Google offering free Chromebooks to Indian schools

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/hardware/Google-offering-free-Chromebooks-to-Indian-schools/articleshow/28000046.cms

by kshatrea • 13 years ago

65 49 13 years ago

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

shimon_e• 13 years ago

It must be so different going to school these days. I feel excited for our future kids!

psbp• 13 years ago

I remember going through the majority of my primary education in the 2000's and being dismayed by the gap between public school education and the resources of the internet. It was such a weird, and unfortunate, period of denial. Maybe we're still experiencing that chasm between the way that society functions and the power of the internet to enrich our lives, but it seems like we're definitely inching closer to my childhood idealizations.

blubbi22• 13 years ago

I'm currently doing my A levels in a small school in the Upper Palatinate. The problem is - at least in Germany - that some schools have to invest the money they get in fundamental thing only, like sanitary facilities. The school I'm attending doesn't even have WARM water AT ALL! NOWHERE! On the other side, there are new built schools that can invest their money in Smart Boards and video projectors. Another point is that most of the "old" teachers simply don't know how to use these fancy new things (including computers in general) and there are also teachers that are so fascinated by Facebook and BayernMoodle (http://www.bayernmoodle.de/) that they more or less force their students to use it on weekends in order to give them exercises. More or less, when I tell my mother about the lessons (she went to the same school as I do), I often realize that sometimes neither the teachers nor the way eduction is being done changed all. I would be happy about new books, some on mine are far older than myself. Maybe others have different experiences, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

snowbunny• 13 years ago

What's so exciting about running a browser on a artificially locked down and crippled OS where you're forced to upload everything to the cloud where you have minimal control over your data, instead of running it on Linux or even OS X or Windows?

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

This is what I would like to know, as well.

But actually, even ignoring that, I don't see how giving kids free electronics is so exciting. Public school is heading towards obsolescence, and arbitrarily handing out gadgets to students demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of technological advancement and its role in education.

This isn't any better than the state of California trying to patch its failure by handing out free iPads, although I guess it's more practical, given the poverty rate and extreme wealth disparity in India.

rwbt2• 13 years ago

I commend Google for it, but my inner voice is somewhat skeptical that this is a great way to get kids hooked on Google's services. Then again, having a Chromebook is way better than some crappy linux machine/cheap windows laptop. So I think its a win-win for both parties.

josteink• 13 years ago

Then again, having a Chromebook is way better than some crappy linux machine/cheap windows laptop.

Why? It's a much more limited device with much less potential for learning essential skills.

A Chromebook can only be used to surf the web. It's the polar opposite of what an educational institute needs.

userbinator• 13 years ago

Indeed, a bootable browser has little use outside of... web browsing. Even an old machine with an old OS is more usable, especially when there's no network connectivity. That happens a lot more than you think with a laptop.

rwbt2• 13 years ago

It depends. A regular laptop can do more things, but most of the time students just need a laptop to research and write articles and the Chromebook does that very well, without exposing the internals of a traditional desktop system.

If I'm a college student, I really don't want to deal with OS upgrades, malware and other things. I just want something that works out of the box and Chromebook does that perfectly. If I really want to tinker, it's not that hard to install a linux distro in a Chromebook and not everyone desires to tinker with their computers.

_delirium• 13 years ago

It's a little hard to tell from the article what the goal is. If the goal is just to use the computers as a means to some other (non-tech) educational end, e.g. as browsers for accessing online information, then Chromebooks seem like a reasonable method of doing so. If the goal is computer education, then I agree they're suboptimal; even something like a Raspberry Pi might be better for that kind of education.

One lingering unease I have about the first use-case, though, is that it forecloses some unplanned exploration. I largely got into tech by fiddling around with lightweight programming on machines that weren't explicitly bought to teach programming. Perhaps web-based dev environments will fill that gap, though; someone with a Chromebook can still experiment with anything from Codeacademy to jsFiddle to sketchpad.cc.

Alterlife• 13 years ago

Apart from the good points that other folks are making, this isn't necessarily targeted at engineering students.

A decent screen, a decent keyboard, comes with a word processor, is low maintenance, doesn't get viruses (theoretically at least) and it can access the web. That sounds pretty good to me.

agumonkey2• 13 years ago

With everything javascript, a browser can get you quite far. You have :

- repl for a handful of languages from javascript to haskell with lisps in between.

- jsfiddle to learn ~basic client-side webdev.

- canvas/webgl to learn ~basic graphic programming.

- if you dig deep enough you have VPRI OMeta for parser/metaprogramming.

- if you're not in a hurry you can even learn ~basic unix (busybox, gcc 4.3) on Fabrice Bellard's jslinux

I don't think you can learn prolog easily though.

Mikeb854• 13 years ago

Funny how people believe things that get repeated, no matter how false.

A Chromebook can only be used to surf the web. It's the polar opposite of what an educational institute needs.

Chrome OS is a highly customized version of Gentoo at its core. When you activate developer mode, you get access to a full Linux distro. Some people use Portage to install extra tools, some use Crouton to install Ubuntu alongside Chrome OS (they share the same kernel as opposed to dual-booting).

