Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog.

Editor's note: We’re posting this electronic communication from sunny Orlando, where we’re chatting with schools at the annual FETC ed-tech conference. We wanted to share highlights from our keynote this morning, which featured a panel moderated by Tom Vander Ark, author of Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World. You can watch a replay of the keynote on YouTube in a few hours. If you’re in town, come visit us at our booth #1101 - we’d love to say hi!

When we first conceived of Chromebooks, we were focused on providing a device that brought you to the web in the fastest, simplest and securest way possible. What we didn't realize at the time was that this device would be so welcome and popular in classrooms! Many schools are eager to improve access to the web and technology for students and are planning to provide each student with their own device – a concept known as "1-to-1" computing. We've heard from our customers that they choose Chromebooks for 1-to-1 because the simplicity of the web takes away the hassle for teachers, students and administrators.

During our keynote at FETC this morning, we had the opportunity to share some exciting news: hundreds of schools in 41 states across the U.S. are using one or more classroom sets of Chromebooks today. As a highlight, three new school districts in Iowa, Illinois and South Carolina are going 1-to-1 – that is, one Chromebook each for nearly 27,000 students.

• Council Bluffs Community School District in Iowa is planning a Chromebook 1:1 Initiative for all 2,800 students in their two high schools and will use an additional 1500 Chomebooks in their two middle schools


• Leyden Community High School District in Illinois will roll out devices to 3,500 students in their two high schools


• Richland School District Two in South Carolina is going 1-to-1 with a total of 19,000 students

It's great to see this positive momentum for Chromebooks in classrooms. It's similar to where we were about five years ago when Google Apps was just getting off the ground. At that time, educational institutions were the most interested and it was inspiring to hear the different ways schools and districts had begun using Gmail, Calendar and Docs. At FETC we’ve been similarly excited to see how teachers have formed communities around professional development for Chromebooks, districts all across the US are piloting Chromebooks in their classrooms, and more and more reach out to us to learn about Chromebooks for Education every day. We believe Chromebooks and the web have the ability to facilitate learning in a powerful way, and we’re committed to helping schools recognize their goals to go 1-to-1.

But enough words from us. We’d like to close with thoughts from representatives of each of these school districts.

“From my perspective, Chromebooks couldn’t get any simpler; setting up this many laptops would have typically taken our team at least 3 months. And from the instructional side, we are teaching content not technology, and Chromebooks simply support teachers in what they do best while giving students the resources they need to be productive citizens. As just one example the quality of work that students turn in has improved literally overnight - from incomplete sentences to full paragraphs, in some cases - because they are much more engaged and participating readily in class.”

David Fringer, executive director, information systems at Council Bluffs Community school district, Iowa

“When we started on our digital evolution path we were looking for just the right tool - one that is invisible and gets out of the way to allow students and teachers to focus on instruction. With Chromebooks our students are publishing, producing and sharing with each other, and best of all, we don’t have to assign students a particular device number. Any student can use any device because all their work is saved online - for that matter they could access their work from home while logged in from the Chrome browser.”

Bryan Weinert, director of technology at Leyden school district, Illinois

Student at East Leyden high school selects a Chromebook from the charging cart. With Chromebooks, students can work on any device in any class period and access their work from anywhere - including from the Chrome browser installed on a home computer.

“Chromebooks make our 1-to-1 computing dream a reality. Teachers don't need to add ‘help desk’ to their job description, and they save valuable class time knowing they can instruct students to close the Chromebooks to stay on task and they won't have to wait when it’s time to open them again. Furthermore, we’ve seen that any behavior issues become an absolute non-issue because the technology is so compelling.”

Tom Cranmer, executive director of information technology, Richland School District Two, South Carolina

Fifth grade student teaches a younger student how to use a Chromebook in the Chrome Buddy project in Tim Swick's classroom at Pontiac Elementary School in Richland School District Two.

