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Posted:
Posted by Saswat Panigrahi, Product Manager, Chrome for Business

Chromebooks are designed to make computing easier and better for everyone. Businesses of all sizes prefer their low total cost of ownership, central web-based management console and built-in, strong security mechanisms.

They’re also great devices for collaborating from anywhere, any time. Today we’re adding another tool for businesses to connect on the go. At the Enterprise Connect conference, Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome for Business announced we’re working with Cisco, and demonstrated a proof of concept of Cisco WebEx running on a Chromebook.
We're also integrating Cisco UC technologies into Google Apps, helping our joint customers work better together. Imagine joining a WebEx meeting directly from Calendar, or starting an instant meeting from Contacts or the Gmail People widget. Starting today, if you use Cisco and Google Apps, features you love, like messaging, fax, click-to-call and Cisco presence, are visible alongside Gmail.
If you’re a Cisco customer and you’re interested in learning more, get in touch with your Google sales team or contact Google Enterprise sales here. To learn more about Chromebooks, find more details here.

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Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Product Manager, Chrome for Business

With easy personalization and built-in security, Chrome devices were made for sharing. The new Managed Public Sessions feature delivers a highly customizable experience for both customers and employees without requiring a login.


Because Chromebooks are low cost, easy to set up and manage, and require virtually no maintenance, Chromebooks with Managed Public Sessions make perfect shared kiosks. You could use a Chromebook with Managed Public Sessions to:

  • Order out-of-stock items online while at a retail store 
  • Search for books and browse the web at the library 
  • Update machine and inventory info from the manufacturing floor 
  • Access the company portal and update HR info from the employee break room 
  • Catch up on work in a hotel business center

Administrators can easily customize any Chrome device to be a public session device using the web-based management console. The features that you'll find in the console include the ability to set the default sites and apps a user sees at login, custom brand the homepage, block sites and apps that shouldn't be accessed, configure device inputs and outputs, and set timed log-out sessions. For security reasons, public session data is cleared on logout so the next user starts fresh.

We’ve tested public sessions with a few customers and here’s the initial feedback:
  • Dillards, Inc. - “We have many more employees than computers at our retail stores, so being able to share devices is key. With Managed Public Sessions, employees can walk up to any machine and get immediate access to their corporate email and important internal systems. And since Managed Public Sessions wipes all data at logout, it supports our PCI compliance requirements.”
    - Woody Chin, CIO, Dillard’s
  • Multnomah County Library - “Our Community Chromebooks program was funded by a grant from the Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission. We have about 160 Chromebooks in 19 neighborhood libraries that patrons can check out for 2 hours of in-library use. The program’s been hugely popular - in the last year, we’ve loaned Chromebooks over 30,000 times. With Managed Public Sessions, we can get patrons online and productive faster, by pre-configuring the devices with a terms of service agreement, the library homepage, and popular apps like Google Maps, Evernote, and the Kindle Cloud Reader. Public Sessions also makes the program easier for library staff to support, as the session count-down timer will help get Chromebooks turned in on time, and preinstalling the most popular apps will reduce setup questions.”
    - Lucien Kress, Project Manager, Multnomah County Library
  • Hyatt San Francisco - “I’ve been running Chromeboxes with Managed Public Sessions in employee break areas. We really like Chromeboxes’ speedy browsing, easy management and security. Employees use Chromeboxes to access Hyatt payroll system, request time off, and stay up to date on internal news. They can also access personal email and social sites during breaks and I don’t need to worry about viruses and malware infecting Chromeboxes.”
    - Victor Povzner, Sr. IT Director, Hyatt Regency San Francisco

Learn more on the Chromebook site or contact us if you have any follow up questions.
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Posted:
Posted by Jim Nonn, CIO at Egan Company

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Jim Nonn, CIO at Egan Company, a Brooklyn Park, MN-based commercial contractor. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Egan Construction is an approximately 800-person construction company in Minnesota currently working on the Central Corridor Light Rail, the biggest construction project in the history of the North Star State. The Light Rail will stretch 11 miles through five major areas of interest, and is expected to be done in 2014. As CIO of Egan, I want to provide my organization with technology that helps connect the job site with the main office, the tools and parts warehouses and our executives.

A year ago, we were looking for a solution that would avoid having a fleet of expensive, quickly outdated and slow Microsoft Windows laptops that constantly break or need replacing. I’ve heard stories from other construction firms that Monday mornings were like the movie Groundhog Day, with the IT team tackling the same four-foot high stack of malware-infected laptops over and over while work ground to a halt. I didn’t want to experience that.

After surveying the market, we decided to move to Chromebooks for our 140-person foreman staff. They’re lightweight, turn on and off in an instant, and provide easy access to business apps that we use every day.

Chromebooks also integrate nicely with Google Apps, which we use to run our business in the field. The workers love the Chromebooks because they aren’t afraid to use them on the job. If one does get damaged, we can swap it out for another one in a matter of minutes, with zero time wasted or data lost. Also, we’ve saved so much in moving forward with Chromebooks instead of Windows laptops - about $200 per machine.

Rolling out Chromebooks to our staff was extremely easy. We have two people and an intern in our IT support department, and I wanted the intern to manage the deployment process. I figured he’d only get so far, then my IT guys would have to jump in, but he did it all on his own. If I would have rolled out the same number of Windows laptops, I would have had to hire additional staff just to manage that. And with Chromebooks, we haven’t been plagued with ongoing support requests.

