
Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps - edtechstrats
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/technology/google-education-chromebooks-schools.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
======
watmough
I have a daughter in the local school district.

They use Lenovo Chromebooks which are built like brick sh*thouses with proper
full-travel keyboards and touchscreens.

Chromebooks work, and I am a big fan of them in education. I have a pretty
good idea how hard our teachers work, and I'd hate to think of the Windows
bullshit being imposed them, like it's imposed on me and my coworkers.

Chromebooks free up teachers and IT admins from Windows update administration,
anti-virus software install and administration at the computer level, and from
most other malware other than browser extension malware.

Google Docs is incredible and a huge step forward to the point that where
possible, most of my own notes are accessible to me from anywhere I can get
into my Google account.

For a child, this means they no longer have to schlep a laptop around. Just an
account and a Chromebook or other thin client are needed.

I'm a big fan of Microsoft's recent changes, and generally a pretty heavy
Windows user warts and all, but it's interesting that Microsoft have never
been able to make say cross-machine sync'd folders work, despite pushing it
for like 15 years, whereas DropBox has built a giant business from it.

~~~
Roritharr
OneDrive works, if one wants to use it. It just came too late.

~~~
patja
I've been through too many OneDrive snafus to invest more effort into making
it work or trusting it for anything. Failed syncs, never-ending syncs, and it
has hosed up my OneNote notebooks such that I have a whole set of duplicate
notebooks I have tried and failed to fix, which all say "This section isn't
available yet. It was added from another device. You'll be able to use it when
that device syncs. Section was last modified at (some date over 2 years ago)"

And I am a bona fide Microsoft fanboy former employee of 15 years!

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Is the onenote data not available as XML?

------
matt2000
A couple personal anecdotes related to this: I volunteer at a school to help
maintain around 300 iPads and ~20 iMacs. It's awful. (I am a longtime Mac user
at home BTW). The management tools around updating the iPads, installing apps,
and configuring users are all terrible, unreliable and old. It leads to
teacher frustration and less use of the equipment in the classroom. The only
thing worse are the windows computers, which are in such bad shape that they
just stopped using them.

An example: To install an app for all students on the iPads, we need to plug
them all in to a big USB hub, then connect a Mac with management software to
it and run a sync procedure. It fails on about 10% of the devices, so we run
it again. Each run takes several minutes. There are over-the-air methods for
doing this, but they're corporate solutions not provided by Apple and are
pretty expensive.

So given all that, if ChromeBooks promise per-user customization and document
storage with much simpler administration, it's no wonder they're taking over.

~~~
rebootthesystem
>The only thing worse are the windows computers, which are in such bad shape
that they just stopped using them.

Sounds like they are old and haven't been maintained properly.

I have experience with small (~200) and large (~6,000) professionally
maintained Windows installations. They operate like a finely tuned engine,
allowing you to focus on your core work.

And that's the key. There are hacks who call themselves "IT" and there are
true IT folks who have the training and knowledge to do things right the first
time around.

Prior to my first experience with professionally managed Windows installations
I had completely ignored that entire world. We built our own computers --save
laptops-- and every installation, save the initial image, was locally managed
by the engineer running that machine. Works great. No question about it.

From experience with 20~30 machine installations, I can't remember a single
serious issue in, say, 20+ years other than a hard drive failure. No real
hardware failures outside of that. No viruses or any such problems in, again,
20+ years and multiple generations of OS and hardware. The key, I'll guess, is
to buy good hardware and install good software.

And so, when I read accounts that describe nightmares I have to wonder what
people might be doing. I don't understand it at all. I've been using PC's
since the very original IBM PC and I can't remember a nightmare scenario,
ever.

As for Mac's and iPads. I've had experience with ~200 seat Mac installations.
They have the same issues PC's might have. The only "nightmare" I could point
out is that, generally speaking, Mac users are utterly clueless. This excludes
developers, of course. I saw IT burn time with the dumbest issues, whereas the
PC users in the same business (about 200 as well) really only consumed IT time
when there were hardware or software installation issues for the most part.

iPad's? I consider them to be useless for but a narrow set of business or
educational applications. Cash register? Sure. Authoring documents and doing
heavy web work? Nope. In general terms I am pretty down on tablets. I think
they've manage to ruin desktop software. The transition of something like
Skype from a computer-class application to mobile-first turned the program
into a circus act that uses 10x more screen space for everything. Touch, as
far as I am concerned, for business and other applications, is bullshit.

Chromebook is a far better choice, one that is easy to manage and deploy.

