HOLONOMY: the science of interacting parts within wholes.
Holos = Whole.
On = Part.
Nomy = Systematized Knowledge.
The Study or Science of Wholeness.
The balance between Self-Assertion and Integration.
In 2000, only eight million Americans had broadband in their homes; by 2009, that number had grown exponentially to nearly 200 million. As a result of this expansion, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 mandated that the Federal Communications Commission develop a National Broadband Plan, to “ensure that the entire broadband ecosystem—networks, devices, content and applications—is healthy.” Among its long-term goals, the plan aims to bring broadband to another 100 million U.S. homes and position the United States as a world leader in mobile innovation. What progress has been made over the last five years to fulfill these goals?
On June 17, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted an event to discuss the five year anniversary of the National Broadband Plan. A panel of experts discussed the development of the plan, the changes that have been made over the past five years, and what lies ahead for the future of American broadband development.
Comcast move heats up Internet speed fight
BY FRANK WITSIL DETROIT FREE PRESS
HOW MUCH SPEED DO YOU NEED?
1-10 megabits per second: One computer and no mobile devices. 25 megabits per second: Up to five devices that are being used for Internet surfing, minimal video watching. 50 megabits per second: Multiple people on the network at the same time, with smartphones, tablets and computers, who are gaming, video conferencing and streaming video. 105 megabits per second: Downloading and storing movies and TV shows, frequent gaming.
Source: Comcast
RYAN GARZA/DETROIT FREE PRESS
Comcast plans to offer higher-speed Internet service to Michigan customers. No prices have been announced, but Comcast is calling it a “premium service,” suggesting a higher price tag for customers.
Comcast plans to offer higher-speed residential Internet service — up to 2 gigabits per second — to about 1.5 million homes in Michigan markets by next month, the cable company said Tuesday.
As competition for Internet customers intensifies, Com-cast is touting its service as the fastest nationwide — even faster than Rocket Fiber, which is creating a 1-gigabit network in downtown Detroit and Midtown.
“Michigan is swarming with tech-savvy residents who have a need for even faster speeds,” said Tim Collins, senior vice president of Comcast’s Heartland Region. “Bringing this new level of fast to our customers reflects more than just our commitment to meeting their needs today, but also into the future.”
Comcast’s enhanced broadband service, which is being called Gigabit Pro, is to be offered in metro Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Jackson and Lansing, and will allow for faster downloads on multiple devices.
No prices have been announced, but Comcast is calling it a “premium service,” suggesting a higher price tag for customers.
“Most households probably won’t need that speed,” said Comcast spokesman Randy Jones. “But there are some users who will find it appealing. It is lightning fast. We’re working very hard to get this in the marketplace.”
Most homes now measure their broadband speeds in megabits per second. A gigabit is 1,000 megabits.
Cable and other Internet providers are adding faster digital connections as customers demand more streaming video, complex digital games and other services that require more bandwidth.
To get an idea of how fast 2 gigabits per second is, Jones said, customers with this service should be able to download a high-definition movie in about 12 seconds, or a 30-minute TV show in 2 seconds.
At 8 megabits a second, it would take nearly 8 minutes to download a TV show.
The average Internet connection in Michigan now is12.7 megabits per second, according to Massachusetts-based Akamai Technologies.
Other Internet companies
— some building new networks — are racing to offer high-speed broadband service.
Rocket Fiber, which is backed by businessman Dan Gilbert, expects to its enhanced service in downtown Detroit and Midtown by the end of the year.
East Lansing-based Light-Speed Communications has offered 1-gigabit residential Internet service in some parts of Lansing since last fall and plans to offer it in Southfield neighborhoods this summer.
The company had said it expected to charge a promotional rate of about $50 a month, and then $50-$70.
Bob Trezise, president and CEO of the Lansing Economic Area Partnership, said the service helps make the community more attractive to businesses and homeowners that want and need the faster service. In many cases now, he added, residential Internet users are entrepreneurs operating out of their homes.
“It’s imperative businesses and neighborhoods have access to that speed,” he said. “The competition is starting.”
Outside Michigan, Comcast also plans to offer the Gigabit Pro service in these cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Portland, Ore., Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and Chattanooga, Knoxville and Nashville, Tenn. And it plans to offer the service in these states: California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Utah and Washington.
