Control Alt Achieve: Chromebooks Unplugged - A Day in the Life of a Student Chromebook

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Chromebooks Unplugged - A Day in the Life of a Student Chromebook

Chromebooks are used by 50 million students and teachers every day in schools all around the world. But are you and your students getting the most out of them?

To explore this question I used a student Chromebook for an entire day as my primary device. To keep things realistic I also did it ... unplugged.

What I mean is, when a student is using a Chromebook at school, they may not always have a power outlet to plug into. This is why many schools ask students to make sure their Chromebooks are completely charged before bringing them in each day.

So for my day using a student Chromebook, I kept it unplugged from power and simply used its battery for the entire day. Then every couple of hours I stopped to record a short video to see how well the battery was doing, and to demonstrate some powerful Chromebook features that can help students with learning and creating. I ended up covering:

Accessibility tools
Screencast and Chrome Canvas
Android apps (including Minecraft)
Video editing
Offline access

See below for the recorded video of my day unplugged, as well as other Chromebook resources. And a big thanks to MediaTek for providing the student Chromebook for this experiment, and for sponsoring this post.

▶️ Recorded Video (21 minutes)

🧰 Chromebook Resources

Chromebooks Can Do That?! - Resource Doc - Slideshow - Webinar
Chromebook Accessibility Tools - Resource Doc - Slideshow

💻 About the Chromebook

For this video I used the Acer 311 C723 Chromebook which uses a MediaTek processor. Here are some of the key highlights of this Chromebook and MediaTek processor for schools:

Battery Life - All-day battery life with up to 15 hours in the Acer Chromebook 311 C723
Octa Core Architecture - 8 CPU cores for enhanced productivity & multitasking.
Rugged Durability - This ruggedized Chromebook features a shock absorbent bumper, widened brackets and reinforced I/O ports, as well as a spill resistant keyboard.
Serviceable Keyboard Design - The Chromebook's keyboard comes with mechanically anchored keys to protect from accidental key removal while also allowing quick and hassle free keyboard replacement in just a few minutes.

You can learn more about the MediaTek-powered Chromebooks here: Resource link