DATE:
Thursday, February 2, 2023
TO:
All School Administrators
FROM:
John Larsen, Business Administrator
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching and Learning
Ben Jameson, Director of Evaluation, Research and Accountability
Michael Heaps, Director of Information Systems
David Bowman, Systems & Security Manager
SUBJECT:
Chromebooks with Expiring Hardware that Will Be Used for Testing
When Chromebooks are purchased, they come with a pre-defined time at which the vendors will stop giving updates to the software that makes the computers run. With Chromebooks this is almost always 5 years or a bit more.
This is called the Auto Update Expiration (AUE) Date.
When a Chromebook hits that date it may continue to work, but it stops getting updates from Google. Over time, this will decrease its functionality with the internet where things will stop working properly. Websites won’t load right; extensions and apps either work partially or won’t work at all.
This can become an issue when older Chromebooks won’t be able to update to the minimum device specifications outlined for a testing secure browser such as the RISE Secure Browser, TestNav (Utah Aspire Plus and ACT), DRC Insight (WIDA Access), etc. If the older testing device can’t update to the secure browser’s minimum specifications, it is possible that the testing platform will be glitchy or not work at all.
In some cases, more than 60% of a school’s Chromebooks are already expired. To see how many and what percentage of your school’s Chromebooks are expired, please click here.
As testing season approaches, school administrators will want to think about how to mitigate possible technology issues if the majority of the school’s Chromebooks that will be used for spring testing are expired. Also, school administrators are strongly encouraged to run an infrastructure test prior to ACT, RISE, and/or Utah Aspire Plus summative testing. If schools are unable to replace expired Chromebooks prior to spring testing and many of the school’s devices failed the infrastructure test, school administrators should develop a plan for rotating through newer devices to complete spring summative testing.
