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Chromebooks Overtake iPads In US Education Market
SmartAboutThings writes In Q3 2014, IDC notes that Google shipped 715,500 Chromebooks to U.S. schools while Apple shipped 702,000 iPads. Thus, Apple's iPad has lost its lead over Google's line of Chromebook laptops in the U.S. education market as Google shipped more devices to schools last quarter. While analysts say [registration required] that this advantage for Google's Chromebooks can be attributed to their low cost, the presence of a physical keyboard has also been seen as an important factor.
And good riddance to it. It can go on the ash heap next to the network computer, Windows RT and .NET everywhere.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
When you have a device that lasts maybe 5 years of use, adding about $100 per child per year just for the device really starts to add up.
I suppose chromebooks could be used for some entry CS-like education and obviously word processing, but I have no idea what educational aid an iPad contains besides maybe text books, but if that was the case, I'd rather have schools endorsing an epaper solution being far cheaper, energy efficient, and probably better on those poor kid's eyes (staring at screens for 8 class hours and how many home hours?).
Bye!
If you try to get a Chromebook for your kid you cannot use it because you cannot create a google account for a minor and that is a prerequisite for using a Chromebook. Been there done that and Google was utterly useless for resolving this catch 22. Given this fiasco it is a disgrace that educators have let Google slide their camel under the tent.
My daughter has one. It's great that she has something portable with a keyboard. Still, it's not very powerful. That may be the PC gamer in me though.
just lie about your kid's age
Can parents opt out their children of these big brother data gathering devices?
They're about half the price and they have a management back end that's friendly to IT departments. That's all there is to it. Unfortunately, they're cheap, featureless pieces of crap that break constantly due to horribly cheap parts because they're just awful pretend laptops but every school district I know of passes the hardware failure cost onto the kid who "broke" it even if they didn't break it. What a great system.
let Google slide their camel under the tent.
I think you mean "Let Google slide their camel's nose into the tent".
Unless you're making a reference to some weird sex thing I don't know about.
Summation 2
And the winner is . . . VHS! Again. Enjoy wallowing at the bottom folks, you won the race.
Up next, access to health care, quality education, affordable housing, and equal rights under the law.
If you sell more product in one quarter, it doesn't mean you overtook your rival, it just means your rival has already sold millions of iPads and schools are saying "no thanks, we'll wait till we need a iPad upgrade".
I love my iPad but if I had to use it as my primary tool for completing schoolwork and taking lessons, I would lose my mind.
This one is a bit of a no-brainer. There is the keyboard, the trackpad, the cost, and the screen-size. Also many sites require such niceties such as right clicking, or click and dragging.
But what is even more silly is when Microsoft pathetically tries to strongarm a school system into using its wayyyyy expensive surface technology. It is not only expensive on a per unit basis but is used by Microsoft to engage their whole licensing nightmare engine with one upsell after another of enterprise crap.
So while any school system that gets iPads is just wasting its money, any school people who get the surface should be fired for wasteful incompetence.
Right out of the gate, Chromebooks are easier to administer at an "enterprise" level. Yes, the school district needs to "sell its soul to get the management console (domain control and device management.) Google has been helpful with support for any needs we have. Getting in touch with and help from apple for issues is near impossible.
Chromebooks come with some good tools for using existing infrastructure without too much of a learning curve. Getting teachers to open and use a spreadsheet on an ipad is a lot more tricky than opening the same file on a chromebook.
Bottom line, if you are dealing with more than 5 devices, chromebooks save a ton of time and energy.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
I think you mean "Let Google slide their camel's nose into the tent".
While I do not remember the exact saying, it is based on the observation that once a camel gets its nose into your tent, it'll be completely inside shortly. So since the camel's nose leads to an entire camel, root AC's terminology indicates a timeframe that the intrusion is complete, rather than in progress.
On the other hand, there's no reason it couldn't be a weird sex thing also.
On the flip side, I'm really seeing a move towards Google Apps for my middle schooler. Virtually all his projects are done as part of a group, and they work from online documents. He doesn't need the high end features of Word or Excel: he needs a way to have multiple people work on something over two weeks. It's easy for the teacher as well- just send them the link and you're done, no papers to lose.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Up next, access to health care, quality education, affordable housing, and equal rights under the law.
