Andy Russell

Group Product Manager, ChromeOS

Bullet points

• This article highlights new Chromebooks and tools designed to improve teaching and learning with ChromeOS.
• Class tools is a new teaching mode for managed Chromebooks that lets teachers share content with students.
• Camera Studio, a universal document camera app optimized for ChromeOS, is coming soon to the App Hub.
• New Chromebook Plus models offer better performance and AI features to boost teaching and productivity.
• