buses with free Wi-Fi and Chromebooks so that students with long commutes to school can take advantage of their time on the bus. Rather than looking out the window, the kids can do homework and study so that they’re free to do other activities once their journeys are complete.
The program began, as a pilot, back in 2016 when Google partnered with education leaders in Caldwell County, North Carolina and installed mobile Wi-Fi routers on 11 school buses. Wi-Fi alone, however, does not make a study hall so Google also ensured that there were educators on each of the buses who could help children working on their homework projects. The results of the pilot scheme were striking and students immediately began to see their grades improving.
The pilot program was expanded from North Carolina to South Carolina and positive results were maintained with reading and math proficiency increasing as well as increased digital fluency. A lot of the kids living in rural areas don’t have access to the internet at home so the pilot program provided vital access to online resources the kids needed to complete their homework effectively.
The Rolling Study Halls initiative is now being expanded across the country and Google claims that it’ll see 1.5 million learning hours reclaimed from school bus journeys that can often clock in at between an hour and an hour and a half.
Google is committing to help provide Wi-Fi and Chromebooks on school buses in 16 school districts around the country. The expansion of the program will be focused on rural communities and will be done with the assistance of school networking non-profit CoSN and broadband specialists Kajeet. Google says that the program is already being rolled out in Deer Trail School District in Colorado but that other districts in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia will follow.
There is no word from Google yet about how this program will be maintained in the long term but the search giant has said that it’ll be up to individual School Districts to determine policies to limit internet access to schoolwork only.
This program still has a long way to go before it can help out all kids living in rural areas and with little access to the internet but it is definitely a good start. If student engagement and homework completion keep going up while discipline rates keep going down on program school buses hopefully more and more districts will gain access to what Rolling Study Halls have to offer.
To keep yourself updated on the Rolling Study Halls initiative you can find Google’s education page here.