What about "Net Neutrality" ?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yeah, but iPAD isn't BetaMax....it's LaserDisc.
Google for education can have minors so it is not really an issue. What part were you unhappy with, that you are not allowed to have your kid sign a contract, or that you did not do your research on the chromebook? Why didnt you just create a google account in your name and let him use it?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The schools that distribute the chromebooks can set up student accounts, no problem.
Were any Macs sold to schools, or was it just Chromebooks and iPads?
Probably no Windows devices either.
Schools are just looking for a cheap method to deliver educational materials digitally. Chromebooks have some tools and support for managing the content. The maintenance of the device is simple, which is probably a plus to schools that don't have much of a budget for an IT department. However, I wonder if the savings are really significant over old fashioned textbooks. I really doubt there is any educational benefit over traditional methods of education. I always kind of agreed with Clifford Stoll that the best way to learn Astronomy was to go look at the stars. As long as it doesn't replace other elements of a curriculum, then I'm okay with it. Really doubt any serious CS education is going on with Chromebooks. Wouldn't learning mathematics be as beneficial to a future CS student as writing a Hello World program.
Yes you can, it lets you create managed accounts for kids.
Awesome solution to the 10+m school aged kids.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I talked to a primary teacher this Thanksgiving (IIRC, 6th grade) about chromebooks in her class.. She loves it, kids do thier stuff in Google Docs can turn it in electronically, etc. Reports are done as presentations, so in part it is reducing a lot of paper...
Though I wonder what the long term cost for society will be. Possible dependency on on-line services?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I would imagine the bit he is unhappy about is that as a parent he is unable to go and buy his child a Chromebook for a laptop because it requires a Google account and unless he lies about the child's age he cannot create a Google account for said child. Yet Google are pushing Chromebooks as a great laptop for kids which I believe it is. However you can only use one if it comes through the school. Which if your school does not provide laptops for your child or provides an iPad which is useless for typing an essay you are forced to lie.
As a parent you should be able to create a Google account for a child that is a subsidiary of and/or linked to the parents account. Simple really.
Unless and Until the Chromebook allows access to local drives, it is useless to me. But that doesn't make it useless to educators. For schools, it can be deployed at less than 70% of the cost of an equivalent windows machine and managed at less than 90% of the cost. Google Docs is very intuitive; far more so than Word. It is easy to use, cheap, reasonably durable, and easy to manage. In a nutshell, it is a win.
As a side note, I don't think they'll ever allow access to the local network. Google Drive is their money maker.
So they outsold iPad one quarter? And now they are the leader? What about the previous 15 quarters going back to the ipad launch? They have a LOOOOOONG way to go to replace Ipads.
I've been to a couple of meetings in UK schools where Chromebooks are being marketed agressively and potentially given away or sold at cost. If that's happening in the US, it's bumping up the numbers.
All the class material and class management are in the 'cloud' [that is at Google central] so 'you don't have to worry about anything' and the total cost of ownership is near-zero.
What's wrong with this picture? Plenty, vendor lock-in, third party and [in the UK] foreign control of a vital resource and not understanding whatever long game Google is playing, just to start with. They're maximising shareholder value or about to, they are not a charity. And as for 'don't be evil' my a***.
Above all, we can make [or repurpose] Linux books, quite easily.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Eww...sex with a camel's nose? That's just disgusting.
"should be able to" or "it would be a nice feature"?
You don't have to lie about the kids age, just set up an additional account in your own name and allow the kid to use it. What real advantage would a subsidiary account have?
Most kids do the following:
1- write reports
2- make presentations
3- do research on the web
4- read books
Tablets stink for #1 and #2. Even for #3, things like cutting-and-pasting text for note taking is a PITA on a tablet. The only conceivable thing tablets are better for is reading books - but (at least at my kids school) they already have most of the books they use yearly in print.
In addition, everything on the chromebook is stored on line. When a kid can start something at school, work on it at home on the family PC, then continue on mom's laptop when we need the PC for something else, you really see how convenient it is, and finally turn it in by sending a link to the teacher. Yes, there are drawbacks (the internet being down, less privacy, dependence on one company), but it is so damn convenient for all parties involved. It is a case of technology making things easier.
I'm surprised that so few people point this out. Chrome OS is nothing but a standard linux distribution. It's even gentoo-based, so the "nerdiest" should be happy. And zillions of kids are going to learn it, they'll probably know it better than windows.