The scale of the light rail project really brings to light how valuable the Chromebooks have become to our organization. At Egan, we take pride in the fact that we’re building something that so many Minnesotans will use. The light rail will bring people together that didn’t have an easy way to connect previously. I like to think Chromebooks have done the same for Egan.
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Posted by Caesar Sengupta, Director of Product Management

Learning online is transforming today’s classrooms. More than 1,000 schools are using Chromebooks, opening the door for their teachers and students to take advantage of the web’s vast educational resources. Today, our newest partner Lenovo has announced a Chromebook based on their popular ThinkPad laptop. Meet the new Lenovo ThinkPad X131e Chromebook.


Classrooms have unique hardware and software needs and this new Chromebook combines the hassle-free experience of Chrome OS with the ThinkPad’s rugged design for the classroom environment. With specialized features like a rubber bumper around the top cover, stronger corners, reinforced hinges and hinge brackets, and a high definition (HD) LED anti-glare screen, the Lenovo ThinkPad X131e Chromebook is ready for schools. Lasting up to 6.5 hours* with a latest-generation Intel processor, the ThinkPad Chromebook will keep up with even the most active students and teachers.

Like all Chromebooks, the ThinkPad Chromebook delivers a simple computing experience with built-in security and automatic updates. It’s a fast computer that’s easy to share among multiple students with Google Apps for Education, and it includes over a thousand web-based educational apps from the Chrome Web Store.

Chromebooks can be managed and deployed centrally through the Chrome management console so schools can easily setup and manage users, apps, and policies across an entire school or district.

The new Lenovo ThinkPad X131e Chromebook will be available for $429 in the United States starting on February 26, 2013. Schools can add management and support from Google for a one-time cost of $30 per device. If you’d like to learn more, contact the Chromebook for Education team or visit our Google in Education booth (#1109) at FETC in Orlando from January 28-31, 2013.

*Actual battery life depends on usage and other factors.
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Posted:
Posted by Richard Ng, IT director, Playworks

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Richard Ng, IT director at Playworks, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving children’s health and well-being through increased physical activity and play. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

For more than 16 years, Playworks has been working with elementary schools in urban communities to help increase students’ physical activity during recess and throughout the day. We are the only organization in the country to send trained adult program coordinators into low-income schools, where they turn recess into a fun, positive experience that helps kids and teachers get the most out of their school day.

Headquartered in Oakland, California, Playworks has coaches and staff deployed at 380 schools, reaching 170,000 students in 23 cities across the country every day. In addition, our training staff serves another 400 schools each year all around the country. As the director of IT, my job is to make sure that every one of our staff has access to the resources they need to be successful at their schools. For our program staff, who visit 2-3 different schools every week the ability to get to their documents, and share and collaborate with each other is vital. Playworks relies on flexibility, mobility and access to information anytime, anywhere – Google is helping us achieve that.

In 2011, I attended Google I/O, where I had my first encounter with the Chromebook. I knew immediately that Chromebooks and Google Apps could be the answer our tech needs. We deployed a small, successful pilot program in early 2011, and today we have nearly 80+ Chromebook devices in use in the field, with more planned next year. With a simple two-page instruction document that we created internally, our team could work, share and collaborate from any of our 23 cities virtually overnight. Because Chromebooks don’t require manual software updates or an IT support staff to troubleshoot, my team can focus less on maintenance and more on strategic IT projects, and ultimately, the kids.

As a non-profit organization, cost is a major factor in every technology decision. The value that Google Apps and Chromebooks have delivered is unprecedented. Playworks has been able to save tens of thousands of dollars since we implemented Google Apps and deployed the Chromebooks. Based on estimates of what we previously spent on software and maintenance versus what we are spending now, I estimate we will save $50,000 - $70,000 per year. That translates to tremendous savings that can be redirected to improving our programs for kids.

At the end of the day, while we are working to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play, Google is helping our team access the technology they need to transform recess in the communities that need it the most.

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Posted:
Posted by Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager, Chrome for Education & Business

Today on the Chrome blog we announced the new Samsung Chromebook for $249, an even more affordable way to bring the the web’s vast educational resources and apps to your students.

At only 2.5 pounds and 0.8 inches thick, the new Chromebook zips along, booting in under 10 seconds and playing high resolution video beautifully. It automatically receives the latest security updates from Google and doesn’t require any manual IT set-up, so additional devices won’t mean skyrocketing support costs. A recent IDC sponsored white paper showed that Chromebooks for Education require 69 percent less labor to install and 92 percent less labor to support, delivering big cost savings by reducing the need to hire additional IT staff.

Our goal is to make computers more accessible to everyone and we hope that the new Chromebook makes it even easier for you to bring the power of the web to your classroom.

Editors note: Join us for a Hangout On Air on Tuesday, October 23 at 11:00 am PDT/ 2:00 pm EDT/ 7:00 pm BST off of the Google in Education Google+ page. We’ll do a quick review of the details of the new device, compare it to other models, and take your live questions.
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Posted:
Posted by Tom Mills, Enterprise Director, Education

One of the many great promises of technology is its ability to help level the playing field in education. It can give students the tools and skills they need to prepare for work in a world where technology will be integrated in our lives. But few schools today have the opportunity to provide computers in every classroom, or access for every student. Budget cuts and limited resources at many schools are real challenges; but devices can be more affordable and valuable than you might think.

