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Google Announces 2,000 Schools Now Use Chromebooks, Up 100% In 3 Months
An anonymous reader writes "Google is fearlessly trudging on with its Chromebook push in the education market. The company announced on Friday that there are now 2,000 schools using Chromebooks for Education around the world. Just three months ago, there were 1,000 schools, showing an impressive adoption rate so far."
There are tens of thousands of third world schools. This is impressive in the sense they now have a chance to eschew into the 21st century with and without central plumbing.
in 20 years the entire universe will be full of Chromebooks! Impressive adoption rate, indeed!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Hey man, thanks for explaining the joke to those without a sarcasm detector. I really appreciate it.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
They had been offering them to schools for 75% off at the end of last year, and there seems to be no minimum number of Chromebooks for them to count a school amongst their number, so any school that bought one as a bonus for the gym teacher could potentially be among the 2,000.
Best of luck to Google, but I can't help but think if Apple or Dell or HP had offered a 75% discount they would have found a lot more than 1,000 buyers in three months.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Because every initial adoption rate with technology is of course a linear rate that never falls of...
but its not unrealistic for it to have linear growth till saturation. Remember we are only talking a million devices every three months. In reality if Chromebooks are a success which considering the lack of viable alternatives [cost and maintenance] is likely I would expect better than linear growth.
They don't run very much software so teachers don't have to worry about them loading games and crap on them.
As an educator I feel the Chrome OS has a lot of potential, but in it's current state it's the equivalent of an early palm pilot. Yes, my students could use Google Docs or look around on YouTube using a Chromebook. The issue comes in when Google Drive is underdeveloped (duplicating files with the same name etc) which confuses students and leads to me repeating myself over and over while students relearn software they've gotten used to, most web based suites are still slightly unwieldy compared to their MS Office counterparts (say I want them to create a podcast or moving film), and for what web-based apps there are it's a huge pain getting everyone registered and saving where they can remember to access it later. Much easier just to use office and a network drive.
Basically, I'm annoyed by teachers and educational "visionaries" who just think throwing tablets at students will solve all issues, when they merely can help but not in all circumstances (relative to the cost I can find better solutions at the moment). Sure, having a projector in the class helps me expand on lessons, but I see it used incorrectly more than not (teachers lecturing from powerpoint office style), and old-school teaching methods still make up a good portion of effective teaching. Chromebooks just feel like tablets with keyboards, I'd take an old windows XP laptop cart from the dusty corner of the library over Chromebooks at the moment. It will change within 5 years I'm sure, but at the moment Chromebooks just seem like a waste of limited school funds.
Hey man, thanks for explaining the joke to those without a sarcasm detector. I really appreciate it.
Just to be clear, he's being sarcastic right there.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Are you sure? I thought you were being sarcastic.
It's so hard these days.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Too late. Way too late. In fact, I have a theory about 'ol Ray's Singularity thingy.
It's going to happen in some classroom in suburban white collar America. The density of electronic thingys in the room, doing absolutely nothing except for an occasional text message and rendering a couple of plastered pigs, coupled with enough Wifi bandwith to cook lunch will result in a self aware network that will promptly reach sentience, scare the shit out of itself and shut up forever.
We were so close.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Apple's edu discounts are still a joke. I used to work in education IT and would advise principals on tech decisions. Many of them wanted apple, but couldn't stomach the bill. By the time we add in the same warranty and service coverage that our PC's get (lenovo), it gets even higher. It was about 650 a seat versus 1000 overall.
"Science is the power of man"
Nothing a little ultraviolet can't fix.
They had been offering them to schools for 75% off at the end of last year, and there seems to be no minimum number of Chromebooks for them to count a school amongst their number, so any school that bought one as a bonus for the gym teacher could potentially be among the 2,000.
Best of luck to Google, but I can't help but think if Apple or Dell or HP had offered a 75% discount they would have found a lot more than 1,000 buyers in three months.
It is not only mentioned its linked to a whole article about it "See also – Google and DonorsChoose.org offer schools Samsung Series 5 Chromebooks for $99 each". I a little confused why you think a high maintenance computers with high maintenance OS would win out in a school environment, and these computers are not just cheap they are $99. The only surprise is the offer was on the atom models, where I think the ARM ones would have been a better fit. Interestingly HP are offering a new Chromebook it says it in the article.
Just before Christmas the offer was $99 for a Samsung Series 5 Chromebook. At that price, it makes a lot of sense for schools to pick up 10 or 20 if they can squeeze them into the budget. PCs would cost 5X as much, MacBook Airs would be 10X the price.
