Chromebooks: 1 Million Sold in 3 Months
Isn't very impressive. Unless you consider who bought them.
iPads are still the apple of educators' eyes, but Google Chromebooks are becoming increasingly popular in the classroom.
Schools purchased more than 1 million Chromebooks — budget laptops that run Chrome OS — in the second quarter of 2014, Google announced on Monday.
The announcement reflects a larger trend among educators looking to bring low-cost laptops into schools to help facilitate learning.
http://mashable.com/2014/07/21/chromebooks-schools/
Microsoft can't have that. Let's make some calls ...
But smarter schools will consider the life cycle costs ...HP also recently announced it would bring to market a budget Windows laptop for $199, and $249 laptops from Acer and Toshiba were announced, giving Microsoft Windows machines direct competitors to Chromebooks.
The reporter says 'devices' but refers to the real issue, life cycle management. So while this is true ...Schools are looking for low-cost devices, and Google's cloud-based services such as Google Docs and Drive are free and cut down on software upkeep.
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/20 ... ooses.htmlChromebooks could undergo wear and tear from students, too; schools don't have to worry about repairs for the most part, considering the low price tag.
The more attractive truth is ...
From a home user's perspective, these attributes spell Limitations. And I'm not a big fan (nor a huge critic). But from an educational perspective, it has great utility. You can't really fuck-up a Chromebook the way you can a windows machine. And any hack done is stupid-easy to undo. Far less things to break. Nothing to back-up or maintain. All you need is a gmail account and you have access to a full office suite. The most the IT side has to worry about is maintaining the net-nanny at the firewall side of the school's internet connection.The affordability and easy maintenance of Chromebooks clinched the deal — we could buy three Chromebooks for the price of a single desktop computer and the district’s small IT team wouldn’t have to struggle to keep up with the repairs and updates on aging PCs," Andrade wrote. "We would also save on support time and costs since Chromebooks update automatically."
The school district uses Google Apps for Education so students have an email address, as well as Google Drive to move student documents off of its internal file storage system.
From google's perspective, they should be giving them away. They should create an education program to get a million a month in as many schools as possible, complete with various curricula.
It is a chew-toy for young mind-teeth. Get these kids to cut their teeth on Chrome, and you'll always have a place in their home.
There may still be a place for 'high order' machines for some things. For example, I can't really see much a programming course taught on a chromebook but I'm sure there are apps that could accommodate some of the introductory stuff.