However, as a linux user, I've always hoped that my favourite kernel would become popular in a different way. Seeing it promoted by an NSA-friendly corporate giant doesn't really comply with my view of what linux should have been. Whatever.
Why didn't you just create a google account in your name and let him use it?
As someone who successfully parented a child through her teenage years, how the hell else could you give your child appropriately guided access to the Internet? The web is full of dangers for grandparent newbies who had been around the block several times before most slashdot readers were even born. It would be totally irresponsible, a complete case of child abuse, to turn a kid who has not yet even learned how to use his or her moral compass loose on the web without close adult supervision.
Very few, if any, kids who cannot yet get a drivers license should have their own accounts on the web. Let those accounts be in a parent's or guardian's name, where there is at least the possibility of intervening before the kid gets sucked into trouble.
Will
I think of it more as a Viewmaster.
Okay, maybe LaserDisc. Either way, it's a really bad tool.
Source: IT Director who was there during the launch frenzy of iPads. Employees demanded them...I even had people in my office CRYING because they 'needed' one. Once everyone had their iPad (and it was no longer a status symbol) their actual usage was limited to email and web browsing. Both of which can also be performed on a phone.
iPads were one of the biggest wastes of money during my time of IT purchasing. They were also the most heavily demanded.
Marketing...
No reason to lie.
We've had great success with our Chromebook deployment. For most computing tasks, they are cheap and easy. They boot quickly and management is a snap.
Microsoft is now trying to duplicate this success. They are giving away Office 365 E1 subscriptions to schools and non-profits. I will grant MS this, their online versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are quite good and closely mimic the desktop versions.
Now for the bad:
1. Microsoft's "version" of a chromebook is something like the HP Stream 14. It's about the same price and about the same quality. Unfortunately, these do not run a locked-down/hardened version of windows. They run the same desktop OS everything else does. This means you need AV, imaging tools....etc to mass deploy these things. Chromebooks don't need any of that stuff.
2. The OS that ships in the cheapy laptops cannot be joined to a traditional domain. User management and policies for these devices cannot be centrally managed. Google's management tools are fantastic.
3. Logins everywhere. To login to these cheapy windows devices, you need to either have local accounts, or a "live" or "microsoft account". This means you need a "live" login to get past the login screen, and an Office 365 login to do any work - it's madness.
In-short, Microsoft is jumping into cloud computing and chasing the incumbents in a half-assed way. Situation normal over at Microsoft.
Our president François Hollande made promises:
Starting September 2016, every highschooler will get a tablet beginning from the 5th grade (typically aged twelve)
Another promise, they will also learn to code. .. but why give them a tablet and not some other device that would allow them to apply what they learnt..
Great
We citizen are told again and again that there is no money, but there is money for buying gadgets..
We are going through the same mistakes that were done years ago in other countries...
2 years ago my son was 3 years old and beginning to go to school, and guess what was in the classroom ? A fracking interactive whiteboard. I have serious doubts about the educational benefits, especially for young childs. Of course teachers weren't even formed..
But, you know, our governments have no money..
Let's see, schools across America bought millions of iPads these last few years, and arguably they have a useful life of, uhm, several years right? Couldn't it be that the demand has abated because the need that can be addressed by a $400+ device has largely been met?
Now schools are buying slightly more chromebooks (2% more by my calculation, 715K chromebooks vs 702K iPads), hurrah! They cost half as much as an iPad and early reports are that their build quality 'inhales deeply' and is ill-suited to the rigors of K-12 education. I know of one deployment in an upscale school district where Dell Chromebooks have a 15% failure rate due to student 'abuse' - in 2 months! (That's 60 chromebooks that had to be sent out for depot repair in a deployment of ~400 chromebooks to 8th graders.)
I think it's fair to say that chromebooks while less expensive than an iPad also have correspondingly shorter useful lives...
iPads are *great* as assistive devices for the handicapped/severely challenged student, unlike the chromebook in many cases, because of the iPads touchscreen interface.
Ken
iPads by themselves suck for serious work. (insert fat fingered fanboi stabbing troll button)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I think of it more as a Viewmaster.
Oh, come on. It's at least Lite-Brite.
The Chromebooks aren't going to last more than a few months. Ever try any of these pieces of junk at BestBuy?
