Who has moved to Chrome devices for some or all staff

[Rick2025]

Just wonder who has decided to Move to Chrome devices for some or all of their district teachers. What issues have you had?  Have you moved any others to Chrome devices? Currently we have smartboards with smart software installed for teachers. What are you using in ( if anything) in place of that?  Some of our teachers have two monitors at the desk and one Smartboard. On a chrome device you can either mirror all 3 or use only as extened for all 3. We would have to buy an adapter that could mirror screen 2 with screen 3. Not very ideal using dongles.  What other issues have you solved. Do you use chromebook plus for teachers? what do you do if they take it home and call in sick the next day. The sub then does not have the device to sign in. Or do you use a chromebox? Would you use a flex device hat is unsupported. Supported devices here, but even those have an expired date eventually. https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094#zippy=%2Clenovo%2Cacer

Thanks all

[Michael_Roop]

In our county I helped move 2 districts to Google devices only and within a year they moved right back to laptops for the teachers.  Most of the other parts of the infrastructure stayed Google devices however. Some reasons:

1) the teacher devices had low amounts of RAM/processing power.  To me teacher chromebooks didnt really start to shine until the last year or so.  Even so, the cost of the teacher chromebooks was so close to a Windows laptop that the district decided to move back to the laptops.

2) Several departments needed Graphics cards.  Some departments needed specialized devices (like our drone program).

3) Even though Office 365 existed, people could not grok using it over an installed Office program.

4) There were some printer issues although they were miniscule.

5) Admin continued to use laptops, especially the business office.  Once that was noticed, and the price difference was less noticeable, teachers started negotiating for laptops.

6) our subs used chromebooks that were set up with a sub login, access to the specific sub plan  drives and SIS pages,  These devices came from the front office with a YubiKey for login.  They were turned in at the end of day.  These devices work well and existed past the return to teacher laptops.

7) While casting seemed to be a major concern, it turned out to not be a problem.  Making sure you have a stable secure building wifi seems to eliminate everything except the typical issues like students being left alone in a room, reseting the chrome casting device or IFP and casting to it.  The largest issue we had to overcome was the amount of updates to the device, then to the casting software, then the device, then the software...  It seemed like every week the two would send out a update and break connection until the update was run.

😎 The users who use chromebooks use a nice cheap usb C dongle with 3 outputs that go to their monitors.  We havent had many issues with this besides "unplug it and plug it back in.  Now go to display and select _______"

[Rick2025]

Just wondering so if you moved back to Laptops do you also run EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) software to help protect them from ransonware?

[Michael_Roop]

Yes, we have our systems in place for that.

[NielsBrockmeier]

We have been ChromeOS driven for the past 6-7 years, all staff have a Chromebook and for special needs, like graphic cards or Windows-only software we put a dedicated machine (or machines) in the classroom. For administrative roles, we have a Chromebox with a 21:9 monitor and for non-administrative support staff (think counsellor/coach/exam officer) they get a 24" Chromebase. For our HR/Finance and IT, we have an option for 21:9 or even 32:9 with a choice of getting it with a Chromebox or as a docking station option. 

The only exceptions for the Chromebook personal devices are our roster staff, who use Windows-only rostering software which ran like hell in the cloud. They have a Windows laptop available for them instead of a Chromebook, and the laptop runs GCPW for easy access. We have 3 more shared Windows laptops available, one for HR in case they need to specifically edit office documents with layouts made in tables (external companies still do this 😭), one for Finance to edit .xlsb files spit out by our "web-based" software and one for IT to flash firmware/program new switches and UPS's. We have 12 virtual Windows instances available for support staff that require specific Windows software for testing students' cognitive and/or psychological behaviour, but they can access these from the Chromebooks. 
All our teaching staff have the option to use 27" docking stations in the teachers' lounge or specific rooms with docking stations. However, we notice these are often only used during exam times and not as much during the rest of the school year.