Learn more about Chromebooks for Education on our website, and join us for the Chromebook Classroom webinar series, Wednesdays at 9AM PT/12PM ET.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager for Chromebooks

Today’s Beta release improves on two of Chrome’s core principles: speed and security.

One of the things people like best about Chrome is that it loads web pages quickly. To get you where you want to go even faster, Chrome will now start loading some web pages in the background, even before you’ve finished typing the URL in the omnibox. If the URL auto-completes to a site you’re very likely to visit, Chrome will begin to prerender the page. Prerendering reduces the time between when you hit Enter and when you see your fully-loaded web page--in some cases, the web page appears instantly.

On the security front, improvements to Chrome’s Safe Browsing technology should help protect you from additional types of malware attacks. Previously, Chrome focused primarily on protecting you from sites that would exploit your computer with no user interaction required. Now, we’re seeing an increase in malicious websites that try to convince you to download and run a file that will harm your computer. Some websites even pretend this malicious file is a free anti-virus product.

To help protect you against malicious downloads, Chrome now includes expanded functionality to analyze executable files (such as “.exe” and “.msi” files) that you download. If a file you download is known to be bad, or is hosted on a website that hosts a relatively high percentage of malicious downloads, Chrome will warn you that the file appears to be malicious and that you should discard it. We’re starting small with this initial Beta release, but we’ll be ramping up coverage for more and more malicious files in the coming months. Remember, no technical mechanism can ever protect you completely from malicious downloads. You should always be careful about which files you download and consider the reputation of their source.

Try out these changes in the new Chrome Beta--we look forward to hearing your feedback. As always, please keep in mind that the Beta channel inherently comes with more bugs and kinks to work out.

Posted by Dominic Hamon, Software Engineer and Speed Demon

Every year, lots of people have fun tracking Santa as he takes flight around the world to deliver gifts. This year, Santa is getting some help from the Chrome Web Store elves who have already started delivering the gifts of gaming to more than 200 million Chrome users.

The first gift of the season is Bejeweled. Bejeweled is one of the most successful online games of all time; the brand new Chrome edition features Classic and Speed modes and flaunts impressive new visual effects created with HTML5.

For those of you who love action games, we have another special gift: Bastion, the award winning role-playing game (RPG) is now available exclusively in the Chrome Web Store. Featuring stunning hand-painted artwork and action-packed combat, Bastion has already destroyed the productivity in our office.

Bastion is part of a set of new games coming to the web for the first time, thanks to Native Client - a new technology that enables console-quality games on the web. You can check out Sleepy Jack, Pocket Legends, and more of these new and upcoming games in the video below.



Finally, several other Chrome Web Store favorites have holiday updates of their own. Angry Birds features many new holiday-themed levels and Cargo Bridge has released a special Christmas level edition.

Discover these and thousands of other games in the Chrome Web Store.

Posted by Christos Apartoglou, Product Marketing Manager

Last April, we announced our plans for Google Cloud Print (GCP), the service that powers printing on Chromebooks as well as a new generation of connected apps and devices. The goal of GCP is to enable simple, secure printing from any app on any device to any printer—and with the latest cloud-ready printers, you can also print without using drivers or cables.

Since launching earlier this year, we’ve seen a surge of enthusiasm from users and developers. More than 6 million printers have already been connected to GCP using Google Chrome; dozens of cloud-ready printers have been released or announced by manufacturers like Epson, HP and Kodak; and the developer community has released a flurry of apps and extensions to enable cloud printing from both Android and iOS.

While developers and printer manufacturers have embraced GCP, we've also released a variety of improvements to the service. You can now share and control access to your printers so your friends and family can use them too. With “Save to Google Docs,” it’s easy to save your online receipts and confirmation pages to an archive in the cloud. The management page has a new tablet-friendly design and a “Print” button so you can upload and print files to your cloud printers from anywhere.

Finally, webmasters can add the print button element to their site to enable printing functionality for tablets and mobile phones.

