Martin Spriggs

This is my third post in my review of Google’s Chromebook offering specifically for educational use. I’m excited to do a site visit next week with a WELS classroom who is actually using them, but for now you will have to settle for my rather myopic review based on an isolated review. Today I want to focus on the more general concept of web-only computing. In other words, what are we giving up by using a computer that can only access web-based applications that run within a browser vs. the more traditional applications you can install on a local hard disk.

I am not ready to do a comparison of education applications that would normally be used in our schools. That will come later after I get a chance to survey some of our teachers. What I do want to do is to talk about some of the advantages of living “in the cloud.” My next post will address disadvantages. Here are three big advantages I see in a web-based model:

Advantage #1: Updates are typically free, immediate, and don’t require “installation”
If you ask any school technology coordinator what takes the most time in maintaining a fleet of computers, either netbooks or desktops in a lab, he/she will tell you installations and updates. Very few have networks and software that will keep things nice and tidy on multiple computers at once. And those that do will tell you that not all apps can be maintained with a “group policy” or other tools. Web apps, by their very nature, are whatever the web server is serving up that day, updates and all. Essentially someone else (the app maker) is handling your updates. By the way, the same can be said of the Operating System itself. Chrome OS is updated by Google on a very frequent bases, and no user interaction is needed. At the very most a quick restart of the machine is required – a 15 second exercise on the Chromebook.

Advantage #2: Web-based apps can run at the speed of the browser and web server, not the local hardware
In many of our schools, budgets are tight and technology budgets are even tighter. As a result the physical computers in the hands of the children are rarely speed demons. In my observations I see three to four year old hardware, at best, that has been either cobbled together or donated from a company that felt they were no longer suitable for use by their employees. Even those schools that have purchased netbooks have found that the underpowered, battery conserving processors struggle to run standard apps like Microsoft Office and other standard apps students might use. As a result students do a lot of waiting (and chatting and whatever) for their computer to do its thing — either to open an app or complete a command.

Web apps have been optimized to run in the browser and in most cases can complete tasks in a very acceptable time frame. One reason for that is that the processing power is taken care of by the web server, and the results of the command are simply “sent down” to the browser for viewing. You aren’t relying on the computing power of your own computer, but somebody else’s more powerful one.

Advantage #3: Security and backups are built in
Infrastructure to keep data (and students) safe and to make sure no data gets lost or corrupted can be expensive and time consuming. Content filters, server or machine-based antivirus apps, firewalls, and backup software (and the disk spaced needed to make them work) are all things that are essentially taken care of in a browser only world like Chrome OS. Cloud-based applications need to provide their own storage and backup solutions. They also handle the security of the user. Chrome OS handles virus protection, which becomes much simpler if no applications or files are ever downloaded to a hard drive. Really all a student needs is a browser and a login. They can work on any machine and the school can feel good about the safety of both the computer and it’s user. Of course, care still needs to be taken with what apps are allowed or websites visited (which can be controlled within Chrome OS).

There are other advantages which include the lower cost of web-based apps, the ease in making new apps available, and the ability to try-before-you-buy (or use) without a lot of fuss. However, there are also disadvantages. Stay tuned for those.