Google worked with IDC1 on a sponsored white paper to quantify the value of Chromebooks for Education based on data from schools using Chromebooks. The key findings show promise for schools looking to implement technology without breaking their budget or asking teachers to serve as IT help desks.
  • Chromebooks require 69 percent less labor to install and 92 percent less labor to support, reducing the need to hire additional IT staff
  • Chromebooks reduce the per-device cost of ownership up to $935 over 3 years – a Chromebook deployed in school starts at $13.30 monthly
In addition to being affordable and easy for schools to manage, Chromebooks are also secure, fast and simple for students and teachers to get online and start collaborating using thousands of educational apps. They start up instantly, so they’re minimally disruptive to students when a great idea strikes (or when a teacher says “close your laptop”). They also have long battery life so creative minds aren’t tethered to a charger all day.

Teachers and administrators have told us that they have enjoyed knowledge sharing with other Chromebook schools around the country. In the spirit of expanding this community, we’d like to welcome a few of the newest members of the Chromebooks family:


Del Mar Union Elementary School District in California has implemented 700 Chromebooks in their eight elementary schools. This year 4-6 graders in two elementary schools have Chromebooks and the district plans to expand to all 4-6 grade students by next school year. Because Del Mar – one of the top-performing districts in the state – is focused on writing and the writing process to support “21st century skills” aligned with common core standards, they chose Google Docs as their primary curriculum tool. Docs allows students to easily share, communicate and collaborate on essays, responses to literature, and projects with their peers and teachers.


Milpitas Unified School District in California has purchased 1100 Chromebooks for students grades K-12. This year, Milpitas High School’s Digital Business Academy students have each been assigned their own Chromebook for the year that they are able to use in school and at home, replacing traditional textbooks. The district has also rolled out a true blended learning program in which elementary students rotate from a traditional classroom to a computer lab with Chromebooks throughout the day.


Lastly, we’d like to extend a warm welcome to Fort Sam Houston Independent School District in Texas, which will add 450 Chromebooks to students grades 9-12, the majority of whom are the children of military personnel living on the Fort Sam Houston Military Installation. And also to Chequamegon School District in Wisconsin, which has gone 1:1 with more than 380 Chromebooks in grades 4-8, including in their special education classroom, where students are engaging with educational web content such as YouTube and Khan Academy.

Learn more about how other districts and schools are harnessing the power of the Web in the classroom with Chromebooks for Education. Here’s to a happy, healthy, productive school year!

1IDC White Paper sponsored by Google, "Quantifying the Economic Value of Chromebooks for K-12 Education," Doc #236459, August 2012.
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Posted:
Posted by Divya Agarwalla, Product Manager, Chrome for Business

Since launch, our vision for Chromebooks has been to bring the simplicity, flexibility and affordability of cloud computing to the personal computer. Auto-updates, the Chrome management console, and browser sync have brought us closer. Today, we’re bringing the cloud model to the hardware itself by trialing a Chromebook rental program, in conjunction with financing partner CIT.

Imagine you’re setting up shop for a local political campaign and will have an influx of new, temporary workers. You can rent a Chromebook for each worker for the next few months, and return them when the campaign is over. Chromebooks meet the needs of most workers, making this rental program a great option for companies with seasonal workers, larger organizations who want to pilot Chromebooks, fast-growing startups and any company looking to preserve cash.

Organizations in the US can rent a new Chromebook starting at $30 per month or rent a Chromebox starting at $25 per month. Rentals are month-to-month, and there’s no long-term commitment. The rental includes Chrome hardware with 3-year limited warranty, the web-based Chrome management console to centrally set-up and control users, devices and apps, and 24/7 support. And the monthly payments actually decrease the longer you keep the device.

If you’re a Google Apps business customer, today we’re also making it possible for you to purchase up to 10 Chromebooks – including web-based user, device and app management – online from Google. You can manage your fleet of Chromebooks right from the Apps control panel, giving you a unified view across your organization and enabling you to get users up and running quickly.

We’re seeing some great uses for Chromebooks in business and government:
  • As part of its HTML5 web app strategy, transportation firm QDI is giving Chromebooks to operational managers in truck depots to coordinate driver loads.
  • School of Rock, a music school with over 90 locations, has adopted Chromebooks to reduce the costs, administrative overhead, security and reliability issues that came with managing traditional PCs at remote sites.
  • And the City of Palo Alto library system has pioneered an innovative new program where patrons can checkout Chromebooks for a week, just like a library book. Given shrinking budgets, this initiative was only possible due to Chromebooks' ease of use and minimal maintenance needs.

We’re excited to see how the next wave of Chromebook customers puts their devices to use and hope that the flexible rental and online purchase options make it even easier for you to bring Chrome devices to your organization.

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Posted:
Posted by Monique le Conge, Department Director, Palo Alto Library

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Monique le Conge, Department Director for the Palo Alto Library, a municipal library funded by the City of Palo Alto, California. Join Monique on September 12th at 1pm PST for a webinar via Google+ Hangout On Air to learn how you can replicate these successes at your organization and ask her questions directly during a live Q&A.


The Palo Alto Library has been providing our community with resources to enrich lives since the early 1890’s. With five libraries located at the heart of Silicon Valley, we witness the role technology plays in advancing life-long education, and we actively make it our mission to facilitate learning in the community by providing the latest tools. In an effort to abide to by our mission, we launched a Chromebooks lending program in November 2011, becoming one of the first libraries to do so.