People with Chromebooks have always had access to the latest and greatest Google Cloud Print features, but today, we’ve reached a new milestone: starting with the latest release of Chrome, anyone using the browser on Windows, Mac and Linux will be able to print any webpage to Google Cloud Print. We’ve also turned on print preview for Chromebooks, so you’ll get the same familiar experience wherever you use Chrome.

In the coming months, we’ll enable GCP from more Google products and work with partners to add more printers and printing services. Happy printing!

Posted by Akshay Kannan, Product Manager

A few weeks ago, we redesigned the Chrome Web Store to make it easier to discover apps. Today, we’re introducing a few new features that make it even easier to find what you’re looking for.

You can now view the most popular and highest-rated apps using two new sorting filters. These are available in the store’s homepage and category view.

You can also find new apps and extensions to try by using the new “Related” tab. Let’s say you find a great Mahjong game and you want to find more apps like it - just click on “Related” and you’ll find similar apps. This tab will also show a list of other apps by the same developer.


Finally, there are two new collections with apps and extensions that can help you plan your winter holidays and make the most of the new year.

To discover more fun and useful extensions and apps, visit the Chrome Web Store after you’ve installed Chrome.

Posted by Shannon Guymon, Product Manager

If you’ve used Chrome for awhile, you know that it fits you better and better over time—it just wouldn’t be your Chrome without your favorite bookmarks, apps, extensions, history, and other settings.

Signing in to Chrome lets you take your Chrome stuff with you, so you can always have your personal Chrome experience on all of your devices.



When you’re signed in to Chrome, changing something on one device instantly changes it on all your other devices. For example, add a bookmark on your laptop, and it automatically appears on your desktop, so you can always pick up right where you left off.

Signing in to Chrome is also helpful if you only have one computer, because it securely backs up your Chrome stuff online. That way, your Chrome stuff is safe, even if a truck runs over your laptop.

To sign in to Chrome, just go to the Wrench menu and select “Sign in to Chrome.”



But what if you share a computer with other people? You don’t want your bookmarks, apps, and extensions getting mixed up with everyone else’s, and you don’t want your Chrome stuff syncing to all their devices.

With today’s Stable channel release, you can now add new users to Chrome. Adding new users lets you each have your own personal Chrome experience, and lets you each sign in to Chrome to sync your stuff. To add a new user to Chrome, go to Options (Preferences on a Mac), click “Personal Stuff,” and click “Add new user.” Check out our latest Beta blog post for a few quick tips.

Keep in mind that adding new users to Chrome isn’t intended to secure your data against other people using your computer, since it just takes a few clicks to switch between users. We’re providing this functionality as a quick and simple user interface convenience for people who are already sharing Chrome on the same computer today. To truly protect your data from being seen by others, please use the built-in user accounts on your operating system of choice.

That wraps up our last Stable channel release for the year. If you haven't taken Chrome for a spin yet, try it out and see what you think!

Posted by Tim Steele, Software Engineer

Update: You can learn more about signing in to Chrome at google.com/chrome/signingin.

With the help of the Angry Birds team, we’ve cooked up a few early holiday presents for you.


Starting today, you can play a new episode of your favorite game, with 42 exciting levels. And if you are handy with the slingshot, you’ll also be able to find a few new hidden Chrome dimension levels.

In addition, you can check out the first of an additional set of 25 holiday-themed Angry Birds levels. A different level will be unlocked every day until December 25th. There are also three Chrome-exclusive holiday levels that you can unlock with a secret password.


The password will be hidden inside a few apps that can be installed from the Chrome Web Store: Astrid, Earbits, Elfster, Good Food, Google Books and Hipmunk. Follow us on Google+ for some useful hints on how to uncover these magic passwords ;)

And finally, don’t worry if you get stuck on a tough level; you can now summon the Mighty Eagle to the rescue from within Angry Birds. Just click the Eagle icon at the top and turn all pigs into bacon.

Not using Chrome but still want to play? Install Chrome with Angry Birds and make sure those pigs get only coal this year.

Posted by Christos Apartoglou, Marketing Manager