New Zealand Chooses Google Chromebooks Over Microsoft Windows 10 For Education (betanews.com)

Google announced this week that it has signed an agreement with New Zealand's Ministry of Education to provide all state and state integrated schools in the country with Chrome Education licenses. The three-year agreement goes into effect on November 1 next month. From a report: "Starting on November 1, as part of an agreement with Google and the New Zealand Ministry of Education, all state and state-integrated schools across New Zealand will be able to start claiming Ministry-funded Chrome Education licenses to manage new and existing unmanaged Chromebooks. The Chrome Education license was developed to make device management in schools a breeze, so that teachers and students can focus on what's most important -- teaching and learning. Equipped with the Chrome Education license, schools can utilize essential education features to better support the many ways Chromebooks are used in the classroom," says Suan Ye, Head of Google for Education, Australia and New Zealand.

Comments

Its about management (CMC)

[labnet]

I did the training for CMC (Chrome Management Console) for a non school related project and I can see why schools are adopting it.
CMC is WAY easier for IT admins to use over active directory.
You can control exactly what version of chrome devices use, when they update, what wifi networks they can connect to, what apps are allowed, where devices are (on a map even!), high security built in and its cheap. Its as close to nirvana that overworked school IT pros can get.

AD will still win on corporate networks, but MS have lost the education space and the mobile/cell phone space. Unfortunately their office/Win10 grip will hold firm in the corporate space for the foreseeable future.

yes management not price and no spyware

[johnjones]

google education licenses in schools, does not allow google to use any user personal information (or any information associated with a Google Account).

basically edu licenses for both Microsoft and Google are free its the hardware etc that costs, microsoft had pretty much lost this one and even DELL know it... I repeat DELL sell chromebooks thats how much chromebooks are working in edu.

personally the quicker we can kill Active Directory and have proper security the better

Re:half a computer for the price of one

[wierd_w]

Not quite true.

A chromebook is a full computer. Just one that has 15 years behind the times performance, at a fantastically low price point, in a very portable package.

Nearly every variety of chromebook in the wild is capable of having its firmware extended to support booting true linux. Many are capable of booting windows after the extension as well. (It does not need to wholly replace the chromebook's proprietary firmware. The firmware has a region that is reserved for legacy booting, which is frequently unpopulated. The extension just puts the missing functionality in where it was designed to go.)

I am posting this from a liberated chromebook at this very moment in fact. Other than the weak CPU and GPU, the often crippled RAM compliment, and the notoriously small internal storage, it is perfectly functional for general purpose computing. The shitty internal storage can be supplemented with a spacious SD card that has been properly formatted, and careful use of zram and tmpfs in heavily written to areas.

Liberated chromebooks neatly occupy the niche that netbooks did a decade ago.