In case you missed it from earlier this week, Walter Isaacson visited Big Think to discuss the inextricable link between new technologies and creative communities built around them. Isaacson noticed when researching his new book, The Innovators, that innovation has a remarkable ability to draw out the human need for connectivity. It's this creative connection that gives technology a broader cultural meaning:
"Technology has always been driven by engineering but the next phase is connecting the creativity to it, the creative industry."
Earlier today, President Obama traveled to Cedar Falls, Iowa to share how this small city has done some big things to deliver lightning-fast Internet to the entire metro area. This afternoon, he toured the Cedar Falls Utilities headquarters to see how technicians connect homes and businesses to the area's fiber optic network, and called for more communities to deliver this vital resource to their economy.
So here are five things you need to know about today’s announcement.
1. Fiber optic Internet is really, really fast.
The average American broadband customer has around 10 Mbps, which means downloading an HD movie would take around 22 minutes. Once reserved for research universities and major telecommunications carriers, fiber optic Internet is now available direct to homes and businesses. And along with it comes blazing speeds of around 1 gigabyte -- or 1,000 megabytes -- per second. That's around 100 times faster than the average American Internet connection, and brings down the time to download that same HD movie to around eight seconds. That’s right: eight seconds.
2. Cedar Falls, Iowa has really, really fast fiber optic Internet. For everyone in town.
If you live, or have a business in Cedar Falls, you can get a "gig," and you can get it for less than many Americans pay for premium cable. Now not everyone needs access to all that speed, and not every town will find fiber optic Internet to be the answer for them -- but communities deserve to decide for themselves, and to experience the benefits that come with it.
President Barack Obama with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker views demonstration of fiber optic spicing at Cedar Falls Utilities in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Jan. 14, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
3. Fast, affordable Internet is about a lot more than watching movies or online gaming.
Fast broadband can be a magnetic force for a local economy -- it keeps existing businesses in town and thriving, and attracts new ones, creating jobs. In his speech, the President outlined just how broadband is helping spur economic revitalization in towns across the country, including here in Cedar Falls. And fast Internet isn't just about helping technology companies, either. It can help small businesses stay competitive, giving them access to the full range of cloud services and online tools to streamline everything from payroll to collaborating with others. And, yes, it's great for streaming movies and MMORPGs, too.
4. But it’s not available all across the country.
There’s been some impressive investment across the country, and for some, speeds have continued to rise -- in fact between 2009 and 2012, annual investment in U.S. wireless networks grew more than 40%, from $21 billion to $30 billion. Yet around half the country's rural population cannot even get access at a quarter of the speed of Cedar Falls -- and when they do, they rarely have more than one provider to choose from. We can’t afford to leave so many parts of the country without a vibrant, competitive broadband marketplace.
5. President Obama’s announcements today will help bring faster, cheaper Internet for more Americans.
In the 1920s, some argued that reliable electricity was a luxury, too expensive to offer to the entire country, and its uses too uncertain for rural communities to take full advantage. From supporting community efforts to bringing faster and better broadband to citizens to removing regulatory barriers to build-out and investment, the President's announcements today are all aimed at helping more communities in America get access to this transformative -- and essential -- technology.
President Barack Obama makes remarks at Cedar Falls Utilities in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Jan. 14, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
R. David Edelman is Senior Advisor for Technology and Economic Policy.
The 3 Big Myths that Are Holding Back America’s Internet
The U.S. is lagging its competitors in the quality of its Internet access, and the people in charge are hearing excuses. It’s time to debunk the myths.
Back in 2001, then newly minted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman (and now top cable industry lobbyist) Michael Powell was asked a question about the digital divide
Hequipped, “I think there is a Mercedes divide. I would like to have one, but I can’t afford one.” The talking point hasn’t changed: Last week I met with a telecom industry investor who is completely unconvinced that there is anything wrong with the state of high-speed Internet access in America. He looked me right in the eye and said, “Sure, I’d like a Ferrari too.”
The staying power of the “it’s like a luxury vehicle” meme in the minds of those who fervently support the status quo got me thinking. It’s the end of the calendar year — the time when our need for summing-up expresses itself in a flowering of lists. So here’s my list of the Three Great Myths about U.S. Internet access. Go to any meeting on high-speed Internet access policy and you’ll hear these lines.
Myth Number One
“There’s no problem because everyone who wants high-speed Internet access has it.”
