The New York City Department of Education announced Monday that it had approved Google’s Chromebooks for use in the city’s public classrooms — which represent roughly 1 million students and 1,800 schools.
The DOE also authorized the use of Google Apps for Education, and put together a guide to implementing Chromebooks and Google utilities into the classroom.
Google has touted Chromebooks as useful education tools in the past, and indeed, many educators have taken to them. Schools purchased 1 million units in the second quarter of 2014.
A big part of Chromebooks’ appeal for schools is that they are relatively inexpensive. As is Google Drive, a cloud-based software that could save schools money they would otherwise have to spend on software. Studies indicate that Chromebooks are seeing increased popularity (beating Apple Macbooks) because of their use in the education sector.”We saw that many schools wanted to use Chromebooks, and in our assessments, found them to be an affordable, manageable option for learning,” wrote the NYC DOE’s chief information officer, Hal Friedlander, in a Google blog post.
The DOE worked with Google’s manufacturers to make sure that Chromebooks met all the specifications needed for New York students. It’s a move to give schools more choice, both in terms of price and functionality, Friedlander wrote.