We launched the Chromebooks program after piloting a few of the devices as an alternative to the laptop lending program that we developed more than five years ago. The old laptop program gave library patrons the ability to use laptops in one of our branches for up to two hours. While it was helpful for some, the program didn’t provide our library patrons with the time and flexibility they needed to explore the Web. Additionally, the administration was concerned about the security of patrons storing local files on the machines.

Today, members of our community, both young and old, are able to check out one of our 60 Chromebooks and take it home for up to seven days to research material for school reports, educate themselves on health matters, or simply watch videos. The possibilities are endless.

What’s great about the Chromebooks is that they are simple for our patrons to use, regardless of their technology experience, and they’re small enough for anyone to easily carry. Users can save their documents and favorite apps to their Google accounts, so that they can retrieve their information at another time from any Chromebook they check out or from any device running Chrome – like an iPhone or Android tablet. And all user data is wiped out after individual use, protecting each user’s privacy. But perhaps my favorite thing about the Chromebooks is that they don’t require any manual software updates or maintenance. Due to shrinking budgets and reduced library staff, IT maintenance is something we pay close attention to when providing new technologies to our patrons, and the Chromebook program has been a breeze to manage.

Our lending program has become so popular that we are expanding the program to include all of the library branches in the coming year. We’ve also received several phone calls from other library systems who are interested in adopting a Chromebooks lending program. We’re thrilled to be able to provide members of our community with Chromebooks because we know they’ll be able to use a Chromebook to grow and learn no matter what their level of technology experience is.
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Posted:
Posted by Richard Birdsall, Co-founder and Co-owner, Genesis Medical Education Consultants

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Richard Birdsall, the co-founder and co-owner of Genesis Medical Education Consultants, a continuing education provider offering state of the art courses to California's health care professionals, headquartered in Orange County, CA. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.


Since 2007, Genesis Medical Education Consultants has provided continuing education for California health care professionals in a safe, professional, and hands-on environment. For an industry that prides itself on being at the forefront of technology, it seems that many healthcare education providers are still behind the times. My mother and co-owner, Shari, and I saw this as an opportunity to set ourselves apart from existing companies.

We started using Google Apps for Business when we opened shop, and it has not only helped us keep pace with companies that have been around for years, but to outperform in multiple areas. We use Google Docs to assemble faculty schedules, create student rosters, and draft manuals and course syllabi. Google Drive ensures every file is available from anywhere we sign in, and all of these materials are easily shared with our instructors. Calendar helps keep us all organized, and we even post a schedule of classes on our website, making it easily visible to both our current students and potential students. With three full time employees, we could customize the exact size of the services we needed with Google as opposed to a one-size-fits-all approach many companies have – all at a very small fee.

In addition to Google Apps, we have two Chromebooks in our office, which we find incredibly easy to use and dependable. Before we had the Chromebooks, teaching at other facilities would keep us offline for the entire day – our old PCs were too clunky to take with us and didn’t have 3G access. Chromebooks changed all that. Now, we’re able to take our Chromebooks with us to any location and get connected in seconds, and we’re able to check email and interact with our students and any time. Chromebooks also save us a ton of money since we don’t have purchase additional software – a savings sent directly back to our students. We are able to charge a fraction of the price as the other guys due to a reduced overhead. And I've saved so much time not having to update every program on our computers since it updates on its own!

With a marriage of Chromebooks and Google Apps, our productivity on back-office processes has increased by at least 40-50%. We’re enrolling new and returning students every day and plan to open another facility in San Francisco next year. As we expand, we plan to purchase more Chromebooks, which we will give to our instructors to use in and out of the classroom. Without a doubt, in helping us establish our business and continue to compete with other companies, Google Apps for Business and Chromebooks ace the test.
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Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Product Manager, Chromebooks for Education

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

While students in the northern hemisphere say goodbye to each other and another school year, we’re in sunny San Diego meeting with thousands of educators and administrators at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. While on break from teaching, these folks are here to teach others how they’re bringing innovation into their classrooms—a lot of which centers around the web.

While the web was developed well before today’s students were born, it’s come a long way even since a year ago. Today you can access the web on any device, use the web offline and take advantage of amazing graphics. For example, you can get a powerful graphing calculator on the web today, for free.

It’s been really amazing to see how the web is impacting schools. We’ve heard great real-world stories about Google Apps for Education, but lately we’re hearing more and more about schools extending the functionality of Google Apps with educational apps available on the Chrome Web Store. There are tens of thousands of apps in the Chrome Web Store, and today we’re adding some new ones: ST Math, VoiceThread and Acheive3000.

To give you an idea of what’s possible on the web: Leyden High School District from Illinois is rolling out Chromebooks to their 3,500 students and are using apps like WeVideo, EasyBib, Vernier Labquest2, SlideRocket, Geogebra and Pearson’s OpenClass as part of their 1-to-1 learning initiative.

Students at East Leyden High School work together on their Chromebooks. Photo credit: East Leyden Art Teacher Anna Reed. 

Chromebooks as a tool for 1-to-1 learning
It’s great to see that many schools are choosing Chromebooks as an effective and affordable 1-to-1 education tool. There are more than 500 districts in the U.S. and Europe actively using Chromebooks, and today we’re pleased to welcome a few more to the community, including Rockingham Country Schools, N.C., Transylvania County Schools, N.C., and Fond du Lac School District, Wis.

Chromebooks are always new—just last month we announced new devices, an updated, app-centric user interface and new pricing for schools. Chromebooks also make it just as easy for administrators to distribute 10, 100 or 1,000 Chromebooks, saving precious summer vacation time previously spent installing software and policies on computers. And great news for schools looking to make hardware purchases: the PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia confirmed Chromebooks meet hardware and operating system requirements for student assessments in the 2014-2015 school year.