It’s true that most of America — 93% of households — is reached by cable, the dominant form of high-speed Internet access in the country. But people don’t sign up for high-speed Internet access in similar numbers. The FCC’s most recent data on this is from 2011 — the commission hasn’t issued a report on adoption since the summer of 2012 — when just 40% of Americans had signed up for wired download speeds of 3 Mbps or higher. And adoption rates are even lower in rural areas and for poorer and older Americans: Income, level of education and age are the largest predictors of Internet access adoption. Adoption plateaued several years ago and hasn’t significantly increased.
(Pew says adoption of “broadband” is about 70%, but they’re counting everything other than dial-up, including satellite and mobile wireless services that don’t substitute effectively for a wire. Smartphones are complementary, supplemental methods of online access; about 83% of people with a smartphone also have a wire at home.)
Why don’t people sign up for wires in their homes? Its expense is the most-cited reason. We pay a lot more than people in other countries do, for service that is worse. We’re in the middle of the pack for OECD nations when it comes to wired Internet access and we are low-ranked for fiber access; the US is 21st out of 34 OECD countries for penetration of fiber.
Our lack of fiber is a substantial competitive problem for the country: fiber, unlike the cable network, is capable of equal upload (publishing!) as well as download capacity, can be easily upgraded by installing advanced electronics, and (as far as we can tell) has unlimited capacity to carry information. Fiber will last for decades and is the world standard for communications networks.
Even counting everything other than dial-up as “high speed,” we’re at risk of leaving behind 60 million Americans who are truly disconnected from the Internet. Given the huge differences in usage patterns between Internet access via smartphone and over wires, we’re at risk of relegating many poorer Americans to second-class Internet access. Research clearly shows that levels of online engagement among smartphone-only users are substantially lower than for people with wires at home. Smaller screens make for relatively impoverished online experiences, access speeds are usually slower, and data caps combined with steep overage charges constrain users from doing all the same things they might do with a wired home connection. More tweeting, more Facebook, but less producing and collaborating.
We’re also far behind other countries (Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Norway, etc.) when it comes to the global standard for Internet access — fiber optic connections to homes.
We’ve got a policy problem.
Myth Number Two
“The industry has invested a tremendous amount in high-speed Internet access infrastructure; we would lose that investment if there was any attempt to regulate high-speed Internet access.”
We know that Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and AT&T made just shy of $1.5 trillion in revenue between 2009 and 2013, which is more than twice what these same companies made between 2001 and 2005. Yes, they’ve invested in their networks — but their capital expenditures for 2009 to 2013 amount to just 15% as a percentage of that flood of revenue (quite a bit less than the 20% for all four during 2001–2005). These companies are in harvesting mode.
There is no evidence other than the companies’ assertions that investment would go even lower if they were regulated. It’s far more likely that they’ll invest when they feel the pressure of competition. Or when policy provides incentives for them to do so. For example, a recent paper from consulting firm Diffraction Analysis suggests that greater investment into fiber network assets could come from policy changes that either make the separation of network services from online services more palatable (fiber-only companies would have more incentives to install more fiber), or make old-fashioned copper networks more expensive to keep in place.
Free Press points out that investment in networks went down following deregulation, not up, and that there is no evidence that a return to a regulatory regime would “be devastating to the United States,” as the cable lobby claims.
Myth Number Three
“Who needs fiber? Mobile wireless is the future.”
This is like saying that because we have airplanes we don’t need airports. A wireless signal is just the last 50 feet of a wire; wireless and wired connections are complementary. A 20 Mbps local wireless connection — between your handset and a cell tower, say — is no good if the wire running from the tower to the core network (the “backhaul”) doesn’t have enough capacity to carry that number of bits or is having latency issues. When that wire is a fiber optic line, it can carry an enormous amount of information.
To haul all our mobile wireless data back from us to the Internet, particularly when we’re uploading a ton of data, we’ll need fiber deep into the places we live, work and entertain ourselves. Fiber, the glass tubes themselves, is cheaper to maintain than copper and can be easily upgraded. And without a major change in policy in the U.S. we’re not going to have it — even as other countries take it for granted and start building the new uses and new societies that are based on ubiquitous, vanishingly cheap communications.
I could go on. A private basic-communications-infrastructure company unconstrained by either competition or oversight will, quite rationally, act to harvest rents from everyone around. And that’s what we’re seeing in America. Yes, cable reaches everyone — and it’s an expensive, second-class network that can’t provide the upload capacity of fiber and is controlled in each town by a single operator that has no particular incentive to upgrade. Yes, the industry has invested in its networks, but that investment has become a trickle of the floods of revenue the companies gather from American subscribers. Yes, there are wireless companies and cable companies selling “broadband,” but they don’t compete with one another; these are complementary Internet access products.
