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Robert Pogson reports:
Recent news about the popularity of Chromebooks with schools may seem puzzling.
Schools in Hillsborough, New Jersey decided to make an experiment out of its own program. Beginning in 2012, 200 students were given iPads and 200 students were given Chromebooks. After receiving feedback from both students and teachers, the schools sold off their iPads and bought 4,600 Chromebooks.
After all, a keyboard is a great input device and writing is one of the three "Rs" but why not just [buy] a notebook PC? The answer is that the high cost of maintaining the legacy PC is too great. Keeping content on the server makes the job easier and with Chromebooks, schools don't even need to own the server.
...then there's the malware, the slowing down, the re-re-rebooting with that other OS.
That makes the ChromeBook a winner in education and probably a lot of organizations large and small, even consumers. Of course, they could get those benefits with GNU/Linux but it would take more technical knowledge. Again Chromebooks win.
See iPad vs. Chromebook For Students
(Score: 2) by cykros on Wednesday August 13 2014, @04:09PM
Well, we're back to the mainframe-terminal model, though at least with this iteration there's a bit more that can be done on our modern "terminals".
Frankly, for educational use, it makes perfectly good sense. No point tying up human resources maintaining independent laptops/desktops when they're all aiming to be roughly identical anyway, without the need for software being installed directly on them in nearly all cases. I can't say I'm thrilled with the behemoth data-mining operation that is Google being handed our schoolchildren's data as a matter of school curriculum, but I think the minority that really cares is too small to be recognized.
The only other concern I could really see is that Chromebooks are not what the average person runs into in the office once they've left school and entered the workforce, but then again, I can't say I've run into much Windows 98 in the workforce myself either. Or Microsoft Word 97. But at least the interface...oh, right... That, and even if Microsoft decided not to ever change their interfaces, if anything, it's probably a better long term strategy to train kids to use a variety of interfaces, so that they learn to learn so use software, rather than just learn a specific set of tools and scream for help as soon as they're expected to use anything else.
It would be interesting to see school's given an option (perhaps by Google), to run their own centralized platform for the Chromebooks to use as opposed to the general Chrome store approach. Might open the door to interesting innovation in educational computing, not to mention assuage some privacy concerns. Bonus points for whoever beats Google to the punch and takes their lunch.
In any case, compared to there being iPads in schools, this is fantastic from every angle. That this was ever the case shows a severe deficiency with technologically literate educators in our school system. Throw that in the mix with inadequate Home Economics education, as well as Civics, and I think the real message we get from our institutions is "you're probably better off breeding in Europe".