~~~
thomastjeffery
> Sounds like they are old and haven't been maintained properly.

That is the heart of the issue. Maintenance should _not_ be so difficult. It
has generally been a non-issue for most Linux distros _for over a decade_.
Windows maintenance is difficult on purpose. There is an entire economy based
on windows maintenance. It's not just a headache, it's like shooting yourself
in the foot.

> There are hacks who call themselves "IT" and there are true IT folks who
> have the training and knowledge to do things right the first time around.

Since we are talking about public schools, I accept the reality that there
will, more often than not, be a "hack" employed. Even so, their job should be
_that_ easy. The reason that it is _not_ is that Windows promotes a culture of
"hacks" and misinformation. GNU/Linux has the _opposite_ culture, and it's
_free_.

~~~
matt2000
And in my case, there are no IT employees at all. For some reason there is
budget available to buy the hardware and none to maintain it. This is changing
slowly but for the moment it's the unfortunate reality. So it's up to teachers
and volunteers to try and make things work, and as you were saying if things
are too difficult they just stop using them.

And a side note, I was a Windows user for a decade and have now been a Mac
user for a decade and the level of maintenance required for a Mac is _easily_
an order of magnitude less than Windows.

~~~
thomastjeffery
> I was a Windows user for a decade and have now been a Mac user for a decade
> and the level of maintenance required for a Mac is _easily_ an order of
> magnitude less than Windows.

That's still generally the case, but it's worth mentioning that over the last
decade, Windows has improved significantly. It's still the worst OS, but it's
a lot closer to OS X now.

After decades of innovation, we now have operating systems like NixOS and Guix
that are inherently maintainable in ways Windows and OS X can only dream of.
If we had a user-friendly NixOS (or Guix) for schools, etc. it would be
_trivial_ , even for teachers and volunteers, to maintain hundreds, or even
thousands of systems.

------
mark_l_watson
I have mixed feelings about this. Personally, working as a contractor at
Google was one of the interesting jobs I have had and I generally like Google.

That said, after reading Dave Eggers' excellent book "The Circle" last year
and having watched the movie yesterday, I was reminded of the dangers (even if
fictional in the case of the book) of a monopoly controlling knowledge. The
book/movie is obviously about Google and information monopolies even if the
fictional company is named The Circle. Buying the education business with
free/inexpensive services definitely increases Google's chance of being the
information monopoly.

Personally I like to pay for services. I pay for FastMail and just use GMail
as a backup email. I pay for Evernote instead of using free offerings like
Keep. I pay for Office 365 to get lots of cloud storage and the Office apps
for the rare times when I need them. I pay for using GCP and I buy movies and
TV shows from Google Play and Apple. It is a cliche, but I like to be the
customer and not the product.

I understand that School districts are on a tight budget, so it is
understandable that they make use of free (or priced under-market) services.

~~~
webwanderings
Did the invention of printing press made them a monopoly? Google does not
generate information; they facilitate it. The more the information is free,
the more it will be converted to knowledge by these same schools and students.
Your comparison of it to your values of buying things for yourself, is
misleading.

~~~
danblick
I'm glad you're questioning that assertion, but I don't think your counter-
argument is very convincing. The economics of the printing press were
different than the economics facing Google. For example: Google search
benefits from network effects (clicks are used to improve future search
results). Google mostly provides information goods (zero marginal cost of
production), but books aren't really a perfect information good.