Fiber Internet access isn’t a Ferrari. In other countries, it’s a basic, inexpensive utility. It’s a Camry.
Chattanooga's Gig: how one city's super-fast internet is driving a tech boom
The city is one of the only places on Earth with internet as fast as 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average. Despite Big Cable’s attempt to block the Gig’s expansion plans, money keeps flowing into Chattanooga
Fancy Rhino, a marketing and film production firm, has been working with The Howard School to include them in the city’s renaissance Photograph: Dominic Rushe/Guardian
Loveman’s department store on Market Street in Chattanooga closed its doors in 1993 after almost a century in business, another victim of a nationwide decline in downtowns that hollowed out so many US towns. Now the opulent building is buzzing again, this time with tech entrepreneurs taking advantage of the fastest internet in the western hemisphere.
Financed by the cash raised from the sale of logistics group Access America, a group of thirty-something local entrepreneurs have set up Lamp Post, an incubator for a new generation of tech companies, in the building. A dozen startups are currently working out of the glitzy downtown office.
“We’re not Silicon Valley. No one will ever replicate that,” says Allan Davis, one of Lamp Post’s partners. “But we don’t need to be and not everyone wants that. The expense, the hassle. You don’t need to be there to create great technology. You can do it here.”
He’s not alone in thinking so. Lamp Post is one of several tech incubators in this mid-sized Tennessee city. Money is flowing in. Chattanooga has gone from close to zero venture capital in 2009 to more than five organized funds with investable capital over $50m in 2014 – not bad for a city of 171,000 people.
The city’s go-getting mayor Andy Berke, a Democrat tipped for higher office, is currently reviewing plans for a city center tech zone specifically designed to meet the needs of its new workforce.
In large part the success is being driven by The Gig. Thanks to an ambitious roll-out by the city’s municipally owned electricity company, EPB, Chattanooga is one of the only places on Earth with internet at speeds as fast as 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average.
The tech buildup comes after more than a decade of reconstruction in Chattanooga that has regenerated the city with a world-class aquarium, 12 miles of river walks along the Tennessee River, an arts district built around the Hunter Museum of American Arts, high-end restaurants and outdoor activities.
But it’s the city’s tech boom has sparked interest from other municipalities across the world. It also comes as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prepares to address some of the biggest questions the internet has faced when it returns from the summer break. And while the FCC discusses whether Comcast, the world’s biggest cable company, should take over Time Warner, the US’s second largest cable operator, and whether to allow those companies to set up fast lanes (and therefore slow lanes) for internet traffic, Chattanooga is proof that another path is possible.
‘We now have people coming in looking to us as a leader’
It’s a story that is being watched very closely by Big Cable’s critics. “In DC there is often an attitude that the only way to solve our problems is to hand them over to big business. Chattanooga is a reminder that the best solutions are often local and work out better than handing over control to Comcast or AT&T to do whatever they want with us,” said Chris Mitchell, director of community broadband networks at advocacy group the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
On Friday, the US telecoms industry called on the FCC to block Chattanooga’s plan to expand, as well as a similar plan for Wilson, North Carolina.
‘What the Gig did was change the idea of what our city could be,’ said Chattanooga mayor Andy Berke. Photograph: Dominic Rushe/Guardian
“The success of public broadband is a mixed record, with numerous examples of failures,” USTelecom said in a blog post. “With state taxpayers on the financial hook when a municipal broadband network goes under, it is entirely reasonable for state legislatures to be cautious in limiting or even prohibiting that activity.”
Mayor Berke has dealt with requests for visits from everyone from tiny rural communities to “humungous international cities”. “You don’t see many mid-sized cities that have the kind of activity that we have right now in Chattanooga,” he said. “What the Gig did was change the idea of what our city could be. Mid-sized southern cities are not generally seen as being ahead of the technological curve, the Gig changed that. We now have people coming in looking to us as a leader.”
It’s still early days but there have already been notable successes. In addition to Access America’s sale for an undisclosed sum, last year restaurant booking site OpenTable bought a local company, QuickCue, for $11.5m. “That’s a great example of a story that just doesn’t happen in other mid-sized southern cities,” said Berke.