We have a few ChromeOS Flex devices, though mainly older Chromebases that aren't supported anymore. All staff get a flip Chromebook with a touchscreen with the minimum spec of 14", i5/Ryzen 5 and 8GB of RAM. There aren't many who run into issues with these specs. We even have a few still content with their Dell 3120 from 2015 running as 11", Celeron N2840 with 4GB RAM 😮 Though they now need to upgrade as they are well out of the supported range.

As for your questions regarding monitors, we don't have smartboards connected to the Chromebooks, we use casting if they need to share their screen and the smartboards have a built-in OS for running the apps locally for the most part. I do know Chromebooks/Boxes don't really like more than 2 screens, not even the Pixelbooks with i7 and 16GB RAM... These are the top-of-the-line devices we use for our data analyst and a few power users who need Linux availability.

Hopefully, this information gives you some insight into how we are using it. Yes, it takes time to transition and we had a lot of annoyed staff at first. But in the end, it saved a lot on IT costs and also lost files when laptops broke, and they did so quite often before we transitioned. So unless you have it set up that everything needs to be stored in Google Drive/OneDrive people will lose data if the laptop crashes. ChromeOS has been a blessing in that area.

[niklasnord]

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@NielsBrockmeier wrote:

We have 12 virtual Windows instances available for support staff that require specific Windows software for testing students' cognitive and/or psychological behaviour, but they can access these from the Chromebooks. 

What techincal solution do you have for these virtual machines?

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@NielsBrockmeier wrote:

We have a few ChromeOS Flex devices ...

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Do you have Chrome licenses for these devices? Is it working well?
We are looking to solve the "EOL Windows 10 22H2" problem by converting all devices that don't support Windows 11 to ChromeOS Flex machines with a Chrome license. We are going to test this during the coming year to see how it works 🙂

[Kim_Nilsson]

We run Chrome Flex on some older Macbooks. Sadly they have a proprietary driver for the isight webcam, so that doesn't work, but the devices are only used for student teachers and substitute teachers, who don't need to participate in Meets with camera on.

@rdnixon did you also run Flex, or only GCPW?

@AbidPatel you to run some Flex, right?

[AbidPatel]

Yes, we converted all of our teaching and learning devices for staff to ChromeOS Flex. 

It wasn't an overnight changeover though. You have to put everything in place beforehand to ensure that teaching and learning can continue unaffected post changeover. This involved moving staff away from Windows based applications, over the course of many years. Some of the discontinued applications:

• Microsoft Office
• Promethean ActivInspire
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• SIMS.net (MIS/SIS)
• Microsoft Movie Maker

Along with other specific curriculum based software that was Windows only. It takes a lot of planning and engagement, but it can be done and I'd like to think we've proved it well.

Now, if only GCPW would support MFA using Yubikeys on Windows devices!

[NielsBrockmeier]

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@niklasnord wrote:

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What techincal solution do you have for these virtual machines?

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We are using Nutanix Frame (Now called Dizzion I think) for the virtualization. We are now also looking at Cameyo since Google acquired them, and we are currently having an issue between GCP and Nutanix which is a pain to fix as we have to be a middleman for the technical side of things.

@niklasnord wrote:

Do you have Chrome licenses for these devices? Is it working well?
We are looking to solve the "EOL Windows 10 22H2" problem by converting all devices that don't support Windows 11 to ChromeOS Flex machines with a Chrome license. We are going to test this during the coming year to see how it works 🙂

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Yes, since the Chromebase already had a license we just transitioned it to the FLEX installation. It's working really well, haven't found anything different than normal ChromeOS devices in terms of management.

On the device itself, there are two big differences however. One is the missing Android apps, we do use some of these in classes. But Chromebases are mainly in staff rooms for us so it's not a big issue. The FLEX install having no sound from the internal speakers however is something we do have a big issue with, unfortunately, the devices aren't officially supported as FLEX devices so we can't complain either, we're happy 95% of the device functionality works without problems. Chromebases are hard to find here so we are already happy we can extend the lifetime of these for a few more years.