Applications for education
Today at ISTE, we are introducing some new features for schools using Chromebooks that make it even easier to find, use, install and manage web apps for your entire school:
  • Grade-level application packs are groups of Chrome Web Store apps that integrate tightly with Google’s suite of Apps for Education, divided by grade levels to meet different classroom needs. These packs are installable from the Chromebook management console. Many of them are free and we’ve worked with the app makers to offer discounts for bulk purchases.
  • Organization-specific web app collections in the Chrome Web Store give administrators the ability to recommend apps to students, teachers and staff. The collection is visible only to the school, and admins can curate apps from the Chrome Web Store, application packs and web apps purchased elsewhere or private apps developed by the school. (This feature is also available to Chromebooks for Business customers from the control panel.)


We’ve enjoyed being a part of ISTE the past several years, and always look forward to hearing about new ways that students and teachers are using the web to do amazing things. (If you’re at the conference, come see us at booth 2603 and listen to or share a story!)
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Posted:
Posted by: Glenn Wilson, Product Manager, Chrome for Business

A year ago we introduced a new model of computing with the launch of Chromebooks. Since then we’ve seen hundreds of schools across the U.S. and Europe adopt Chromebooks and use them to reshape learning as we know it. We’ve also seen a lot of interest from businesses, with organizations across a variety of industries using Chromebooks in a number of compelling ways.

Today we announced some exciting developments — new hardware, a major software update and many more robust apps — as we continue on our journey to make computers much better. For businesses and schools, we’re introducing zero-touch deployment, more affordable desktop virtualization, and a simplified pricing model.


Zero-touch deployment
Today, most businesses and schools require a very manual and often cumbersome process to deploy computers. In contrast, you can remotely set up Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, and manage users, apps and policies across a fleet of devices via a web-based console. This ease of setup and deployment results in a total cost of ownership for Chromebooks that’s less than half of that of traditional PCs.

With the latest OS release, you can also push network settings and auto-enroll a device for management when a user first logs in, creating a zero-touch deployment experience where you can ship a device directly to an end user. Once a user is logged in, the Chromebox or Chromebook is automatically configured with the designated apps, networks and settings without any manual IT intervention. Thereafter, you can now control the frequency of OS updates and receive reports on device usage.

Works seamlessly with all apps
For those who still require access to specific Windows software, we’ve teamed up with nGenx to launch a hosted virtualization solution where you can access any desktop app through the web—at a fraction of the price of current virtualization offerings.

New customers, compelling use cases
One of the things we’ve learned from businesses is that Chromebooks and Chromeboxes make great tools for a variety of uses such as retail stores, call centers, mobile or distributed workforces, and library lending. Here are four great examples:
  • Retail and distributed offices: Dillard's Inc., one of the largest fashion, apparel, and home furnishing retailers in the U.S., will deploy Chromeboxes in hundreds of their retail locations across the U.S. to give employees access to Google Apps and various internal apps.
  • Call centers: Kaplan, an educational test prep and training provider, is moving their New York call center to Genesys’ HTML5-based customer service solution running on Chromeboxes.
  • Mobile workforces: Mollen Clinics is rolling out 4,500 Chromebooks with 3G connectivity to support Walmart & Sam’s Club flu clinics.
  • Device lending: The California State Library is making 1,000 Chromebooks available for checkout in public libraries across the state, based on successful Chromebook lending programs at the Palo Alto and Santa Clara City Libraries.

Simplified pricing
Finally, we’re simplifying business and education pricing for the devices, as well as for management and support. Management and support is now a one-time cost of $150 per device for businesses and $30 per device for schools, and lasts for the supported life of the device. You can purchase devices, and management and support directly from Google or our authorized resellers. And you can add management and support to any device that you currently own. For more information, check out our website.

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Posted:
Posted by Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager for Chromebooks

(Cross-posted from the Google Chrome Blog.)

Editor's note: We’re posting from sunny Orlando, where we’re chatting with schools at the annual FETC ed-tech conference. We wanted to share highlights from our keynote this morning, which featured a panel moderated by Tom Vander Ark, author of Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World. You can watch a replay of the keynote on YouTube. If you’re in town, come visit us at our booth #1101 - we’d love to say hi!

When we first conceived of Chromebooks, we were focused on providing a device that brought you to the web in the fastest, simplest and securest way possible. What we didn't realize at the time was that this device would be so welcome and popular in classrooms! Many schools are eager to improve access to the web and technology for students and are planning to provide each student with their own device – a concept known as "1-to-1" computing. We've heard from our customers that they choose Chromebooks for 1-to-1 because the simplicity of the web takes away the hassle for teachers, students and administrators.

During our keynote at FETC this morning, we had the opportunity to share some exciting news: hundreds of schools in 41 states across the U.S. are using one or more classroom sets of Chromebooks today. As a highlight, three new school districts in Iowa, Illinois and South Carolina are going 1-to-1 – that is, one Chromebook each for nearly 27,000 students.
  • Council Bluffs Community School District in Iowa is planning a Chromebook 1:1 Initiative for all 2,800 students in their two high schools and will use an additional 1500 Chomebooks in their two middle schools
  • Leyden Community High School District in Illinois will roll out devices to 3,500 students in their two high schools
  • Richland School District Two in South Carolina is going 1-to-1 with a total of 19,000 students

It's great to see this positive momentum for Chromebooks in classrooms. It's similar to where we were about five years ago when Google Apps was just getting off the ground. At that time, educational institutions were the most interested and it was inspiring to hear the different ways schools and districts had begun using Gmail, Calendar and Docs. At FETC we’ve been similarly excited to see how teachers have formed communities around professional development for Chromebooks, districts all across the US are piloting Chromebooks in their classrooms, and more and more reach out to us to learn about Chromebooks for Education every day. We believe Chromebooks and the web have the ability to facilitate learning in a powerful way, and we’re committed to helping schools recognize their goals to go 1-to-1.

