10 million Malaysian students, teachers, and parents will now use Google Apps for Education; For Malaysia: Bringing Google Apps and Chromebooks to the classroom
For Malaysia: Bringing Google Apps and Chromebooks to the classroom
Google Blog, April 10, 2013
Posted by Felix Lin, Director of Product Management
As a parent of three kids, I have the same aspirations as many other parents and educators—to provide them with the best opportunities to learn and discover their passions. For many students, the web has become an incredible resource for the classroom, offering tools to work collaboratively, share and research. School systems of all sizes—from a single primary school to an entire country such as the Philippines—have “Gone Google” in their schools and embraced the web to transform education.
Today the country of Malaysia is going a step further by adopting Google Apps for 10 million students, teachers and parents. As part of this initiative they are also deploying Chromebooks to primary and secondary schools nationwide. These efforts to integrate the web are a central part of a national plan (PDF) to reform its educational system.
To deploy technology across a nationwide school system, computers need to be simple, manageable and secure. Chromebooks are ideal for learning and sharing in the classroom—there’s nothing complicated to learn, they boot up in seconds and have virus protection built in. They also offer easy setup and deployment, which means they’re ready to go the moment a student opens the lid and logs in. And with reduced overhead costs, Chromebooks are a cost-efficient option* to deploy technology at scale.
To date, more than 3,000 schools worldwide, from Edina, Minnesota to Point England, New Zealand, have deployed Chromebooks to improve attendance and graduation rates, make learning more fun and enable students to take more ownership for their learning.
The web gives our children and students new opportunities to access the world’s information and work collaboratively. We look forward to working with national and regional leaders to make the most of the web with Google Apps and Chromebooks and help them provide the best opportunities to every student.
*In research sponsored by Google, research firm IDC found that Chromebooks yield three-year cost of ownership savings of $1,135 per device compared to traditional PCs or tablets, require 69% fewer hours to deploy and 92% fewer hours to manage.
Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2013/04/for-malaysia-bringing-google-apps-and.html?m=1
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10 million Malaysian students, teachers, and parents will now use Google Apps for Education
venturebeat.com, April 10, 2013
By John Koetsier
Millions of Malaysian kids will be writing stories, collecting data, creating presentations, and organizing the future of their education in the cloud — Google’s cloud.
Today, Google announced that Malaysia is adopting Google Apps for 10 million students, teachers, and parents. In addition, the country will be shipping an unspecified number of Chromebooks to schools across the country — all part of a national education blueprint to “place Malaysia firmly on the path to development.”
Malaysia has 10,000 schools, and the government’s plan is to equip them all with 4G Internet access, a virtual learning platform, and at minimum a 10:1 ratio of students to computers.
It’s no secret why they’ve chosen Chromebooks: cost. Google says that Chromebooks “yield three-year cost of ownership savings of $1,135 per device compared to traditional PCs or tablets and require 69% fewer hours to deploy and 92% fewer hours to manage.” And it’s also no secret why Malaysia is adopting Google Apps — for educational use, the apps are entirely, completely free.
That’s of course, in strong contrast to its Google Apps for Business, which costs $50 per user per year. Google had originally made that free for businesses with under 50 users, but it quietly killed free access in December last year.
Deals like this put Google in direct competition with Intel, as well as other computer manufacturers. Intel has a global education initiative which has, for example, put computers in the hands of all middle and high school students in Portugal, and focuses on working with local hardware and software producers to create educational laptops, tablets, and software based on Intel’s references designs.
But having been involved in that initiative in a previous job, I can tell you that costs would be much higher than a Chromebook.
Globally, more than 3,000 schools have now adopted Chromebooks, which generally cost around $300-500, although they will cost significantly less in volume, and Google had a Christmas sale last year, offering Chromebooks at just $99.
Source: http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/10/google-10-million-malaysian-students-teachers-and-parents-will-now-use-google-apps-for-education/
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