Quantifying the economic value of Chromebooks for schools

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Lead Product Manager, Chromebooks for Education 

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Many schools have told us that Chromebooks have helped them transform learning. Those in Texas and North Carolina have shared stories of students using Chromebooks to better connect with their teachers and peers and expand their learning opportunities (you’ll see more stories in the coming weeks from districts in New York, Florida and Michigan). But beyond opening new avenues for learning, Chromebooks are also helping schools save money, allowing them to meet tight budgets and provide computers to more students.

Plymouth-Canton Community Schools — one of the largest districts in Michigan — for example, told us that they’ve been able to save $200k in the 3rd grade alone, by purchasing Chromebooks over alternative devices. Theyve been able to leverage those savings to purchase charging carts, protective cases for the devices and additional power adaptors so that students can charge the Chromebooks at home and at school. The same has been true outside of the US. Earlier this year, Academies Enterprise Trust, a network of 76 schools across the United Kingdom, anticipated that they could save £7.7m in hardware and maintenance costs by using Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks.

To more fully understand the total cost of ownership and savings impact of Chromebooks, we commissioned IDC to conduct interviews with 10 schools using Chromebooks to support teaching and learning in 7 countries. The study comprised of 10 schools in 7 countries representing 294,620 students in all, across United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand. The interviews consisted of a variety of quantitative and qualitative questions designed to obtain information about the economics of deploying Chromebooks for these school systems as well as the impact of using Chromebooks on their students and faculty. Some of their key findings:

According to one school district in the study, Chromebook’s price point enabled the school system to reach a 1:1 user-device ratio, something it couldn’t have done before given the cost of their previous devices. They said, “We now have a 1:1 device solution with Chromebooks … Without Chromebooks, either we would have fewer devices or we would have had to spend four times as much to get to the same point.” For this district, being able to expand the number of students who have daily or consistent access to educational content on Chromebooks represents a substantial advantage and supports their core missions.

You can read the full whitepaper here, and calculate how much time and money Chromebooks can save for your school.

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Schools share their tips for success with Chromebooks

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Product Lead for Chromebooks for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editors note: As educators in North America begin to prepare for the 2015/16 school year, we thought this would be a good time to pull together the best tips we shared in the last year from schools using Chromebooks. If you’ll be at ISTE 2015 next week in Philly, come see us in the Expo Hall at space #1808. We’ll have a range of Chromebooks to demo and over 50 sessions in our teaching theater. If you won’t be there, you can follow along at #ISTE2015 and @GoogleforEdu for the highlights and news.

Schools across North America are choosing Chromebooks as devices to support teaching and learning. Districts continue to invest in Chromebooks, purchasing more devices as they continue to see success. A few examples: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina now use 83,000 devices, Milwaukee Public Schools now use 38,000 and we’re happy to announce that Arlington Independent School District in Texas recently purchased 17,000 Chromebooks. We gathered tips from experienced districts like these to help school leaders prepare for success in the upcoming school year.

1. Understand teachers’ needs
Success begins with asking teachers what they need and truly listening to their answers. New York City Chief Information Officer Hal Friedlander shared the importance of listening to and understanding the needs of teachers. “We treat schools as customers and engage them as advocates of the technology,” Friedlander says. “The educators who live in the community and teach students every day have the best ideas about what they need in technology, not a guy like me who works at the 30,000-foot view.” It’s a logical place to start, but too often people rush this step.

2. Equip staff with advanced training
Fulfilling teachers’ needs also involves training — preparing them with the tools they need to use technology effectively. Back in November, in the midst of dispatching 32,000 Chromebooks, Chesterfield Public Schools Executive Director of Technology Adam Sedlow shared tips for a successful Chromebook deployment, emphasizing the importance of professional development. Interestingly, the district didn’t require every teacher to attend training — instead they created an optional two-day experience called Camp Chromebook. Because the training was crafted to be fun and engaging, the 300 spots filled up in minutes. Once school started, the trained teachers helped their colleagues who couldn’t attend Camp Chromebook.

3. Plan a phased rollout
Over the past year, school leaders have taught us that planning counts. During a panel at Education on Air, three leaders shared what they’ve learned about successful IT rollouts. A common theme: be thoughtful about planning each phase. Hillsborough Public Schools Director of Technology Joel Handler shared that for his New Jersey district, this meant organizing a pilot phase with outstanding teachers who were respected by their peers as instructional leaders. Valerie Truesdale, Chief of Technology, Personalization & Engagement at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, shared that her district used Chromebooks in middle school because data showed them this age group was the place with most need.

4. Encourage risk-taking and innovation
Throughout the year, leaders echoed the importance of encouraging staff to take risks. Joel Handler put it well “if you aren’t failing, then you aren’t taking enough risks.” Outside experts agree. Laszlo Bock, Google’s head of HR, cited the need for risk-taking and failure as one of his four “work rules for school” – lessons included in his recent book "Work Rules." Laszlo shared that “failure actually isn’t failure, it’s the single best learning opportunity we have." Changing culture isn’t always easy, but many educators are doing it well. Ryan Bretag, Chief Innovation Officer at Glenbrook High School District 225 in Illinois, shared a few practical tips on how to create the conditions for change in schools.

What tips did we miss? Share your tips for success with Chromebooks by using #GoogleEdu. If you’re looking for support in preparing to deploy Chromebooks, check out our Google for Education trainer directory. Although Chromebooks are easy to set up and use, we know that many people like to engage a trainer to get started. On our site, you’ll find a range of organizations that make it their full-time job to support schools with edtech.

