Chromebook, the world's most preferred student device.

Since the pandemic, with the advent of online education, one of the most frequent requests came from my friends, relatives, acquaintances were on which device to buy for their kid. Since I work in the IT hardware industry, most of the time this was for exploring the options of a better discount than market price.??

But this raised many thoughts with me, the first one is device selection for students is done by parents, and cost of the acquiring the device is the only criterion. Usually, parents don’t go deep into its useful features instead, buy a product based on their affordability. As we always state, ‘In India, Pricing is a feature’

In India, a Mobile phone is the cheapest of the options and for any parent who can’t afford more than $100, they go ahead and buy a mobile phone. Even many community programs, which are promoted by crowdfunding, will also end up on the mobile phone as they can reach many more students with a limited amount.

A parent who can afford $500, goes with an entry-level laptop. In most of these cases, Indians miss out on Chromebook, which is the world's most preferred student device.??

While there are some Chromebook users in India, they are not as popular as they are in the US or UK, where they are primary devices for children and teens who go to school as well as any individual who has a lighter than usual workload. Chromebooks are available since 2011, but they never became very popular despite attempts by both Google and its OEM partners like HP in the past to launch affordable notebooks running the Chrome OS operating system in India.

Chromebooks in most cases are cheaper to buy than laptops running on Windows operating system. This is generally true, but a lot of people don’t know what they can do with a Chromebook. There is a large chunk of consumers who possibly don’t know what a Chromebook is, and how it is different.

What is Chromebook?

A Chromebook not only runs web apps but it is equipped to run?Android apps from the Google Play store. Because ChromeOS is essentially a web browser at its core, it delivers a different experience from the Windows and macOS notebooks we are used to.

What Can I do with a Chromebook??

If you are planning to buy a device for a student, anything that a student need is very well available in Chromebook. It’s just that it’s a laptop with a different operating system. There is a misconception that Chromebook is merely a machine with a Chrome browser and is useless if we don’t have internet. That’s not completely true. Yes, this is a chrome-based device but offers much more beyond a browser.?

Let us rephrase the question as what is expected by students in online education

1. Connecting to an online class: Most schools either use Google Classroom, Zoom, or other platforms. Chrome work best with Google’s core products including Google Classroom which gives a much better connectivity experience.?So if your kid's school is using Google workspace, Chromebook is the best option.
2. Browse over the internet: Needless to say, Chrome as a search engine, Chromebook is an ideal product for browsing. With an option Education Chrome Upgrade license, schools or teachers can manage and control what students access
3. Watch the Video Content – Chromebook have almost all the media options supported. Chromebooks have longer battery life compared with a traditional laptop?
4. Prepare notes, presentations, and spreadsheets – Chromebook offer Android play store where you will be able to download free apps for word processing, creating a presentation, etc like Libre office, WPS office?
5. Educational apps: Most of the education content creators, these days have created their android apps and can be used fairly well in Chromebooks. There are many innovative educational apps are available in chrome like Gcompris, GeoGebra.?

The pandemic, in many ways, has accelerated that, especially on the education front Education has always been a core part of Google and its ambitions with Chromebooks. The Public Education department in Kerala has already signed up for Google workspace extending to 4.7 million students. A Chromebook will be the perfect device if the education content is being pushed through google workspace.?

With more and more data coming into the cloud, with improved and faster connectivity, more than the local computing power of the machine, it is more important how the device interacts with the data that sits on the cloud. Hence chrome books can play a major role in the Indian education system bringing content from the internet to millions of students anywhere in the country.

Any teacher will tell you that there is no replacing in-person instruction, so students will one day leave the Google classrooms behind and return to the physical classroom - but they will be bringing their Chromebooks with them, and the impact of that on the future of Chrome OS and the Chromebooks they power will be long-lasting.