My Week on a Chromebook

Inspired by conversations between Jonathan Wiley and Mindy Cairney on their podcast The EdTech Takeout, this week I decided to try to use only my Chromebook.  I often have teachers ask me if a class set of Chromebooks would work for a 1:1 environment, and while I have used my Chromebook, I have always had my Mac as my primary computer.  I figure to best advise, I should dive into the Chromebook to see what limitations it might present.

Here is what I found:

Keyboard Shortcuts
I am a really big keyboard shortcut user.  I missed those A LOT.  A quick Google search led me to a cheat sheet of Chromebook keyboard shortcuts.  This was really handy.  Some of the ones I used the most:

• Alt+Backspace works as the Delete Key
• CTRL + Right Arrow jump from word to word (although it didn't quite work like my beloved CMD +right arrow to get to the end of a line.)

Quickly Flipping Between Accounts 
I have both a Gmail and EDU that I toggle between constantly. I didn't think I could have two accounts logged in to the Chromebook at the same time but apparently, you can!  #HappySurprise.  I could never figure out getting my second gmail though.

No Firefox
I have one system at work that I need to access via Firefox...so that was something for which I had to jump to my Mac.

No iMessage
I love the integration of iMessage on my Mac.  My whole family is on it...but so long as I kept my phone close I made it work.

Split screen
Love the ease of this.  All I had to do was drag windows to the corners to see multiple windows open at the same time.

Small Screen
Don't love the small screen...I could get a bigger one, but the one I have is only 11".

Notifications
There are little blue dots when a tab (email, twitter) has notifications. That was cool and not as distracting as the notifications on the Mac.

Programs 
Spoke to a Chem teacher - for the purpose of his course he has tools that plug into the computer to do experiments programs that need to be downloaded - students would not be able to do that.

Speed - or lack there of.
OK, this was the BIGGEST drawback.  It was SLOW!  There were a number of times during the week I had to jump to the Mac because the Chromebook came to a stand still. (I imagine this had something to do with the millions of tabs I had open.)

All in all, I think a class set of Chromebooks would be fine for students.  The week was not as difficult as I thought it would be.  But for my uses, I think I am sticking to my Mac.  (Although, I am not adverse to checking out a more powerful Chromebook with touch screen and app capabilities.)

For more advanced Chromebook users what I have shared might seem straightforward, but if are on a Mac and wondering...these were my insights.