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."

Comments

Wow, at that rate

[oodaloop]

in 20 years the entire universe will be full of Chromebooks! Impressive adoption rate, indeed!

Re:Wow, at that rate if your an idiot

[oodaloop]

Hey man, thanks for explaining the joke to those without a sarcasm detector. I really appreciate it.

Little facts not mentioned...

[pushing-robot]

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.

Re:Little facts not mentioned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple and Microsoft "donate" thousands and thousands of obsolete and refurbished ipads and computers to schools every year in an effort to get kids to become reliant on their products. Here's one example. At least google is giving these schools modern hardware that isn't refurbished or otherwise unsellable crap.

As a teacher...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:As a teacher...

[Dcnjoe60]

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.

Your comments about it being easier to just use office are exactly why Microsoft basically gave Office away for almost free to schools. The idea was to make it so common that switching was hard to do. Face it, do students really need a word process that was designed for legal offices? Do they need a spreadsheet that was designed for engineers? Most of the components of Office are so overkill for primary and secondary education that one has to wonder why education is so in love with it.

There is an answer for that. Education is no longer about teaching kids math and science and history, but instead preparing them to enter the workforce. Microsoft Office is the dominant office suite in business so by indoctrinating children in how to use it, business doesn't have to expend their resources on training employees. We have accepted that knowing Microsoft Office is needed to succeed in life so now it is taught along with math, science, english and history.

This isn't new, it used to be a lot of people took typing in high school because it would help them in the business world. The difference is that once you learned how to type on a typewriter, you could type on any typewriter. The same is not true for office suites (other than the actual typing part). Excel and Lotus and OpenOffice were quite different except for the most basic of tasks. Same, too, for Word, WordPerfect and OpenOffice.

Apple, pretty much gave away computers to California schools, because they knew that the kids would grow up knowing how to use Apple computers and it would build a loyal customer base for them. Microsoft took it a step further and did it with Windows and Office to not just the West Coast, but the entire country.

And because of that, we have teachers (and school boards) believing it is too difficult to change, because whatever they are changing to is different. But, as a teacher myself, my role is not to indoctrinate students, but to enable them to think for themself. Yes, they use Microsoft products, but they are free to use other software, too. Yes, it does sometimes create more work for me, but in the days before computers, kids with poor penmanship did, too. That didn't mean that I didn't make the effort to teach them or grade their assignments.

Educators and education shouldn't be hesitant about investigating new ways of teaching. Giving how locked in most of us are to the established technologies, it is a wonder that we ever gave up the old chalk boards for dry erase and smart boards. That said, technology always needs to be kept in perspective. It is a tool to be used in teaching. It is a means to an end, not the end, itself.

Re:As a teacher...

[Ambassador Kosh]

I do have to give Excel a lot of credit though for being very good at engineering tasks. I have tried to use openoffice but it is just missing too many of the engineering type tools. The excel solver is VERY good and excel has a bunch of stats stuff needed.

Excel can even be integrated with various engineering tools like HYSYS or Matlab and do some truly amazing things. I do like openoffice but I also have to be realistic that for engineering tasks you need to learn excel. My professors all expect us to use Excel, Matlab, HYSYS and other tools for our homework. If you don't know how to use those tools the odds are you won't pass the class. The problems are too complex to solve by hand and while you can use any other tool you want the odds of doing it well enough to solve the problems is pretty low.

A regular user does not need even a tiny fraction of the power that excel has and could easily use even stuff like google docs.

One way or another education is going to radically change in the next 20 years. Schools are either going to adapt to more modern technology or at least the colleges will be replaced because they are so darned expensive. Something like the khan academy or other online learning systems are not any worse and usually far better than any of the large lecture classes.

Re:Wow, at that rate if your an idiot

[mooingyak]

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.

Re:I'm sorry

[Ambassador Kosh]

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.