But it’s what Chattanooga can do next that has the local tech community buzzed.
EPB’s high-speed network came about after it decided to set up a smart electric grid in order to cut power outages. EPB estimated it would take 10 years to build the system and raised a $170m through a municipal bond to pay for it. In 2009 president Barack Obama launched the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a stimulus programme aimed at getting the US economy back on track amid the devastation of the recession. EPB was awarded $111m to get its smart grid up and running. Less than three years later the whole service territory was built.
The fibre-optic network uses IntelliRupter PulseClosers, made by S&C Electric, that can reroute power during outages. The University of California at Berkeley estimates that power outages cost the US economy $80bn a year through business disruption with manufacturers stopping their lines and restaurants closing. Chattanooga’s share of that loss was about $100m, EPB estimates. The smart grid can detect a fault in milliseconds and route power around problems. Since the system was installed the duration of power outages has been cut in half.
But it was the other uses of that fiber that fired up enthusiasm in Chattanooga. “When we first started talking about this and the uses of the smart grid we would say to customers and community groups ‘Oh and it can also offer very high-speed internet, TV and phone.’ The electric power stuff was no longer of interest. This is what what people got excited about and it’s the same today,” said EPB vice president Danna Bailey.
For consumers the change is noticeable but incremental. “You don’t need a Gig to load Google.com faster,” says Berke. If you are downloading a lot of movies, though, there’s a huge time savings: it takes just 33 seconds to download a two-hour, high-definition movie in Chattanooga, compared with 25 minutes for the average high-speed broadband household. And it does mean that a family streaming video from their various devices is unlikely to ever see those spinning wheels of delay that bug the rest of the US on a daily basis. Nor are they likely to suffer outages like the one Time Warner Cable experienced this week, which is now under investigation by the New York attorney general. For Chattanoogans the internet is always on and always blazing fast.
For business, the Gig offers a new set of challenges and opportunities. If we are moving towards an “internet of things” with smart, driverless cars, home automation, delivery drones, robot construction, we will need more bandwidth and more reliability. “You can’t do that with cell towers,” says Sheldon
Grizzle, co-founder of Spartan Ventures and another of the city’s tech entrepreneurs. Nor can you do that with an internet system like the one in the US, the 31st fastest in the world according to a recent report by Ookla Speedtest, behind countries including Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Uruguay.
‘It’s like the early days of the internet’
Grizzle and others have the opposite problem, they are now working out what they can do with the Gig. “It’s like the early days of the internet, it takes time to figure out what you can do with this,” he said.
And therein lies Chattanooga’s dilemma. At present the city is like a deep sea port capable of handling enormous ships that none of its neighbours can receive. There are other Gig cities, including Lafayette, Louisiana and Bristol, Virginia. Google has plans to roll out its own fibre systems in cities including Kansas City, Kansas, and Austin, Texas. But none yet are as large or as advanced as Chattanooga.
Some companies are already coming up against the limits. Medical researchers are using Chattanooga’s high-speed network to build 3D models of aneurysms to allow surgeons to pre-plan operations but transmitting that information outside the city for a real-time diagnosis would mean relying on the antiquated cable networks of the incumbents who have, so far, been reluctant to upgrade their systems.
“It’s better for us if it gets more places in our community and in the country,” says Berke. C
Chattanooga is too small to support all the business it is creating, he warned: “If there’s no market for what happens on the Gig here, we are doing a lot of work for nothing.” But Berke is hopeful. “The history of the internet and technology has been that you always need more speed and capacity. We have the fastest, cheapest most pervasive internet in the western hemisphere. We believe that gives us an advantage but soon it’s going to be much more the norm and we want to be able to participate in that kind of economy.”
Digital inclusion: ‘You can’t ignore your neighbors’
Chattanooga’s success is all the more remarkable because it almost didn’t happen. The cable companies sued twice to stop it getting off the ground. It’s a story that has been repeated across the US where the cable companies have successfully lobbied for legislation in 19 states that ensures that municipal utilities cannot offer broadband internet.
The competitive disadvantage they face is clear. EPB now has about 60,000 residential and 4,500 business customers out of a potential 160,000 homes and businesses. Comcast hasn’t upgraded its network but it has gone on the offensive, offering cutthroat introductory offers and gift cards for people who switch back. “They have been worthy competitors,” said Bailey. “They’ve been very aggressive.”