[Bill_Gibson]

We're headed into a Windows to ChromeOS migration this summer using Lenovo Flex 5i devices.
We had a solid pilot in the spring and feel really good about the current state of Chromebook+ and the responsiveness/reliability/security of the Chromebook platform.

1. We have identified an issue with audio negotiation when connected to a usb-c dock to an external sound output. Hopeful that this can be eliminated or handled more gracefully by CrOS. This will be more obvious at lower grades where videos are routinely started/stopped.
2. We would very much like to have a software solution to 3 screen mirror/extend, and are hopeful that this will become a reality...in the meantime we're considering introducing a hardware splitter.
3. We will be offering VDI access to full MS Office on an as needed basis. We evaluated O365 and the dependance on OneDrive cloud storage / the challenges it brings / feature incompleteness steered us away.
4. We use VDI for some legacy niche apps and for Adobe CC.
5. There are more Cricut devices in the field than I expected. We plan to deploy loaner Windows devices to address this.
6. I expect at some point Chrome will cause an issue with printing PDFs and we will no longer be able to fall back on "try Edge".
7. Our extension based web filter is not able to capture incognito and personal gamil account web activity.
8. We're moving staff over to an allowlist for apps/extensions to improve our security posture and reduce problematic installs.
9. I would like to feel more confident about the software readiness of our Epson interactive projectors that rely on this app for wireless projection.
10. We think that we've been able to address Math department concerns about digital pens and using mathematical equations in Docs.
11. We're removing access to our SMB file server, and finishing out our contract with an on-prem uniflow pull based queue print server.
12. We have a few legacy licenses of Quickbooks for internal accounting, and purchasing Quickbooks Online has thus far been a challenge as Intuit is not allowing resellers to sell this product.
13. So far our only deployment carve-out is some loaner devices for ad-hoc use, our visitor management system, and a small HR department (no apparent reason).

[mpartenope4676]

Bill, I hope this message find you well. Did you have any issues getting Uniflow set up? We've been trying since August and have run into many snags. The latest is that we've set up all our printers in the CUPS Printers section. When we set up the corresponding IPP printer in Uniflow on the on prem server,  whichever printer was set up last receives ALL the print jobs, no matter which CUPS printer we select from a chromebook. We set the CUPS up driverless and the path is ipps://server-name-here:631/ipps/print/printer-name-here Any insight you have would be welcome. We've been banging our heads against the wall!

[Bill_Gibson]

We stubbed our toe in the same way on this.

Change your destination to the following (leave off the S in the middle)
ipps://server-name-here:631/ipps/print/printer-name-here
ipps://server-name-here:631/ipp/print/printer-name-here

We're running uniFLOW on-prem and publish our secure input queue to everyone, and manually configure legacy accounting-only queues for a limited set of users where there is no release station in place.

Bonus: We use a  "customization" that enables us to setup the mobile release webpage to target a specific printer. This allows us to use Chromebooks and student IDs that have been barcode encoded to release print jobs. Let me know if you'd like to discuss further.

[mpartenope4676]

Bill, thanks for replying so quickly! So, the documentation says to do it he second way, but when I do this, the printer won't connect on the chromebook. It throws an error. Once I set it back to the first way, the printer connects and we can print, but it doesn't go to the correct queue! Interesting about the customization. We have to get actually printing before we can think of anything extra though! hehe I'm not sure if it matters, but I used GAM to set up all the CUPS Printers using this script.

gam create printer displayname Printer-Name driverless orgunit / uri ipps://server-name-here:631/ipps/print/printer-name-here

[Bill_Gibson]

I assume you have separate IPP Service objects with the queues selected for each of your queues in the Airprint/IPP service webpage.
https://server:8008/login.htm  

[mpartenope4676]

Correct, that's how we set it up. We've tried host name and straight IP thinking that it was maybe causing an issue. I think I'll try adding the object manually instead of via GAM and see if it lets me connect the printer to a chromebook/print. Meanwhile, I wish people would just stop printing! hehe. PaperCut mobility became completely unreliable late spring last year but I didn't bother fixing it because Uniflow was coming in August. Here it is now January, and they have no idea how to fix it saying this has never happened. Just our luck!