No, I haven't. But I did buy a Samsung Chromebook and I have been carrying it around and using it.
It seems no more fragile than my old Atom-based laptop, which is still in perfect working order.
They are equipped with dim TN LED-lit panels, low resolution, and the keyboards are the most uncomfortable things ever.
Huh, which model in particular are you thinking about? Because IMHO my Samsung Chromebook is kind of like a Mac laptop, only less expensive. Both use similar "chiclet" keyboards, both have multi-touch touchpads (and both *use* the multitouch gestures). The Chromebook costs less, weighs less, and has long battery life; and it is adequate for the things I usually want to do when I'm out and about.
The screen doesn't have a "wow" factor but neither am I suffering when I use it. The 1366x768 resolution is pretty common for a device that size.
You make it sound horrible, but so far I love the thing. It's far better than my old Atom-based laptop (which struggles even to play a YouTube video).
But I digress, I've always hated the "chiclet keyboard" that all the laptop vendors have switched to.
You can thank Apple for that one. They did it first and then everyone else followed.
It does allow for a thinner laptop but I wish there were more laptops still made that have more ergonomic keys.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
You forgot one thing:
0. Play (educational) games
Ever heard of 'Brain Pop' or 'Study Island'? If not, do you remember playing Oregon Trail in the '80s? If you told most public school teachers you were going to prohibit students playing games, even educational games, on computers, far fewer teachers would fight to get computers in their classrooms...
Ken
"That's the nose of the camel, hump to follow"
Ken
Yes but then if someone's son draws a picture of a young girl eating a banana and uploads that to the cloud under the fathers name, they can go to jail for it or get investigated at least. Or it a story containing a gun and a bomb is uploaded, etc.
The long arm of the law is too long these days.
There is no "vendor lock-in" with Google products.
I've been using a Chromebook for a while. I am a web developer. This particular machine does not have Crouton or a standard Linux distribution on it, just the stock OS. I would probably have opted for one of those, but this machine has a broken power button, which prevents it from being put into developer mode. So far I have not run into any insurmountable problems, and I think overall that it has been an improvement in my workflow.
Chrome OS has a number of useful features. The longest part of rebooting or updating the machine is waiting for your browser tabs to reload. You may say that this is uncommon and that you don't care how long it takes, but on the other hand no one will miss that wait time either. Having files backed up automatically is quite pleasant. If and when you are in the unfortunate position of having a machine die on you, sitting down to any Chromebook and typing in your password will restore your files, bookmarks, browser history, desktop background, and all installed programs in a couple minutes. The biggest downside is printing; it's possible if you have another computer or a Cloud Print ready printer (yeah right), but it's not fun under any circumstances.
Tips:
Either Google Docs or Office Online do a pretty good job of handling office tasks, with one exception: neither will open a password-protected excel spreadsheet. For that I have been using RollApp, which does exactly what it says on the tin but is a bit slow. For web development, Chrome OS includes an SSH client. You don't need more than a VPS and vim, do you? You do? Well, in that case, you should be more than happy with Cloud9 Web-based IDE (Chrome Store link). You get your own little linux environment for each workspace, already set up for various development tasks. The editor is pretty similar to Sublime Text, and cloning projects from GitHub is fast and easy. You can also connect to a private VPS and do whatever crazy things you like there. Loading up a workspace restores all opened files and terminal windows, including any terminal programs/output. Run your tests, close the window, come back a week later, and the test output is still there. If you happened to be exploring something using a CLI interactive interpreter, that will still be running when you get back to it. Also, the workspaces are separate instances: developing locally I would always have to set up a new user, add it to the www-data group, set up its own fcgi pool, add an entry in /etc/hosts, and so on and so forth. Setting up lxc or nspawn containers makes this marginally easier. Letting your IDE handle it for you is brilliant.
Using a Chromebook does not mean giving up your ability to use (or create) complex software, but you will have to change your workflow. There is probably a fair amount of software that is not available on the web or even via SSH, but I think that most people's needs would be satisfied. I left my other Chromebook lying around the house for the roomies to use, and I don't think any of them noticed that it wasn't running Windows -- probably never used it for anything but web browsing. Your IT professional may need a XAMP stack, but he doesn't necessarily need it on a local machine, and there are some real advantages to not doing so, even if you skip the cloud-based IDE and just do a VM.
