Chromebooks are heading straight to the top of the class, as Google recently added another 1,000 schools to its list of Chromebooks for Education participants.

The program now boasts 2,000 associated schools, double the number it had just three months ago.

"With the Web, students and teachers are using new technology and devices to collaborate with each other in class, from home, and around the world," Google Global Education evangelist Jaime Casap said in a Friday blog post.

The most recent schools to join the Google program include North Carolina's Transylvania County Schools, which purchased 900 devices, Florida's St. Thomas Aquinas High School with 2,200 devices, and Rocketship Education in California, which now has 1,100 Chromebooks in use.

During a recent Florida Educational Technology Conference in Orlando, some of the program's early adopters reflected on the impact Web learning has had on their schools. According to Casap, the online learning opportunity led to tech-support internships and allowed home-taught students to get involved remotely.

Google's program extends beyond the U.S. "In an increasingly digital age, it's great to see that the students I teach have been able to harness these skills in such a way, and it puts them in good stead for the years ahead," said Bruno Reddy of King Soloman Academy in London.

The search giant in December teamed up with charity website DonorsChoose.org to offer a $99 Samsung Series 5 Chromebook to full-time public school teachers in the U.S., from Dec. 10 to 21. Pricing for the Series 5 laptop normally starts at $429.

Lenovo jumped onto the educational bandwagon early this year, announcing that its first Chromebook — a variation of the ThinkPad X131e — will be sold exclusively to K-12 schools.

Meanwhile, Google's initiative pushed the Chicago public school system to bring 270,000 students, teachers, and administrators into the cloud, allowing them to share information from anywhere, including PC and mobile devices.

Earlier today, meanwhile, Google unveiled its latest Chromebook, the HP Pavilion 14(pictured), available today for $329.99 in the U.S. via HPDirect.com. Featuring a 14-inch screen with 1,366-by-768 display, the Pavilion 14 runs a dual-core Intel Celeron processor and includes 4.25 hours of battery life, as well as built-in dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and Ethernet, plus Bluetooth 3.0 compatibility.

The obvious marketing edge here is that google hopes to start em on the Chrome OS while they're young, and convert them to Googlers while still in grade school

Apple got a looottttt of praise for this marketing tactic back in the 1980's btw

Would it impress the least if this number ever grew  to say 5 or 10000 schools?    Did you notice the articles fast growth rate , with an approximate doubling of schools using chromebooks in 3 months?  So, forecasting future numbers as attainable shouldnt seem like an outlandish proposition, kowen

Sure, but what do you expect? It's a marketing gimmick if anything.  I'm sure that MSFT has had enormous expenditures for its Windows 8 campaign for all of the grand results that has given them so it could be doing comparatively worse.

I imagine those kids will get quite frustrated when they take these laptops out of the computer lab/wifi area and they stop working... Will go home and love their iPads even more.

Seriously though, why wouldn't google give schools Chrome OS desktops? It's not like these kids can be mobile with these laptops.

The chrome book is a great device to learn how to surf the internet, but does it have MS Office? If not, then it definitely has limitations that would prevent schools from only using it.

Desktops? that could come one day, probably after the upcoming android/chrome merger but even then that would take a while to accomplish.

I personally think that desktops with some Google OS will come out, but not until a couple of years from now or perhaps further. i think that google will want to do this eventually though, as MSFT is starting to age, already they are putting out a significant portion of their profits as dividends, making it more of a value stock than what would be considered normal for a tech company. i just dont see how a company that gives out 45% of its earnings to be able to defend itself from hungry growing companies as well as it wants to.


http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=msft+Key+Statistics - see share statistics column for quoted info

It doesn't really need it when they have Google Docs

They don't stop working. Jesus....

Google's offline system is very good actually and for any non-college student it would be perfect. Hell, for the greater majority of college kids it would be perfect as well. Really only begins to be hampered when you get to degrees that require specific applications that at this point don't have a more mobile/Chrome based solution available. But as all these new digital store fronts on each OS grow, this will disappear largely as well.

Also, they use laptops for portability throughout the school. They have a shared resource they use all throughout the school on dockable carts to recharge. Every student/room does not have a full set.

Google Docs doesn't have all of the functionality taht MS Office has. They're also built quite differently from each other, so one would have a harder time transitioning to MS Office later in life if they only learned Google Docs. I wouldn't want my middle/high schooler learning Google Docs.