Google Announces 2,000 Schools Now Use Chromebooks, Up 100% In 3 Months 96
An anonymous reader writes "Google is fearlessly trudging on with its Chromebook push in the education market. The company announced on Friday that there are now 2,000 schools using Chromebooks for Education around the world. Just three months ago, there were 1,000 schools, showing an impressive adoption rate so far."
Re:I'm sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree entirely at the college level at least.
For engineering classes if you can't solve a problem with a computer you are not a very useful engineer and the way you solve problems on a computer is a learned skill. Just knowing how to solve a problem by hand with a LOT of the simplifications needed to solve a problem by hand help in any way at all for solving a real problem with a simulation program like HYSYS.
Heck knowing how to solve a problem by hand does not even translate very well to solve the same kinds of problems in Excel much less Matlab but with far fewer assumptions. Many of the students in my class are having a very hard time with the homework because we have mostly moved beyond hand solvable problems and they don't have the computer skills necessary to solve them effectively on computers. Even the exams seem to be slowly changing to more setup and understanding.
Even the law expects engineers to look stuff up instead of going from memory. Memorization has no real place in learning anymore. You need to learn how to work with technology effectively to solve problems. If you define yourself based on competing with computers you are going to lose badly.
Re:As a teacher... (Score:4, Insightful)
I do have to give Excel a lot of credit though for being very good at engineering tasks. I have tried to use openoffice but it is just missing too many of the engineering type tools. The excel solver is VERY good and excel has a bunch of stats stuff needed.
Excel can even be integrated with various engineering tools like HYSYS or Matlab and do some truly amazing things. I do like openoffice but I also have to be realistic that for engineering tasks you need to learn excel. My professors all expect us to use Excel, Matlab, HYSYS and other tools for our homework. If you don't know how to use those tools the odds are you won't pass the class. The problems are too complex to solve by hand and while you can use any other tool you want the odds of doing it well enough to solve the problems is pretty low.
A regular user does not need even a tiny fraction of the power that excel has and could easily use even stuff like google docs.
One way or another education is going to radically change in the next 20 years. Schools are either going to adapt to more modern technology or at least the colleges will be replaced because they are so darned expensive. Something like the khan academy or other online learning systems are not any worse and usually far better than any of the large lecture classes.