Google continues its push to bring its web-centric Chromebooks into schools, and it looks as if the fact that Google is in this project for the long haul is starting to pay off. According to Google, 2,000 schools worldwide now use Chromebooks for Education. That, by itself, isn’t a massive number, but what’s important to note is that there are now twice as many schools that use Chromebooks compared to just three months ago.
Google’s Global Education evangelist Jaime Casap made this announcement at the Florida Educational Technology Conference earlier today. In a blog post on the company’s Enterprise blog, Casap also noted a number of new deployments, including at the Transylvania County Schools in rural North Carolina deploying 900 devices; top Catholic prep school St.Thomas Aquinas High School in Florida, which now uses 2,200 Chrome OS-based devices and the Bay Area’s urban charter network Rocketship Education, which now uses 1,100 Chromebooks for its students.
These are all relatively small deployments, but Google clearly believes in this project. The fact that there is a steady stream of new schools deploying Chromebooks for their students shows that sticking with this project is starting to pay off for the company and its partners, including Lenovo, which just launched its first Chromebook in January. Outside of the education space, it seems Chromebooks are picking up some steam, too, with Acer, for example, saying that its $199 C7 Chromebook now accounts for 5-10 percent of its U.S. shipments, for example.