But enough words from us. We’d like to close with thoughts from representatives of each of these school districts.

“From my perspective, Chromebooks couldn’t get any simpler; setting up this many laptops would have typically taken our team at least 3 months. And from the instructional side, we are teaching content not technology, and Chromebooks simply support teachers in what they do best while giving students the resources they need to be productive citizens. As just one example the quality of work that students turn in has improved literally overnight - from incomplete sentences to full paragraphs, in some cases - because they are much more engaged and participating readily in class.”
David Fringer, executive director, information systems at Council Bluffs Community school district, Iowa

“When we started on our digital evolution path we were looking for just the right tool - one that is invisible and gets out of the way to allow students and teachers to focus on instruction. With Chromebooks our students are publishing, producing and sharing with each other, and best of all, we don’t have to assign students a particular device number. Any student can use any device because all their work is saved online - for that matter they could access their work from home while logged in from the Chrome browser.”
Bryan Weinert, director of technology at Leyden school district, Illinois

Student at East Leyden high school selects a Chromebook from the charging cart. With Chromebooks, students can work on any device in any class period and access their work from anywhere - including from the Chrome browser installed on a home computer.

“Chromebooks make our 1-to-1 computing dream a reality. Teachers don't need to add ‘help desk’ to their job description, and they save valuable class time knowing they can instruct students to close the Chromebooks to stay on task and they won't have to wait when it’s time to open them again. Furthermore, we’ve seen that any behavior issues become an absolute non-issue because the technology is so compelling.”
Tom Cranmer, executive director of information technology, Richland School District Two, South Carolina

Fifth grade student teaches a younger student how to use a Chromebook in the Chrome Buddy project in Tim Swick's classroom at Pontiac Elementary School in Richland School District Two.

Learn more about Chromebooks for Education on our website, and join us for the Chromebook Classroom webinar series, Wednesdays at 9AM PT/12PM ET.
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Posted by Jaime Casap, Google Education Senior Evangelist

Since we launched Chromebooks this summer, it’s been exciting to hear how students are using Chromebooks to collaborate and create in the classroom. In the spirit of letting our customers speak for themselves, we wanted to share stories from three of the newest schools using Chromebooks in their classrooms, libraries and to provide Internet access to students at home using built-in 3G.

Renaissance Charter School, Nevada - Management
The Renaissance Academy Charter School in Nevada virtually serves students from low-income families across 13 counties in the state. The Academy’s mission is to free students from perceived limitations on their performance, and to narrow the achievement gap through technology. Roy Harden, administrator, jumped at the opportunity to deploy Chromebooks to their 490 students and staff. “We promised our students and parents a protected environment for their computing needs, which the Chromebook - with forced proxy settings and content control - allows us to uphold. With 3G connectivity, the Chromebook also gives access to our students who typically do not have an Internet connection at home. We couldn’t ask for a better solution,” he said. The new features in the web-based administrator’s management panel will also help Harden better manage different age groups of students, teachers and staff, and these features will greatly improve his visibility into devices distributed across the state.

Prairie View Elementary School, Wisconsin - Engagement
The Oregon School District in Wisconsin has led the state in adoption of modern technologies in the classroom. As technology director and a former teacher himself, Jon Tanner understands how important it is to provide web access for all students while keeping costs low. This is why he decided to bring Chromebooks to 22 third graders at Prairie View Elementary School. Shannon Luehmann, the teacher whose class is using the Chromebooks, notes, "It was like Christmas morning in my class when I shared the news with the kids and let them open the Chromebooks. Some student reactions were, 'So, you're telling me this is mine to use all year?', and 'We are going to do some pretty cool things with these computers this year!'"

“Thinking long term, I would love to give every child the opportunity to take home a Chromebook and be connected,” Tanner said, “but we never had a product we felt we could do that with before.” Teachers and administrators have already noticed a big improvement in student engagement. Even with some of the biggest behavior challenges, students have used Chromebooks to “engage in the classroom, be more productive, and even be more positive.”

Students using Chromebooks in Shannon Luehmann’s third grade classroom at Prairie View Elementary School in Wisconsin

Montgomery School, Pennsylvania - Collaboration
Jared Hamilton, technology coordinator at Montgomery School, decided to start piloting 40 Chromebooks for middle schoolers at Montgomery School, an independent, co-educational day school in Pennsylvania. As he sees it, “Chromebooks are perfect for this age group because they spend most of their time on the web anyway.” The students gravitated toward Chromebooks from the start because they found that they could get more done in less time, and turning in assignments to their teachers was easier. “Once they start using the Chromebook, they don’t want to go back,” Hamilton said. Having Chromebooks in the classrooms has also improved collaboration and engagement; in particular the faculty noticed a difference in the school-wide “Make a Difference Project,” for which students work together to present ideas to their community about how to make the world better. As Jared explains, “big projects like that become so much easier with real-time revisions and collaboration.”

