The Chromebook Challenge

Over the course of the next several weeks you will be approached by a peer with a little black laptop that looks like this:

We'll call it "the football."

You will be challenged to use this Chromebook laptop exclusively for one week, instead of your Macbook.  We are considering Chromebooks for our 1:1 student laptops in the future and the aim of this challenge is to familiarize you with these devices so you will have a concept of what it would feel like from the student perspective.

If you are familiar with the Chrome web browser, then you are familiar with about 90% of the Chromebook.  It is really just a web browser with a small handful of laptop features.

The technology committee toured three area schools last month to determine if we should investigate Chromebooks further, and the findings were extremely positive.

Some reasons we are considering the Chromebook:

• Google apps integration - device intended to maximize collaborative learning, collaborative teaching, and student engagement.
• Classroom management - 8 second bootup, longer battery life, updates will likely go unnoticed
• Reduced distractions - less options for custom installations of apps and games
• Reduced costs with no loss in functionality - Chromebooks are significantly less expensive than Macbooks and provide excellent apps for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.

So your focus for your week with the football will be to use your web-based tools like Google Docs, Google Apps, Moodle, etc. to get your job done.

This post will be used as a forum to discuss your experiences with the device, both good and bad.  Please read the comments below and leave your own comments and questions.

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The Chromebook Challenge has already begun and here are some of the comments so far (please leave future comments in the comments section below):

• Due to a smaller screen, the font size can be changed. View how here and here.
• Printing can be done from a Chromebook, but requires the user to be logged into a Chrome browser on another computer, or would require the purchase of new "cloud-ready" printers.  Other schools have seen a dramatic reduction in the need to print once they started using Google Apps, and when they did need to print, they just shared those documents with their teacher and the teacher printed them out.
• Glare on the screen has bothered some users.  Adjusting brightness helps and some commented that this may not be an issue for younger eyes.
• It does indeed load quickly.
• A middle school student logged in with their school google account and played with it during the pride party...he loved it and thought it would do anything that he would need for assignments!
• Find Chromebook familiarization tips here.
• The chat feature is available in your gmail.  Your students need to accept a one-time invitation to chat from you before you can chat.  The chat feature is integrated with Google+, so you will need to create student "circles" in order to keep them separate from the rest of your contacts if you desire.
• The front-runner for a remote-viewing/classroom management tool is Hapara.  View more here.