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Introducing new Chromebooks and features engineered for work

Posted by Saswat Panigrahi and Raghu Yarlagadda, Product Managers, Chromebooks for Work

Editors note: To learn more about the new features that make Chromebooks ready for work, join our Chrome product team for a Hangout on Air on Tuesday, September 1st at 10AM PT. 

Today, Chromebooks are putting on their power suit. Customers like Netflix, Sanmina and Starbucks have adopted Chromebooks for their ease of deployment, security and ability to integrate well with existing technologies, and a recent IDC study of Chromebooks use in K-12 education shows that Chromebooks require 69% less labor to install and 92% less labor to support than other devices. And with today’s announcements, the Chromebook family gets even bigger and better:

Work-ready devices: Today, the new Dell Chromebook 13 joins the Asus Chromebook Flip and Chromebook Pixel in the Chromebook for Work lineup. Built with a lightweight carbon fiber cover, the laptop comes with a 13.3” FHD IPS touchscreen display, 5th Gen Intel® Core™ processor, magnesium alloy palmrest, backlit keyboard and high-precision glass trackpad. And if you’re often on the road or rushing between meetings, you’ll have the machine power to keep moving, thanks to a 12-hour battery life. Starting at $399 and available for purchase starting September 17th, the Chromebook 13 brings enterprise class performance at an economical price point.

Plays well with others: Using Microsoft infrastructure? No problem. Single sign-on and support for legacy apps mean Chromebooks can now plug right in with VMWare, Dell vWorkspace, or Citrix’s improved Chrome receiver. Connecting to your files is even easier with Windows File Shares (SMB/CIFS), Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive. Need to print? Printing to local printers with Cloud Print 2.0 or to any existing printer using the improved Cloud Print CUPS connector is simple. With the help of a new API, HP supports over 100m+ printers with the HP Print for Chrome app. And connecting just got more seamless –VPN support from Pulse Secure and Dell SonicWall join Cisco AnyConnect on the Chrome Web Store (F5 Networks and Palo Alto Networks coming soon).

Manage from the beach: Chesterfield School District deployed 14,000 Dell devices in just a few weeks, and manages almost 32,000 devices today. What’s their secret? The Chrome Device Management console, a cloud based management solution with 200+ features that integrates Chrome devices with your infrastructure and helps manage thousands of devices with ease – from users to networks to applications. Weve made enhancements such as domain autocomplete and asset management, making users and IT admins lives easier.

With so many businesses undergoing transformation, shifting to the cloud and rethinking how mobile and devices play into this transformation, Chrome authorized resellers and SYNNEX corporation are ready to help you.

Check out our webpage or join us on Tuesday September 1st at 10AM PST for a Hangout on Air to learn more about Chromebooks for Work.

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Converga brings together on site and remote employees virtually with Chromebooks

Posted by Douglas Grgas, General Manager of IT/Infrastructure, Converga

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Douglas Grgas at Converga, a business process outsourcing company based in Australia, providing digital mailroom, document processing and a variety of other managed services. Converga introduced Chromebooks to ensure better availability of internal services for remote employees, as well as a new platform for office staff.

When employees are based in many different locations, whether it’s at corporate offices or customer sites, it’s important to make all employees feel connected to headquarters. As a company with over 1,300 resources at more than 150 customer locations, we’ve addressed this challenge firsthand by providing employees with technology to stay in touch. Many of our employees spend the majority of their time at our customers’ offices providing managed services, such as operating mailrooms or converting paper documents to digital versions.

To bridge the gap between off-site and on-site communications, account managers visited customer sites regularly to communicate with remote employees, and our CEO carried out a roadshow, where he talked about company performance, new customer wins and progress on global objectives, but off-site employees still felt disconnected from central operations on a day-to-day basis.

Our biggest ongoing challenge with keeping employees connected while at customer sites was having to rely on customers’ devices and networks. Often employees couldn’t access email and the Internet, which resulted in being disconnected from corporate communications and reduced productivity. We wanted everyone to feel connected and productive wherever they were, and to have access to technology that simplified their activities.

We chose Chrome for Converga because of its simplicity of use and seamless remote management. We liked that Chromebooks are sleek and lightweight like a tablet, but have a keyboard for easy data entry.

Beyond the device, the central Chrome Device Management service allows easy deployment and controls, device security, network connectivity and integrated apps across Converga’s fleet of Chromebooks, all with the additional benefit of leveraging Google’s Support services.

Also, since Chromebooks integrate with Citrix XenApp, which virtually delivers existing apps through the Chrome Browser, we don’t have to repurchase or rewrite existing applications.

Converga has deployed Chromebooks at 50 customer sites across Australia and New Zealand during the past year. We’ve also deployed numerous devices, many utilizing the Citrix XenApp, at our corporate offices.

Now more than 500 employees have a two-way channel to communicate with headquarters, using a reliable and standard operating environment, which IT can manage remotely. Employees can quickly search for information using Chrome, record notes in Google Docs and communicate with employees at other sites via Hangouts and Google+, all accessible via a simple to use, remotely managed, lightweight device.

Chromebooks are the foundation that helps our employees connect with each other and senior management. We use our company Google Site, which acts as our intranet, to do everything from feature employees of the month to communicate company perks and share performance metrics. Employees also use the intranet to share updates about customer sites, so the rest of the business can stay connected. For example, around Christmas, our employees post pictures of how their customers have decorated for the holidays. Each time an employee does something related to the Converga tree, a tree that represents our company values, he or she is asked to share the activity with the rest of the community.

Introducing Chromebooks has supported our goal of making all employees, regardless of their location, feel united. As we continue to introduce new technologies, our employees are more engaged in their work and empowered to share their stories with one another.

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