[mpartenope4676]

Most of the below is so I could note it down somewhere, hehe, but figured it might help someone else down the line! We had another meeting today and they added a 2nd engineer to the conversation. As you and the documentation said, the proper format is ipps://server-name-here:631/ipp/print/printer-name-here. When I set up a cups printer this way, the chromebook would display the error message "Error setting up printer" The engineer was able to resolve this, but I wasn't able to follow along with how. Here's what I think happened, but take all with a shaker of salt cause he was going so fast! It was on the onprem uniflow end however, I think the IPP Service Printer Name. I think it was just a name mismatch done by our 1st engineer. The other, and perhaps larger piece of the puzzle, was the configuration of the Helper Printer within Print Management on the Windows Server. A custom "workflow" (looked like it was an XML file name MomApIpp.xml) had to be imported/configured into the on prem Uniflow console which required a reboot. The 2nd engineer then had to configure the helper to convert the jobs to PCL somehow using the MomUdSetup.exe. He named the helper ConvertPDFtoPCL and set the Foxit Spooler Name to match this for the IPP printer object in Uniflow. He then had to go into the Workflow tab for the IPP printer in uniflow and either adjust or add a new a workflow named "Identify User." In the advanced settings, he entered the following string into the "Identification Parameter" field: (IP_UserName) Selected "SMTP Mail Address" and "LDAP Login" in the "Identity Type" section and entered "Email Address" in the "Identity Category" field. The 1st engineer had set up the IPP objects in Uniflow as Email print - Direct Print under the Printer Wizard. When the second engineer modified the workflow as above, this changed to Advanced Printer Configuration by clicking on the object and then clicking the change wizard box and selecting that configuration from the wizard. He then loaded the global workflow named IPP--Printing (which I think he had overwritten during the steps above when setting up another object. He set up a second one to test. Thankfully he did cause the first was a Canon Copier and second a HP printer and there were some hiccups. In print management on the windows server, The canon driver is set to Canon Generic Plus PS3 and the HP had to be set to uniFLOW Universal PclXL Driver. He also had to set the Printer Model (Dif) under the general tab off the IPP object to some printer model that closely matched the driver of the printer that we were using. Lastly, the loopback address was used for the uniFLOW server URl for the IPP printer object. https://127.0.0.1:8443. Bottom line, pretty convoluted. I miss GCP fo' sho'. 

[Bill_Gibson]

Great brain dump!
♥️GCP4E!!!
Glad to hear you were able to get some traction on this issue!

[Kim_Nilsson]

@sorentorp - you have too, right, or at least for many teachers?

[niklasnord]

Hey.

Mandatory schools in our municipality, Arvika kommun, in Sweden will from august 2024 start to phase in Chromebook as the official staff device. Chromebook will replace Windows PC.

• Exempt initially are 2 schools that still are using the old printer system (Equitrac). From Q3 2025 they will move to HCP (Hybrid Cloud Printing, our new printer system) and will then be included in the chromebook implementation.
• Exempt initially are staff using the software 'Skola24 Schema' for scheduling that requires Windows operating system. Preliminary during 2025 a new cloud based scheduling software will replace the one requiring Windows for ~75% of the schools.
• All students (~2800 in total, ~1800 have a personal device) are using Chromebook since 2015
• The implementation is made in an organisation with ~500 staff device
• The implementation is one of several actions taken to meet the problem with EOL of Windows 10 22H2 in october 2025 and the fact that we have a lot of old Windows computers not compatible with Windows 11
  
