A decade ago, we launched a small pilot program with a handful of schools. Council Bluffs in Iowa and Fon du Lac in Wisconsin were among the very first to use Chromebooks. Today, Chromebooks are as essential as a backpack for students learning in the US and in places like Australia, Brasil, Canada, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and Sweden. As we celebrate our 10th birthday, we’re taking a look back at how far Chromebooks have come in the classroom, and announcing new features for educators and students.
From pilot program to 40 million
Googlers took the first Chromebooks into schools in the U.S. for a pilot program in 2010, and we found that students, teachers, and education leaders immediately loved how fast, simple and secure they were — three principles we still adhere to today. And with the rapid introduction of Chrome Education Upgrade, which unlocked advanced features in the operating system, Chromebooks rapidly became a hit with schools and IT administrators for their shareability and ease of management at scale. With Google Admin Console, school administrators were suddenly able to manage devices remotely, which has fundamentally shifted the computing model for schools from “computer rooms” to “shared carts” to today, assigned Chromebooks for most students – because hundreds of thousands of devices can all be managed by a single person.
Chromebooks expanded globally, scaling up in partnership with manufacturers like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung. More recently, NEC and Sharp have all started building Chromebooks for the Japan Education market–making Chromebooks the #1 device in K-12 education globally for the last year. To open up possibilities for note taking, digital reading, art, filming video reports, podcasts, and early learning apps, Chromebooks are now available in multiple formats, like convertibles, clamshells and tablets, and come with stylus support and touchscreen functionality. And to increase access, Chromebooks now come with multiple connectivity options including WiFi and mobile broadband. Today there’s a device for every learner and a growing ecosystem of apps for students and teachers alike– over 40 million of them around the world– with the Chromebook App Hub offering engaging apps and fresh lesson ideas.
Chromebooks were built to be the foundation for teaching and learning, no matter where you are. And in 2020, as schools turned to distance learning, we’ve worked hard to improve the video conferencing capabilities of older as well as newly released devices to run Google Meet and Zoom, and introduced new features like Zero Touch Enrollment to help admins remotely enroll and ship devices to students and teachers at home, and extended support for automatic updates to eight years, so devices stay secure and equipped with the latest features for years to come.