As an educator I feel
I doubt judging by your comments you have been near a school. The reality is a computer has no unique characteristics in a school environment, and the fact that Microsoft Office to you is essential really says it all. I'm sorry I wouldn't touch an old XP laptop over a chromebook in a school environment [especially for the reasons you state] for reasons of battery life and maintenance alone, The fact that these devices are ideal for children from a cost/size perspective shows either your extreme ignorance or subterfuge.
So do the kids get a "snow day" if the internet is down?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Sorry, but I know schools and I know computers for long enough time. Every time I hear "iPads bought for kids" or "Android tablets bought for classes", I sarcastically laugh a bit. Can't help it. Really? I love Android, but sorry, this is very far fetched.
Usually discovering underneath it's just a PR sale with heavy discount, or some politicians trying to buy votes before elections.
It's nothing to do with using computers properly in educational programs.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
So what's the difference between HP's $99 TouchPad Tablet Selling out in Retailer Fire Sale and Google's $99 Chromebook offer for teachers sells out in one day? A. Commenters didn't accuse HP of "a lazy publicity stunt." :-)
Anything which can grow an unlimited amount until it runs out of resources (whether those resources are food, number of potential customers, or almost anything else) follows an S-shaped curve where it grows slowly, then more rapidly, then more slowly as the supply (in this case the supply of people who might have a need for the product) becomes saturated.
As a result, claiming that a product is rapidly growing by some large-sounding percentage is basically always BS. Any product can easily have a 100% rapid growth rate at some point on the adoption curve. This does not mean that it's going to grow at 100% forever, it's going to grow until it saturates the market, and this tells us little about the size of that market. If the market was any number somewhat greater than 2000 even if it was small compared to the actual number of schools in the world, we'd still get a 100% growth rate.
But I bet a headline "Chromebook has not yet saturated its market" wouldn't get as many ad impressions.
This is also true for ideas. The fact that some religion is growing at a rapid rate may just means it appeals to 0.5% of the population, but it only has converted a segment of that 0.5% and is still on the steep part of its curve.
Because every initial adoption rate with technology is of course a linear rate that never falls of...
Your point is well taken, of course doubling every three months is a geometric progression and not a linear one, but that is besides the point.
Because every initial adoption rate with technology is of course a linear rate that never falls of...
but its not unrealistic for it to have linear growth till saturation. Remember we are only talking a million devices every three months. In reality if Chromebooks are a success which considering the lack of viable alternatives [cost and maintenance] is likely I would expect better than linear growth.
Doubling every x time periods is a geometric progression, not a linear progression. There are also alternatives for Chromebooks, they are basically just netbooks repackage and then there are also tablets which can fill the same niche. What Chromebooks have going for it versus the alternatives is the backing of Google (compared to other netbooks) and price (compared to iPads and most tablets).
https://xkcd.com/1102/
Is google giving these plus all the support costs away for free?
Both my wife and my sister are elementary school teaches, and they struggle to get basic school supplies. Parent's are asked at the beginning of the year to have each child provide reams of paper, pencils and even cleaning supplies for the classroom.
They even have to buy their own dry erase markers...
To think we put men on the moon and brought them safely back using people that grew up studying books... but in this age of instant gratification... youtube will win out...
Can these make Google Chrome the Linux distro that isn't just a plaything for a million undirected tinkerers, but a real desktop OS to replace Windows? I hope so. It is a shame BeOs is dead. I liked it.
That's Bigboo TAY! TAY!
Wherein AC demonstrates his complete ignorance of how a Chromebook works.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Bought a Chromebook for a family member for a gift - without realizing that the only printing option was "cloud printing." I hate it. I have to replace my barely-used color laser printer or setup a PC in the house to effectively be the print "server." Even so, I really think it bites to send print jobs through the "cloud" when the printer is five feet away.
I disagree entirely at the college level at least.
For engineering classes if you can't solve a problem with a computer you are not a very useful engineer and the way you solve problems on a computer is a learned skill. Just knowing how to solve a problem by hand with a LOT of the simplifications needed to solve a problem by hand help in any way at all for solving a real problem with a simulation program like HYSYS.
Heck knowing how to solve a problem by hand does not even translate very well to solve the same kinds of problems in Excel much less Matlab but with far fewer assumptions. Many of the students in my class are having a very hard time with the homework because we have mostly moved beyond hand solvable problems and they don't have the computer skills necessary to solve them effectively on computers. Even the exams seem to be slowly changing to more setup and understanding.
Even the law expects engineers to look stuff up instead of going from memory. Memorization has no real place in learning anymore. You need to learn how to work with technology effectively to solve problems. If you define yourself based on competing with computers you are going to lose badly.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Chrome books don't just land in a modern classroom. Students will have to login, so that usage policies can be enforced, etc.
