I am currently at the ITEC IT Conference in Ames, and I just came from a session put on by representatives from the Council Bluffs schools. They are completing a pilot project of Chromebooks and are prepared to roll out a grades 9 to 12 Chromebook 1:1 initiative this fall. I've tested a Chromebook myself, and they are great! There is little work that needs to be done to deploy them. They boot up in 8 seconds. The battery lasts 8 hours. They are designed to use Google Apps which we use in the district already.
However, you can't load programs or software on them. They don't do Java. They have only limited Flash capabilities. And, they are paperweights if they don't have a wireless Internet connection. As wonderful as it would be to get away from laptops and netbooks that sometimes take a minute or two to log in, I just don't think Chromebooks are the answer in a community where we have so many families without Internet access, let alone wireless Internet access at home.
What do you think?
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