Google _is_ darn near close to a monopoly on search (at least, Peter Thiel
made that the premise of Zero to One), which isn't to say they're also a
monopolist in every other field they're in.

~~~
webwanderings
I don't know what your definition of "perfect information good" really is, but
books have been converting information into knowledge for hundreds of years.
Before the printing press, scribes used to hand-duplicate. The invention of
printing press effectively changed the whole scene (just as the searching on
the Internet changed Internet). Irrespective of the concerns of privacy etc,
Google provides the best sauce of technology which facilitates searching the
information (which converts to knowledge). As far as I can see, Google isn't
in the business of creating knowledge.

~~~
danblick
The term "information good" is from economics:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_good)

An information good is one for which it's very cheap to produce additional
units. Unfortunately, I'm probably abusing the term, since books are listed as
an example of information goods. The idea is that most of the cost of
producing the book goes into the content (writing, editing, etc.) and actually
printing one additional book is cheap. (When I said books are "imperfect"
information goods I meant that they still require paper and shipping and
retailing and such, but it's probably just a bad use of the term.)

There's a fantastic book about the economics of information goods called
"Information Rules" (
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/087584863X](https://www.amazon.com/dp/087584863X)
). Software is an information good so this covers some topics relevant to the
digital economy. My favorite part is the chapter on lock-in. In particular the
discussion around the equation:

profits from a customer = quality advantage + switching costs

which puts "(marginal) goodness of your product" on equal footing with "pain
you can inflict on your customer for leaving".

~~~
webwanderings
The original topic was not on the topic of economics, rather, the monopolies
any invention creates. The economics of things have existed alongside
everything else in human history. The point was whether Google is a monopoly
in the context of information. My contention was to identify the fact that
Google only facilitates the information (like what printing press did to the
information people were keeping orally, or through scribes).

If Google is the monopoly in the sense that the OP describes, then a unified
Internet itself is a bigger monopoly. Break apart the monolith of the Internet
itself, and you have more player contending equally in facilitating search
etc.

------
WalterBright
> he said: “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the
> quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I
> don’t know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right
> there.”

Wow. Back when I worked for Boeing on the 757 design, there were engineers
that were "formula pluggers" who pulled formulas out of manuals and used them.
Then there were engineers who understood the formulas - where they came from,
what assumptions they were based on, and how to derive them.

The latter used the formulas correctly, the former often blindly misused and
misapplied them.

Googling for a formula is not how proper engineering is done.

~~~
xnzakg
You're talking about engineers. Of course you need to understand some formulas
if you're going to be an engineer. But for most of the people who aren't going
to do that, they're useless.

~~~
zanny
Except the quadratic formula, just as an example, has a lot of positive
qualities when taught to children:

* The longform is fairly complex, so it is non-trivial to remember or recount. You can't just guess it (at least without knowledge well beyond it). So it looks like "magic".

* It is a great introduction to _what_ formulas are. They are non-trivial proofs of concepts that took research and logic to conclude.

Learning logic and learning patterns, especially the non-obvious ones like the
qf, are what promote analytical thinking. We need _more_ of that, not less.
Maybe the problem is more that kids are shown a magic formula and made to
mechanically repeat it on a couple dozen data sets than to actually learn how
to reach conclusions _like_ the qf. Making kids proof it would probably be
more valuable than making them repeatedly use it beyond a few times to assure
them it is valid magic math.

~~~
smichel17
One of my teachers back in high school made a comment to the effect of: "This
class isn't about learning math. It's about practicing critical thinking
skills."

------
mafribe

       “I cannot answer for them 
       what they are going to do 
       with the quadratic equation. 
       I don’t know why they are 
       learning it.”
    

