This may finally be the year when classroom’s get a major technology upgrade. Apple’s already had success with their iPad-optimized textbooks and now Google’s announced their huge success with providing Chromebooks in order to bring classrooms into the 21st Century.
At a keynote address yesterday in Orlando, FL, Rajen Sheth, Google Group Manager, talked about the success of Google’s Chromebooks for Education program. In case you didn’t know, Google’s undertaken a mission to provide schools with one Chromebook per student in order to improve access to and integrate the Internet into the education of students in grades K-12. Because most students and teachers aren’t always able to have classroom access to the Internet, Google has been providing these netbooks at very low costs.
Since the program rolled out last year, Sheth said that “hundreds of schools in 41 states across the U.S.” have integrated the Chromebooks into classrooms. Additionally, three new school districts in Iowa, Illinois, and South Carolina are beginning the 1-to-1 program, which will provide Chromebooks to upwards of 27,000 students.
Sheth’s full keynote speech about the success of Chromebooks for Education can be viewed below:
At the rate that tech companies are integrating themselves into classrooms of today, my only hope is that this initiative by the Googles and Apples of the world will narrow the gap in quality education among different students instead of widen it.
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Correction: This article was edited in order to correct the spelling of Google’s Group Manager, Rajen Sheth.