EPB is lobbying the FCC to expand its footprint beyond its electric power territory to nearby communities. Many of those communities are still relying on dial-up to get online. For Beyer, who appoints EPB’s board, the expansion is part of what he sees as his mandate to make sure everyone has access to high speed internet.
“Today I talk to people who may never have been on the internet and don’t want to be. But they also understand that their kids and grandkids have to be,” he said. Chattanooga’s population is a third African American and that population is disproportionately affected by poverty and urban blight.
To address that, in part, the city’s library is taking full advantage of the Gig, its has 3D printers, laser cutters and offers coding classes. Ken Hays, a local developer and the chief of staff under former mayor Jon Kinsey, now runs the city-backed Enterprise Center which is assessing the impact of the Gig.
In his recent report “Chattanooga Forward” he wrote the city “will only be successful in this new economy if we focus effective efforts on increasing digital inclusion among all citizens”. The city is making sure schools have access to devices for its children to get online. Fancy Rhino, a marketing and film production firm backed by Lamp Post, has been working with The Howard School, an inner-city school, to include them in the city’s renaissance.
Build me a worldThe company put out a documentary about the school in 2012, Build me A World, and continues to run The Studio, a project to teach children at the school digital skills and make music and videos. “You can’t ignore your neighbours here. We have big issues with education, we need to put something back into the community,” said Drew Belz, who founded the company with cousin Isaiah Smallman.
Bailey said EPB could afford to be more community minded because of its structure. “We don’t have to worry about stockholders, our customers are our stockholders. We don’t have to worry about big salaries, about dividends. We get to wake up everyday and think about what, within business reason, is good for this community,” she said.
“The private sector doesn’t have that same motivation. It’s perfectly fair, they are motivated by profits and stockholders. they have a lot of capital already invested in existing infrastructure. It would be costly to overbuild themselves.”
There are hundreds of other municipally owned electric companies across the US, some even in states where Big Cable has yet to force a ban on them building broadband. But Mitchell said few had the skills, or the political backing, to pull off what EPB had done on this scale.
Berke said they had no choice. “The Gig wasn’t coming here anytime soon without us doing it,” he said. “It was going to go a lot of places before it came to Chattanooga. For us, like a lot of cities, you either decide to do it yourself or you wait in line. We chose to do it ourselves.”
With Chromebooks, Students Find New Ways to Learn Cross-posted on the Google for Education blog Posted:Monday, November 10, 2014 Students and schools have done some amazing things with Chromebooks since we first launched in 2011. At the Urban Promise Academy in Oakland, Calif., students are using the Scratch program to create their own video games on Chromebooks. In Chesterfield County, Virginia, students get access to feedback and support from teachers after school hours using their Chromebooks. And in Fairfield County, South Carolina, schools saw double-digit gains on their state performance tests after they started to offer Chromebooks, Google Apps for Education and other technologies to their students, who often don’t have Internet access at home.
A student at Urban Promise Academy uses a Chromebook to design video games
Schools tell us that Chromebooks fill three big needs: they’re easy for students and teachers to use, they’re easy to share, and they’re easy to manage. That’s critical for schools that often want to give their students the best technology, but don’t have a large IT department to support it. And it’s part of what has made Chromebooks such a hit in schools. In fact, according to IDC’s latest report on tablets and laptops in K-12 education, Chromebooks are the best-selling device in the U.S. this year. And they’re continuing to grow in popularity—in districts like Montgomery County, MD (more than 50,000 devices), Charlotte-Mecklenberg, NC (32,000 devices) and Cherry Creek, CO (26,000 devices), who have all begun using Chromebooks in 2014.
Beyond the U.S., countries are looking at how they can use technology in the classroom on a large scale—like inMalaysia, where the entire national school system is using Chromebooks. This week, we’re hosting the Global Education Symposium, a gathering of education ministers from 18 countries working to implement technology that will help them meet their country’s educational agenda. We’ll hear from education leaders who are exploring new educational models, and look at how innovative local schools are using technology to help teachers and students excel.
It’s been thrilling to see how Chromebooks—alongside Android tablets, Google Play for Education, Classroom and Google Apps for Education, which is now used by 40 million students and teachers around the world—can help students meet their learning goals. We can’t wait to see what’s ahead as more students around the world gain access to new learning opportunities through technology.
Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Lead Product Manager, Chromebooks for Education http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/with-chromebooks-students-find-new-ways.html