Heck, even if you don't use developer mode, there are some cool JavaScript programming tools that you can download and run locally in the browser.

auctiontheory• 13 years ago

Think of the hundred of millions of kids who've been hooked onto Microsoft's products. Why shouldn't kids have a choice?

wklauss• 13 years ago

I think we should strive for not repeating the Microsoft situation with a different brand. Like someone else commented, a Raspberry Pi seems like a better solution. Chromebooks are extremely tied to Google services.

patrickaljord4• 13 years ago

Why shouldn't kids have a choice?

With chrome you can develop for the web which is the most open platform that works everywhere. And if you want to develop in native, you can install crouton and do whatever you want. Chromebooks are not locked in or "jailed", they all come with a dev switch that is documented by google and encouraged for anyone who wants to use it: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo...

This is the way it should be in my opinion, the possibility to mess up with your device should not be enabled by default to avoid confusing noobs. But, if you're a tinkerer, it should be as easy as pressing a few keys and the process should be duly documented by the manufacturer and it should not breach the warranty. This comes from a happy pixel owner who enjoys hacking on Golang, js and even ruby among other languages on my chromebook. Best environment I've had after 10+ years of ubuntu and some osx :)

codygman• 13 years ago

Even better is wiping the chromebook and putting linux on it!

eru5• 13 years ago

It already comes with a Linux. You might want to put a different flavour of Linux on it, if you care enough. It's pretty easy, at least if you are willing to boot from external media.

donniezazen• 13 years ago

You should create something better than Linux and distribute it for free.

eru5• 13 years ago

A Chromebook is essentially a cheap linux machine.

chestnut-tree2• 13 years ago

"I commend Google for it..."

Why? This initiative is clearly in their own self-interest. That's not meant to be a cycnical jab, but just stating how it is.

Much more disturbing to me are the privacy implications. Since you cannot use a Chromebook without signing into the OS, Google has the potential to track everything you do on a Chromebook. And now they're giving these computers to kids.

Just stop and think about that for a few seconds. Over the course of a year, Google will potentially know every single website you visit, every document you print (even to your desktop printer), how ofen and when you use their online apps, and who knows what else? Their vaguely-worded privacy policies simply don't tell you what they track and record.

The privacy implications are horrendous in my view. Until Google clearly and unambiguosly state what they track and record I would never recommend using ChromeOS (that, plus the limited capabilities of the OS).

patrickaljord4• 13 years ago

Since you cannot use a Chromebook without signing into the OS, Google has the potential to track everything you do on a Chromebook.

Pixel owner here. You can sign in as guest without a google account and use chrome without a google account then. You can even run as incognito in guest mode if you really care.

aufreak3• 13 years ago

Is it possible to install regular Ubuntu or something on a Chromebook? I'd absolutely hate to see kids use computers whose operation they do not control.

Mikeb854• 13 years ago

Developer mode. Chrome OS = Gentoo, and you can use Crouton to install Ubuntu or another distro alongside Chrome OS (and they share the kernel as opposed to dual-booting).

salient• 13 years ago

This deal was probably made pre-Snowden revelations. I doubt any of the world's governments are so eager to deploy US-controlled machines in their institutions and schools, especially if they are "cloud-only".

rational_indian• 13 years ago

But it's free!!!

louthy• 13 years ago

So was the Trojan Horse.

seiji• 13 years ago

What? The NSA wants poorly written papers by school children?

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

It's interesting that Google is hardy being scrutinized for using exactly the same tactics for which Microsoft was vilified a decade ago.

eitally2• 13 years ago

They're probably hoping for something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ipm3fDU60.

winterswift• 13 years ago

I see there's a mini-shitstorm going on here, but let's say Google is in fact a business acting in its own self-interest to some degree, which seems reasonable. Let's say they're giving away Chromebooks because a) they wish to do good in the world, and b) they'd like to get more people using Google services, and this seems like a rather effective method of gaining long-term users. Now, ignoring the fact that you can indeed use crouton, enable dev mode, or otherwise "hack the platform" so to speak, where's the actual issue in having these kids using Google services? Google's offering them free computers. Does we honestly think that a poor kid in India wouldn't eagerly give written consent to become a user of Google's services, letting Google benefit from that as they do from any similar user, especially when they're not being forced in any way whatsoever to continue doing so in the future?

I'm a goddamn middle-class American, I believe I have a reasonable knowledge of what Google will get out of this deal (as they do every day from my heavy usage of their services), and I would accept the free computer. Even at that, poor kids without regular access to the internet aren't your average highly tech-literate, open-source-aware HN user, and I really doubt they care about Google's relatively responsible* use of collected information in exchange for a rather nice free netbook, even if they were fully aware of its implications.

*Sure, I understand this is an arguable definition, but in the larger scheme of things, it seems fair to say that Google doesn't have a malicious use of the data in mind.

diadara• 13 years ago

I love quoting RMS. "What schools should refuse to do is teach dependence. Those corporations offer free samples to schools for the same reason tobacco companies distribute free cigarettes to minors: to get children addicted. They will not give discounts to these students once they've grown up and graduated."

Surely this applies only if you consider chromebooks as free and this not true atleast by RMS standards.

xradionut• 13 years ago

I think a much better ethical investment would be XO laptops from OLPC, Internet-in-a-Box devices, and grants to train local teachers on how to use both.

Google offering free Chromebooks to Indian schools

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