How Google Is Schooling Apple And Microsoft In The Battle For America's Classrooms | Fast Company | Business Innovation

How Google Is Schooling Apple And Microsoft In The Battle For America's Classrooms | Fast Company | Business Innovation



It’s an entirely different picture today: Google now dominates K–12 education in the United States, even in schools, like String Theory, that have formal relationships with Apple and Microsoft. Just five years after Google introduced its bare-bones Chromebook laptop—which runs a software suite that includes Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts, and more, and retails for as low as $150—the search giant has topped both Apple and Microsoft in U.S. education sales. It shipped more than 5 million devices to U.S. buyers in 2015, roughly twice the total of each of its rivals.

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teachers and administrators are increasingly interested in the kind of management tools that Google’s Chromebooks are uniquely suited to deliver: setting up student accounts, updating software, grading homework, and more. And with classroom Wi-Fi improving, schools can take advantage of free access to Google’s massive cloud servers, which store student data and sync updates to homework assignments. Plus, administrators can manage the Chromebook remotely—an enormous advantage for short-staffed district technology teams juggling thousands of student and teacher accounts.