If Mr Rochelle cannot answer this question, and recommends just googling it,
he might not be a good person to be anywhere near STEM eduction.

~~~
wolfram74
Also, the most literal answer "solve quadratic equations" is kind of the most
meaningless, what a physicist does with it is different than what a graphic
designer does with it. The teacher might be saying they don't know in that
context and would rather not lie to individual students that it's super
important for them in particular way.

~~~
taneq
That's like saying you don't know what you'd "use a lever" for.

~~~
wolfram74
And I imagine after answering that question a few hundred times it might take
on a level of kafkaesque absurdity.

------
jtraffic
> I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic
> equation. I don’t know why they are learning it

This sounds disingenuous to me. There are lots of things kids and college
students and adults learn that have no immediately foreseeable application.
I'm sure most people on HN have thought about it. I wonder what the consensus
is.

My take is that learning how to use technology should not be a classroom
priority, for many reasons. One of those reasons is that there is no guarantee
that whatever tech you learn will stick around. I had a high school teacher
insist that we use Ask Jeeves rather than Google because she "liked it
better."

It feels as if the adoption of Google products is driven much more by
convenience for the school system than by a strong belief that it improves
learning. I'm not an expert, but I remember reading more than once that
technology doesn't seem to have a meaningful main effect on learning (though
perhaps has a mild interaction effect with the teacher.)

The article itself barely addresses the question of learning outcomes, and
focuses so much more on privacy.

~~~
Eridrus
This is probably taking his off-hand remarks too seriously, but I don't think
anyone really uses the quadratic equation for anything. Quadratic functions
definitely come up, and the derivation of the quadratic formula is definitely
useful to learn, but the formula itself seems like a mathematical dead end.

In general I think being forced to learn things with no clear application is
part of why the school system fails so many people.

~~~
jtraffic
I see your position. We should acknowledge that both sides of this are well-
trodden, and the article even touches on it:

"It puts Google, and the tech economy, at the center of one of the great
debates that has raged in American education for more than a century: whether
the purpose of public schools is to turn out knowledgeable citizens or skilled
workers."

I guess over time I've started leaning more toward "knowledgeable citizens,"
_but_ I don't know why they need to be mutually exclusive.

~~~
dkarapetyan
You can do both if the tools being used are commodified but not if they're
propietary. Chromebooks and Google applications are proprietary products so
they're at odds with creating knowledgeable citizens that can work and think
outside Google sanctioned confines.

------
seastonATccs
For us Microsoft tools were the highest price point and we didn't use 50% of
the features. Apple Enterprise is a joke though they are making good progress
now. Google had just enough of a tool at a price we could really justify to
the tax payers. As for Google evangelism we offer Google docs and office 365
online. Students are free to choose as Google and Microsoft have been awesome
at cooperation in tools. We also have a training with outgoing seniors about
how and why free accounts exist on websites. I've always told them they can
used a paid account to retain privacy. To this date no seniors have chosen
this. Most don't even convert accounts but just use takeout, the bulk data
download tool.

~~~
dhimes
I would be very happy if the kids became conversant in libre office. It has
all the functionality they need and they would be comfortable with it going
into college.

~~~
tchaffee
I'm a big fan of free software. My desktop is Linux. But I almost never use
LibreOffice. Can't access and edit the docs on my Android, nor my wife's work
Mac. Nor my parent's Windows PC when I visit them. I'm definitely not
installing software on my parent's PC. I'll be responsible for the next 100
"something isn't working" phone calls.

~~~
dhimes
Is there no way to install LO on the Mac or Android? Do you use Google Docs
instead?