What can Chromebooks in the classroom do for your school? Learn more about Chromebooks for Education on our website.

You can also join us for the Chromebook Classroom webinar series, Wednesdays at 9AM PT/12PM ET. Register here.
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Posted by Glenn Wilson, product manager, Chrome for Business & Education

Four months ago we launched Chromebooks for businesses and schools, and we’ve been inspired by our customers embracing this new way of computing. Over that time we’ve learned a lot about what they need to make this device a great fit in their organizations. One piece of feedback we’ve heard from some customers is that they work with yearly budget cycles. To meet these customers’ needs, in addition to our 3-year subscription model, today we are introducing an alternative payment option. This new option gives schools and businesses a choice to pay upfront for Chromebooks with one year of access to the web-based admin management console, phone support, and hardware warranty coverage. After the first year, customers can choose to pay a monthly fee for years two and three for management console access and support.

Education:
  • 1-Year Upfront: $449 (Wi-Fi), $519 (3G)
  • Years 2-3: $5/month per Chromebook for management & support
Business:
  • 1-Year Upfront: $559 (Wi-Fi), $639 (3G)
  • Years 2-3: $13/month per Chromebook for management & support

We have also added a few new features to the web-based management panel to help customers better deploy, monitor and customize their Chromebooks, including group policy management, shipment tracking and asset management.

We’d like to thank all of our early customers for their enthusiasm and for helping us make Chromebooks great for businesses and schools. If you have any questions, feedback, or are interested in purchasing Chromebooks, please contact us.
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Posted by Kevin Gough, Chromebooks for Business team

With frequent updates, Chromebooks automatically get better over time. During this webinar, you’ll learn about the newest business features for Chromebooks, including VPN and secure Wi-Fi (802.1X) support , as well as apps optimized for Chromebooks that make these computers even more flexible for business.

With built-in Wi-Fi and 3G, it’s rare for Chromebooks to be without internet access. However, we’ll review new offline functionalities for our apps, including the new Gmail Offline app and offline modes for Google Docs and Google Calendar that allow Chromebook users to be productive even without connectivity. And, for employees who need access to their desktop software, we’ll demo a “tech preview” of Citrix Receiver optimized for Chromebooks. If you're a Citrix customer, this app enables access to your virtualized applications right from the web browser. We’ll also include time for Q&A with Chromebook product specialists on topics of your choice.

What: Chromebook innovation - new features, offline apps and Citrix
When: Thursday, September 15, 9am PDT / 12pm EDT / 5pm GST
Preseners: Kevin Gough & Jeff Keltner, Chromebooks for Business team

Register now
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Posted by Kevin Gough, Google Enterprise team

Google and salesforce.com share a similar vision for cloud computing and we’ve teamed up over the years on a number of joint initiatives, including integrations between AdWords, Google Apps, Google App Engine and Salesforce offerings. This week, salesforce.com is hosting their Dreamforce cloud computing industry event, and we’re happy to be one of the sponsors.

If you’re going to be at Dreamforce this year, come get an update on Google’s products and cloud vision in one of our conference sessions.

And if you’re in the Bay Area during the conference (8/30 - 9/2), but haven’t yet registered for it, good news, the Dreamforce keynotes, super sessions and the expo sessions are now free, so consider registering and coming on by.

Google sessions to attend

Super Session: 3 Million Google Apps Customers: Strategies for Mobile & Social at Work
Date: Thur, 9/1, 2:45 - 3:45 pm
Location: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts - Novellus Theater
See Google products in action, including new mobile and social tools, and hear our customers share their successes and what they’ve learned during cloud adoption. If you're one of a lucky few, you may also walk away with a new Chromebook.

Keynote: Eric Schmidt
Date: Thur, 9/1, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Marc Benioff will hold a fireside chat with Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, on topics ranging from the evolution of the social enterprise to technology policies necessary to stimulate economic growth.

Chromebooks for Business
Date: Wed, 8/31, 5:00 - 6:00 pm
Location: Moscone West - 3020
Hear how organizations are putting Chromebooks to use and see demos of new Chromebooks, included tools to manage Chromebooks across an organization, and features from our collaboration with Citrix.

Register for Google sessions on the Dreamforce agenda builder. Attendee login.

Expo

Come by booth #611 on the expo floor to try out our latest Chromebooks and ask questions of Google product specialists.

We hope to see you at Dreamforce!
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Posted by Adam Naor, Chromebooks for Education Business Operations

As summer vacation ends and students prepare for the year ahead, we want to share stories from the first three schools to hit the ground running with Chromebooks for Education. Chromebooks decrease wait times in the classroom with a super-fast bootup, protect against viruses with enhanced security, and regular updates from Google mean that Chromebooks actually get better over time, saving thousands of dollars on maintenance and software upgrades. We asked these three schools to share their stories about how they plan to use Chromebooks this year to make the collaborative classroom a reality.

Chromebooks in the classroom
Contributed by Peter Iles, principal, 7th & 8th grade teacher, and tech lead, Grace Lutheran School, Oshkosh, Wis.

As a small private school in central Wisconsin, Grace Lutheran has not always had the funds to provide students with access to modern technology. Our computer lab was at least seven years old but our budgets were limited, so we had a severe need for low-cost, updated technology. To be honest, we were failing our students in being capable and current with technology and trends.