  
• A thorough risk and consequence analysis with test in production was conducted during Q2 2024
  Results:
  • Initially problems with the ordered units in regard to the Wi-Fi Mediatek chipset. The units were Asus CX3404 (CX3402CBA-EB0012) and Acer CBE574 (NX.KREED.001). The Mediatek chipset was useless and after a short process both manufacturers approved us returning the units regarding them as DOA.
    Do not order units with Mediatek WiFi chipset!
  • The test was the continued with Acer CP514 (NX.AHBED.004) with WiFi chipset from Intel
  • Staff was positive after the test
  • One problem with the Acer CP514 was the back lit silver keyboard. It was reflecting lights and making it hard to see the keys unless you are looking at it from the exact angle. Especially problematic for staff with progressive glasses.
  • As a result of the point above we will be ordering units with back lit black or grey keyboards
  • Several of the staff didn't realise that it was a new operating system
  • Flip and pencil touch was very appreciated (all staff coming from non-touch devices)
  • We need to offer more ChromeOS specific education for staff to make the continuing implementation smoother
  • If possible we need to speed up the transition from Equitrac to HCP
  • If possible we need a new scheduling software that is cloud based and platform independent
• The implementation will be made in 4 ways
  • Devices for new staff
  • Replacement of damaged devices
  • Replacement of old devices (Windows devices older than ~6 years)
  • Replacement of all devices on a few smaller schools
    
    
• The device that will be used during the implementation is Acer CPE594-1N-35XZ (NX.J28ED.002)
• Pre school staff will most likely also start implement Chromebook as staff devices (~175 total devices) during Q4 2024 based on the test described above

We are looking forward to this implementation and feel confident that it will be a positive process.

//Niklas Nord
ICT strategist for K-12
Arvika municipality
Sweden

[chand]

We've had a Chromebook as an option for our teachers for 10+ years now. Some use it as their mobile device/laptop and a "loaner" for students if needed. For a daily driver device, we offer a version of the Acer "Spin" series. Some use the touchscreen and stylus features ("Squid" is a decent Android app for inking). Teachers connect to a projector and a large desk display through a port replicator box and this holds up well for the most part (occasional reboot of device remedies hiccups).  We use Epson for projectors and their app allows for wireless projection (fine for presentations) but we recommend the ethernet port (on the port replicator) for media playback. As mentioned elsewhere, don't skimp on RAM!

[niklasnord]

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@chand wrote:

As mentioned elsewhere, don't skimp on RAM!

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☝️THIS☝️

[niklasnord]

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@chan wrote:

We use Epson for projectors and their app allows for wireless projection (fine for presentations) but we recommend the ethernet port (on the port replicator) for media playback. 

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This is a situation we have to face in the future. One large school is equipped with Epson projectors with wireless support. Are you using the Android application for wireless connection to the projectors?
The staff are recommended to connect their Chromebook via ethernet for media streaming, are the projectors connected via ethernet as well?

[mrrobashcroft]

Don't know if useful for you, but we just connected a GoogleTV/Chromecast dongle to the HDMI input of any projectors or screens that didn't have Chromecast built-in.  This worked fine for us, even on an old Panasonic projector that had built-in wireless support (that we didn't need to use anymore).

[tomlarson73]

We plan to replace our teacher MacBooks with Chromebooks. Early grade classrooms also have Promethean ActivPanel 9 Pro devices. This allows teachers to take their personal devices home while ensuring substitute teachers have access to instructional tools. Substitutes can log in as guests on the ActivPanel, providing them with the same resources as full-time teachers.

[MarkLoundy]

Every staffer I've ever worked with who has been moved from a MacBook to a Chromebook has hated it. It's like going from a new Lexus to a 1996 Corolla.

[Bill_Gibson]

We came from Business class Dell devices (not Macs), but the move to Business grade Chromebook Plus devices has been positive.

I would expect moving staff to student grade device to be less of a great time.