~~~
tchaffee
Can't install stuff on my wife's company Mac. But a browser is everywhere.
Yes, I begrudgingly use Google Docs. One big challenge to alternative
offerings is compatibility. There is usually little resistance to asking
someone to accept a Google Doc or an MS Doc. I wish there were a widely
accepted open source alternative.

~~~
dhimes
Agree. I even started using Google Docs with a contractor. Not happy about it,
but it more-or-less worked. I'm on a slow network and I find Google Docs
annoyingly unresponsive.

------
hanibash
Google is providing cheap, stable laptops for education and most people
commenting here are painting Google as an evil data-hungry corporation. I get
that companies should be subject to scrutiny due to their outsized
responsibility and impact, but this is just silly.

In 2013 only 60% of children had internet access at home in the U.S.[0]

It might not seem like a big deal for HN readers, but computer access is still
a really, really big deal for kids in the U.S.

[0][https://www.childtrends.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/69_fi...](https://www.childtrends.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/69_fig1.jpg)

~~~
kuschku
Provide cheap, stable laptops that do not have any bias to any corporation, no
integration with Google services, or anything, and this would be true.

But this way? Sorry, but after the past years you can’t honestly believe this
is pure altruism.

~~~
orangecat
_Sorry, but after the past years you can’t honestly believe this is pure
altruism._

Of course it's not. That doesn't mean all parties can't benefit.

~~~
kuschku
I’m sorry, but that’s not relevant. A child should never have to enter any
such arrangement where they have to give up anything.

Anything shy of pure altruism regarding schools for young children should be
considered automatically evil. Making profit with children is always bad.

------
chicob
I teach high school kids as a part time.

I have around 15 students, and afaik all of them use Android. Most of them are
13-14 years old. They have absolutely no understanding of how advertising-
based businesses work, a poor knowledge of privacy settings or the workings of
data deletion, nor do they have any remotely adult conception of why they
should worry about those things.

They share everything. Sometimes they even take pictures of my whiteboard
doodles.

Google's objective is in plain sight for everyone to see. Imo, this Chromebook
move is not good at all.

~~~
walterbell
Zuboff's _surveillance capitalism_ is instructive:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism)

video:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=0QwPHinDdOc](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0QwPHinDdOc)

~~~
chicob
Thank you for the links, and yes it is. In particular, Zuboff's third law:
"Every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will
be used for surveillance and control."

------
giomasce
> “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic
> equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I don’t
> know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right there.”

To me, this is giving Google much more than your privacy, customer loyalty or
ad exposure. Your are giving away some of your very basic abilities: if you
only learn to search with Google, you will not learn how to reason on your
own. Knowledge stored in your brain is of much better use than that on Google,
because your brain is capable to perform much more powerful queries on it.

However, using a brain at its maximum power needs years of training, which is
what one would really expect to receive in school. This training requires that
your brain works on its own, without external help from a search engine, for
more or less the same reason you will hardly become a strong cyclist if you
train on a motorbike.

Schools should really be wary of too much computer time for children.

~~~
tacomonstrous
>To me, this is giving Google much more than your privacy, customer loyalty or
ad exposure. Your are giving away some of your very basic abilities: if you
only learn to search with Google, you will not learn how to reason on your
own. Knowledge stored in your brain is of much better use than that on Google,
because your brain is capable to perform much more powerful queries on it.

Sorry, but this just sounds like propaganda. As an academic, Google is the
single most useful tool at my disposal. It doesn't inhibit original thought,
but lets me focus on what's actually new by giving me access to things that
are already known and available.

------
omash
This is a great business move, the children probably have no option but to
provide their personal information to Google.

~~~
bamboozled
What a disgrace!

------
xbmcuser
Google I feel has broken Microsoft Office monopoly the difference will be felt
10 years from now though. Earlier everyone had grown up using Microsoft office
now most children will grow up using Google Office suite. Though I still think
Google sheets is still way behind Microsoft Excel. The day Google can build a
convertor that can convert all excel files and macros etc I would shift to
Google sheets currently I have too many years of work to move to Google
sheets. The next generation of students growing up with Google won't have the
same problems.

~~~
patja
Isn't proficiency with Microsoft Office still expected in most workplace
environments? Google docs, sheets, slides all fall short of the capabilities
of their equivalent applications in Office. The Google apps are good enough
for many tasks, but really don't cut the mustard if you are accustomed to the
depth of capabilities in Office. Are we doing students a disservice by sending
them out into the world without proficiency or even familiarity with Office?