This summer, we considered three options: a complete PC refresh, Windows loaner laptops, or a set of Chromebooks. The first two choices would cost tens of thousands up front not including additional license fees and time I don’t have to maintain a Windows server environment. Chromebooks were the obvious economical choice, but they also made the most sense from an instructional perspective since we use Google Apps for Education, which is well integrated with Chromebooks. In my English class, students do peer reviews in real-time in Google Docs and with Google Maps and Earth we can do real-world math problems, which is far more tangible than working out of a text book.

In all, 17 Chromebooks will be shared in a classroom throughout the day among 5th through 8th grade students. I’m also actively using the Chromebook web-based management console, which allows me to whitelist certain extensions and pre-install education applications on each student's machine. The web changes the way students interact. And really, we have to change the way we teach. Chromebooks open up the whole world of knowledge - and that is one of the best gifts any teacher can give a student.


Chromebooks as a 1:1 device for sixth graders
Contributed by Tina Heizman, Director of Information Technology, Merton Community School District, Merton, Wis.

I really believe in the power of technology to enhance learning. When our 110 sixth graders return to school in September, they will each receive their own Chromebook to keep and use until they graduate from eighth grade. They will be able to take them home and use the 3G capabilities if needed. With the implementation of the Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education, our goal is to increase critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity among students.

When we learned that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction was finalizing their statewide agreement for Google Apps for Education, Chromebooks seemed like a perfect addition. Giving students Chromebooks will keep them productive and allow my department to focus on helping students and staff, instead of dealing with hardware issues. Three years ago we gave each student in 5th through 8th grades a netbook, but login times have slowed significantly and hardware fails. Students become impatient and prefer to use their cell phones, which we’d like them to avoid for network security reasons. With the Chromebooks’ 8-second boot-up time and an 8-hour battery students can access the information they need, when they need it, and work a whole school day on a single charge.

I used to spend my summer imaging new computers, but using the web-based management console to deploy web apps across all 110 Chromebooks took me less than one hour. My vision is to have the devices be part of the natural classroom environment, available when needed, so learning can be the focus. Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education can do that for us.

Chromebooks on PC carts and in the library
Contributed by Ced Paine, Director of Technology, The Fessenden School, West Newton, Mass.

Fessenden is an independent K-9 school with hundreds of students. My five-member IT team has their hands full with six laptop carts, a computer-stocked library and two busy computer labs. When Chromebooks were announced, I thought “this is perfect, this is what we need.” Keeping desktop software up to date is a bear. Fessenden can now be considered cutting edge and technology-forward.

This year Fessenden will add two carts full of Chromebooks that teachers can reserve using Google Calendar for their lessons. As for the students, they are learning to create and collaborate in new, exciting ways. Chromebooks and the web are what I consider the holy grail of educational tools. Kids don’t think of it as using technology; Google Docs is just a blank screen to start creating. Add in the ability to chat with a peer or their teacher while doing their homework presentation in a different town and the results are just amazing to watch unfold.

In addition to the Chromebook carts, students can borrow a Chromebook from the school library. Eventually, we would like all students in 5th through 9th grades to have their own Chromebook. I’m blown away by the creative ways students and teachers use web technology. There’s one project where throughout the year each group rewrites one chapter of a book using Google Docs. At the end, the entire class has re-written the book in their own words. The web allows the students to be the teachers.

How could you use Chromebooks in your school? Learn more about Chromebooks for Education on our website, or register to join our webinar on Tuesday, August 29 at 11:00 a.m. PDT.
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Posted by Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager, Chrome for Business

One of the best things about Chromebooks is that they improve over time with frequent automatic updates. Over the last few months we’ve gotten great feedback from many of our Chromebooks for Business and Education customers, and we’re excited that this week’s latest stable release of Chrome OS includes their top feature requests: VPN and secure Wi-Fi (802.1x) support, and access to virtualized applications.

With VPN support, users can remotely access their private school or business network from a Chromebook so they can use important internal systems while taking advantage of the Chromebook’s portability.

Secure WiFi (802.1X) support lets organizations protect their wireless network and systems by requiring authentication credentials in order for a Chromebook to connect to the network.

Finally, while most new applications will be built for the web, we recognize that some users need to access desktop applications.1 With the technology preview release of Citrix Receiver for Chrome OS, Citrix customers can now access virtualized versions of their desktop applications, like Adobe Photoshop, using a Chromebook.

Also in this week's release, Chromebooks resume even more quickly – 32% faster in most cases. And users can save paper by using Google Cloud Print’s Print to Docs feature. We’re excited for feedback, and to get the latest features, fixes, and improvements, all users need to do is open their Chromebooks!

If you’re interested to learn how Chromebooks can help your school or business, contact our team.

1. IDC, 2010. “Worldwide Software as a Service 2010–2014 Forecast: Software Will Never Be the Same.”↩
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Posted by Kevin Gough, Chromebooks for Business team

How can Chromebooks for Business help your organization? One customer has provided Chromebooks to its distributed sales teams which makes full use of Chromebooks’ long battery life and 3G access. Another is using Chromebooks for support team members who telecommute. They appreciate that Chromebooks’ are easy to use and don’t require trips to headquarters to get the latest updates installed.

Register now for a live webinar this Thursday, July 28 at 12pm EDT, 9am PDT to learn more about Chromebooks for Business. Our team will discuss the total cost of ownership for Chromebooks when compared to other computers, explain the latest security enhancements and share deployment scenarios. We'll also demonstrate how administrators can customize user and device settings, such as applications on the home screen, using the Chromebook management console.
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