GREENSBORO, N.C. — Several school districts across our state are putting an emphasis on getting working devices into the hands of both students and teachers.

Wake County purchased 85,000 devices, and will give them out during this school year and into the summer.

Durham Public Schools is working on distributing 20,000 Google Chromebooks to ensure every student has a working device.

Guilford County bought 79,000 devices earlier this year, and gave out thousands to teachers before the holiday break.

“Teachers need the capability of being able to hear their students, for them to be heard by their students,” Jess Thomas says, the education technology coordinator for Guilford County Schools Technical Services. “Their machines need to be able to handle large programs like Microsoft Teams, and they need to connect with their students virtually.”

Teachers say their newer, faster devices will be game changers for the second half of the year.

“Having this device is definitely gonna allow me to be able to expand what I’m already doing with teaching,” Matthew Killian, an English teacher at Penn Griffin High School says. “Having a bigger screen, having a faster device, a newer device, will definitely allow me to use some of the newer technologies.”

Some counties in North Carolina have also embraced the "bring your own device" movement, to help reach the one-to-one device ratio in classrooms.