~~~
smelendez
I think if students know the basics from Google they'll be fine picking up
Office. Lots of people learned Office on the job after coming from Lotus
1-2-3, or electric typewriters.

------
lumberjack
They are also building profiles on every single one of those students which is
not only creepy but downright dangerous.

Imagine if Trump decided he no longer wanted to hire anyone for a public
sector job, if they are pro-green politics.

Society will come to regret this and I'll probably still be alive to witness
it.

~~~
notatoad
The privacy policy for education and the article both explicitly say they are
not doing this.

~~~
tchaffee
> say they aren't doing this.

Well, problem solved! Neither the government nor Google have ever lied to us.
;-)

~~~
Jabbles
Without an example that shows that Google has a habit of lying your comment
just wastes people's time. Do your research and make your comment useful.

~~~
tchaffee
Oh lighten up. The defendant is already infamous. Whether or not you think
Google is "evil" is largely a matter of opinion and definitely not worth
anyone's time debating. It's already been done over and over. But it's still
my right to distrust any big company or government with my data, along with
deciding the odds that current or _future_ leadership will break promises.

------
misingnoglic
Honestly, this isn't a big issue for two reasons:

1\. The Google stuff works. I would have loved for that kind of organization
and management in my elementary school classes. Google docs is also great and
means I don't have to beg my not so wealthy parents for a Microsoft word
license (or learn in the 4th grade how to pirate it).

2\. Let's not kid ourselves, everyone is going to make a Google account
anyway. As long as the school accounts aren't used in collecting ad data
(which they're not) this is a non issue.

~~~
tchaffee
Your 2nd point and obedient acceptance of the inevitability highlights just
how much of a monopoly it is and how desperately we need alternatives. Or to
just break up the monopoly.

~~~
misingnoglic
Again,the products are good. It's not like Comcast where I feel screwed when I
can only use them. If I want to use a different email provider right now I
could very easily, but none of them appeal to me.

~~~
tchaffee
My problem is that it's _everywhere_ you turn. Phone. SEO. Maps. Videos.
Browser. Email. Search. The list is endless, and growing and for a phone is
there really an alternative? The other choice is another big company who will
collect data about you too. Agreed Comcast is worse. That's not exactly a high
bar. :-D

------
pmoriarty
"Free" apps.

The only cost is the student's privacy. Gotta get them sucking at the Google
teat early, and in to their database as soon as possible.

~~~
gravypod
Well of course! How else will you manage to look at historical trends of your
consumers? Gotta start sucking the cash out of the little ones from an early
age.

I wish someone from the GNU/Linux crowd could make a chromebook-like software
set that was really Free software.

~~~
a2decrow
Doesn't come with lobbying money, though, so in the end it wouldn't make much
of a difference.

------
zzzzzzzza
With regards to quadratic equation comment, Aside from being one of the
simplest non trivial derivations/ uses of algebra you could teach children
(and often the derivation is not taught...), the solutions to polynomials have
a very important place in the history of mathematics and the development of
modern algebra (which of course is also not taught...) Should children all be
forced to gain an appreciation for the significance and origins of modern
algebra? I think, yes. We force them to learn history of whatever country they
reside in, year after year. We force them to learn and appreciate novels and
literary analysis (equally "useless"). If they don't have an appreciation for
mathematics is or does (and quadratic equation is a simple example leading up
to some VERY important developments), how will they really know whether or not
they want to have a career involving math some way in the future?

------
samtoday
Google Classroom has an interesting monopolising effect on schools. Google
Classroom has changed the price dynamics hugely; making it impossible for
other providers to really compete since they give so much away for free. It is
really a shame - Google Classroom (the app) isn't the best LMS as it is quite
unresponsive and confusing.

~~~
dhimes
Exactly. This is an example of the _possible_ downside of relaxed anti-trust
enforcement: leveraging your domination in one area to brutalize competition
in another.