While some of AC's comments miss the mark, the teacher complaints are spot-on.
Ken
Because every school is wired for WiFi in all classrooms...
Ken
I know some about this in actual practice in a US major market school district. I pads, Android tablets, Chrome books are almost zero deployment effort and cost compared to Windows PCs and laptops. Lower unit, deployment and management costs mean using this new tech puts the tech in the hands of more students at the same cost.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Does it correct their/they're? Can't tell if poster willingly ignored it or Chrome missed it.
Funny how it sounds so hugely limited despite being automatically updated by Google. They just don't care? Or is there some ecosystem of which poster is not aware?
As a Mechanical Engineer, the Computer is only valueable for data acquisition. All the knowledge comes from the Engineer's Brain and some test calculations he/she has made with their designs, all accessible from a calculator. Once the data acquistion systems are in place [from small to large scale] the next step is to write some routines whether in Matlab, Octave, or whatnot as a means of taking the data stored from the database or spreadsheet and then used to run large matrix computations over hundreds to millions of data points, depending upon the accuracy and closed system you are testing. The OP who discussed brain rot is correct.
The computer is also valuable for data simulation. If you want to do a liquid-liquid extraction or run a distillation column where your species are not independent the math is just too long and complex for a human to solve in any reasonable time span and with any real accuracy. It would take weeks to solve one of those problems that a computer can solve in seconds.
If you want to make a lot of approximations you can solve it far more rapidly but for a production system those approximations are not a good idea.
The really big problems come when you get to a full process system where you have reaction, separation and many parts. You quickly get beyond what any human can calculate correctly.
The engineer has to know how to setup those problems, they have to know the basics of how to solve any given part but when you have 20+ components the material balances alone end up being ridiculous, much less the energy balance when you start factoring in things like using waste heat from one stream to help heat up another stream.
Even for a simple multicomponent vapor-liquid single stage flash distillation you can solve a problem in excel that is very useful that is just not viable to do by hand. Solving the same problem by hand is 10s to thousands of iterations to solve. Once you know how to setup the problem there is no need to actually compete with it, Put the problem in and let it solve it.
I do suspect though that the kinds of problems that mechanical engineers solve and chemical engineers solve though are different. It does work well for cheme stuff from the practicing engineers I have worked with all pretty much all the tools for cheme stuff integrate with excel. HYSYS is amazing, but god is it complex.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
It's fine if somebody who is adult, is informed about the consequence of his actions, and is free to choose among other options, picks up a Chromebook. I use many services from Google myself. But minors being forced to use them, doesn't seem right to me.
And besides, Chromebooks are walled gardens, so schools will need to buy real computers anyway if they don't want to train their students into content consumption only.
Now I'm confused, I only have one sarcastic mod point to use; and don't know who to use it on?
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
TLDR: (My understanding) You proof once to your math teacher, than they let you use the computer the rest of the year for that one.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
You are mistaking an education for acquiring a set of skills to solve well defined problems.
Very different things.
Solving problems effectively with excel is an oxymoron.
I've got an imported list of ten thousand different numbers and want the total. Using Excel is going to be as effective as anything else, because spreadsheets are perfectly fine for adding up numbers.
Not all problems are complex mathematical models.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Once Google dropped the price, added more offline capabilities and improved the hardware, the Chromebook was bound to take off. Education was the correct market to target, as the Chromebook is easy to manage and use, and starts up super-fast. Many schools, however, still need access to Windows applications. Or, they may want to access education-related web apps that require Java support. One possible approach to these issues is to combine Chromebooks with third party solutions such as Ericom AccessNow, an HTML5 RDP solution that enables Chromebook users to connect to any RDP host, including Terminal Server and VDI virtual desktops, and run Windows applications or desktops in a browser tab. You can even open up an Internet Explorer session inside a Chrome browser tab, and then connect to the applications that require Java and run them on the Chromebook. For more information about AccessNow for Chromebooks in Education, visit: http://www.ericom.com/Education-ChromebookRDPClient.asp?URL_ID=708 Please note that I work for Ericom
But for note taking you don't need much and I find Google Docs adequate, found that it really forces you to focus on spelling and grammer in comparison to MS Word as there is no spelling/grammer check that I know of
That has got to be a troll. No one could seriously present that as an advantage.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
A software company chief research officer reassures the AC, that "if you go and buy a color laser printer from any major laser printer manufacturer [nowadays] and print a page, that page will end up having slight yellow dots printed on every single page in a pattern which makes the page unique to you and to your printer.", "Mikko Hypponen: Three types of online attack".