I have no connection to any company listed above except as a satisfied user.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
For some reason, this reminded me of a passage from "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. The computing world seems more and more divided between a small creative class (scientists, artists, programmers, engineers, writers, et cetera) who mostly use PCs (laptops, desktops, workstations, convertibles like the Surface) and a much larger consumer class (people who primarily use toy computers like the Apple TV, Xbox, iPad, iPhone, et cetera).
I don't doubt that tablets have the potential to be useful in education, but I really hope that schools don't start treating education as a consumable product, like a movie or webpage.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Surface pro 2s have been selling for as low as $300. That is $200 cheaper than an iPad Air, and they come with a digitizer (you know, so you can actually take real notes) and you can add a well-designed keyboard cover.
If you're an engineer looking for a high-end ultrabook, then yes, the Surface Pro can easily set you back $2000. However, for schoolwork, Microsoft actually seems to be providing a much better alternative than the iPad. An actual PC tablet running an i3 (not a toy running ARM) with an actual active digitizer and the ability to run desktop open source and commercial software.
Microsoft got where it is today because its enterprise tools are so good. In a small school district, with a part-time IT guy, I could see this being a real mess but if a school has a properly staffed, full time IT department, it is not that hard to manage these things through active-directory and other enterprise tools.
Actually, that is why most universities have switched from local administration to Google or Microsoft for email and such, and Microsoft seems to be winning that battle. You can create one login for the student for their entire tenure in the district, and that can include active directory logins, office 365, and email, so they can use that login on tablets, school computers, and the city library.
Of course, those are major universities and colleges. I'm not sure how well it scales down to a school district serving a town of 3000 people with 300 students K-12.
Schools use Google Apps for Education. It's designed for use by school aged kids.
Soon, Apple's only remaining market niche will be your mom.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
What we are now realizing is that the value is largely OUTSIDE the device, and is based on what it can find on the Interweb, as well as from any IT resources at the school. Think about it. Now a school can autonomously decide what and how to create and post information, rather than waiting for some company to decide what its allowed to do and how it can be used. Decommoditizing information is a great thing for capitalist (a la MP3 / iPod etc) but not for unrestricted educational environments. I can see kids will gravitate to all aspects of the device. Creating, sharing, repairing, upgrading, protecting understanding. Sounds like a great match for a school system. A closed system would be ho-hum, and turn those eager, unrestricted minds off.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
Microsoft's legacy architecture means that there will (realistically) never be a really secure version of windows. To properly secure windows (as I did when I ran a network for a bank) you need to disable practically everything and limit what the end user can do online. In those scenarios, Microsoft operating systems can work, but it is far from ideal.
The "walled garden" approach of companies like Apple and Google is fantastic for organizations like schools. We can allow staff and students to run apps from a safe repository in the cloud. Their data lives in the cloud - decoupled from the local operating system - and even the local network. This combination of control and flexibility as well as the walled garden approach is ideal for schools.
To be fair, this is possible in the windows world, but it requires quite a lot of administration and work. It requires group policies, careful delegation of permissions, patch management, anti-virus, disk imaging...etc....etc.
The Google Apps ecosystem does away with all of this - and the cost benefits are undeniable.
We have bought Samsung, Dell, and HP chromebooks - the Dell's seem to be built the best. In two years in a school with 150 users, we've had one broken power connector.
They are durable enough. And at less than $300 - all in - they are easily replaceable.
eMate 300.
netbook
... I shake my head at public schools fundraising to buy chromebooks.
Oh yes, the documents as you say, will be fine. The apps and infrastructure around them and any interactive content will not, for example. There's a certain amount of lock-in with anything that's cloud, except something open-source from top to bottom.
As for 'no lock-in' generally, try moving away from gmail.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
that is a prerequisite for using a Chromebook
Hmm I must be imagining this guest button then.
As far as NEWS is concerned, the only thing that is interesting (in that it is counter intuitive) is how a toy was the #1 purchase in a serious endeavour at all. As far as I am concerned it is obvious that a machine that is designed for content creation should be the choice in a field that by definition encourages creation, not just consumption. The iPad has been shoehorned into a content creation role because of its apparent ubiquity. It may as well have been a Nintendo DS as an iPad if you aren't interested in content creation (and if you aren't then how do you expect children to learn: I hear, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I understand!).