Chromebooks at School

We will be deploying about 60 chromebooks next year and I am interested in talking and sharing our experience with other schools who are using them, or thinking about using them.

So far it seems like it will be fairly easy thing to do. We are a google apps school and set up a chromebook account to use as the master account on the machine. We use an iprisim for a filter and once it has connected to it, the student authenticates (as they do with any computer) and then off they go.

For research, writing and other google apps this seems like an ideal solution. Good battery life, about 60% cheaper than the macbooks we typically buy, and easy management.

The one big question is printing, we hope to use google print or HP's eprint but right it is a bit clunky. You have to copy the contents of what you want to print and then send it as an email to the printer. Does anyone have insights into making google print work more elegantly? I see this as a big question to answer as we get ready to let students and teachers print from phones and other mobile devices.

Thanks in advance for any help or thoughts you have to share.

-Jamie

Tags: chromebook

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Permalink Reply by Jim Heynderickx on April 19, 2012 at 11:01am

A quick update. We have a Samsung 5 Chromebook in for testing, and it's been good so far. We installed the "developer unstable" version of the new Aura Chrome OS this week, and it is a significant improvement because of the desktop, dock, and multiple windows functionality (as well as the terminal).

Jamie, what type of numbers are you thinking of next year? Also, do you have a favorite draw/paint program for the younger students, or do you just stick to the Google Apps options?

Thanks!

Jim

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Britto on April 19, 2012 at 11:57am

Jim,

Glad to hear it is going well and to hear positive things about Aura, we haven't looked at that but the features you mention sound promising.

We are probably looking at increasing chromebooks by another 3 carts or so for a total of about 200 machines. Our primary uses are as a browser and google doc'er so I am afraid I can't offer any insights into paint programs, we also primarily use them with middle and upper school students.