Google donates 35 classroom Chromebooks to AAPS

From AAPSNews Service

Google has given a free classroom set of 35 Chromebooks to the Ann Arbor Public Schools to use in district instruction.

The notebooks, which run on the Chrome operating system and use the Chrome web browser, have been tried out over the past few weeks in classrooms at Skyline High School and Ann Arbor Open @ Mack.

Director of Instructional Technology Monique Uzelac explained that the Chromebooks are not like traditional laptops computers, but operate only on the Internet. “They’re thinking that enough people have gone to the cloud now, that they will adapt to this product,” she said.

The district is expected to use the Chromebooks for student projects that use online research and Google applications. At Skyline, the Chromebooks were used in the school’s yearbook class; at Ann Arbor Open, they were used for a project by a third/fourth multi-age class.

Since the Ann Arbor Public Schools moved earlier this year to A2SchoolsGoogle for its e-mail, documents, calendars and other applications, Uzelac said “it was a good time for us to try this out.”

Chromebooks are being beta tested by several districts around the country and Uzelac said Ann Arbor was one of a handful of districts chosen. “We’re looking forward to expanding the partnership between Google and the schools,” she added.

The Google Chromebooks are being rolled out on June 15 for sale to the public.

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