Also, they've been caught once not keeping kid info private. They'll do it
again. But, free.

------
thrillerson
Chromebooks are much better than iPads for this kind of a task for sure, but I
wouldn't want everything my child wrote and looked up throughout his
development sent to a major advertising corp. This data should still be
maintained by the school or by a company the school partners with with a zero
internal or external sharing policy.

~~~
duality
It seems to be maintained by a company the schools partner with with a zero
internal or external sharing policy:

From [Common questions about
Classroom]([https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224?hl=e...](https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224?hl=en))

Does Classroom contain ads? No. Like all G Suite for Education services,
Classroom contains no ads and never uses your content or student data for
advertising purposes. Learn more about [privacy and
security]([https://edu.google.com/trust/](https://edu.google.com/trust/)).

~~~
groot451
[https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-
tracks...](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks-
students-internet-browsing-eff-says-complaint-federal-trade)

IMHO google is constrained by laws protecting minors here, not because the
Google nor even the schools care that much.

------
plg
If there was a chromebook that came with a SIM card and an unlimited data
plan, worldwide, I would buy it in a heartbeat and replace my Macbook. I like
the idea of cloud storage, the ability to instantly log onto a new machine and
have everything there. This critically depends on 100% connectivity though.

~~~
kevin2r
The Chromebook pixel from 2013 had 4G LTE, for some reason they didn't include
it on the 2015 one.

------
thomastjeffery
This is a _huge_ step in the right direction. Microsoft Office and Windows are
a huge unnecessary and practically unmaintainable approach.

That being said, public education would benefit even more from using a
consistent, maintainable, and free Linux distribution.

Public schools but _a lot_ of worthless effort into providing computers for
students that are (attempt to be) secure and usable. A good Linux distribution
(like NixOS, or even Ubuntu) has tools to provide a consistent maintained
operating system for tens or hundreds of systems. This has been the case for
_over a decade_ , but administrations have assumed that since everyone uses
Windows, that they would be swimming upstream to do otherwise.

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WalterBright
Is there any evidence that computers in the classroom improve results of the 3
R's ?

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Gaelan
15 yo high school student here; we have Google Apps accounts and use
chromebooks every once and a while. The district has carts of chromebooks that
are brought in when students need to do research or work on projects in class.
They work pretty well. (The district also has Mac Minis, which are used by the
teachers and in the library; they are imaged to Windows if the teacher
chooses.)

Happy to answer any questions.

~~~
skybrian
Do you use them for having fun or just for homework? What other computers do
you use?

~~~
Gaelan
We don't take them home, just for working on projects in class. Of course,
nobody _ever_ goofs off when given an hour of relative freedom.

At school, chromebooks and the Macs in the library. At home, whatever we have
--we don't get computers to take home.

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MarkMc
> Referring to his own children, he said: “I cannot answer for them what they
> are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are
> learning it.”

In case anyone is curious, this video has a good visual explanation of how to
derive the quadratic formula:

[https://youtu.be/EBbtoFMJvFc](https://youtu.be/EBbtoFMJvFc)

------
tabeth
I'm still on the fence to whether or not the ability for big companies to give
away free software is a net good or not. On one hand, schools theoretically
have more money now to spend on mission critical things. On the other hand,
the theoretically best possible product will in all likelihood will not be
free. Such a product could give exponential gains in productivity to teachers,
easily offsetting whatever cost is incurred.

~~~
johnsmith21006
Classroom is NOT free for schools.

~~~
peder541
Do you have a source for this? Their support documentation says otherwise.

"Classroom is a free web service for schools, non-profits, and anyone with a
personal Google Account."
[https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6020279](https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6020279)

"Classroom is free for all users."
[https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224](https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224)

~~~
sofaofthedamned
Classroom is free, I think the device management MDM software costs $30 per
device for a perpetual license:

[https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1388674-managing-
chro...](https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1388674-managing-chromebooks)

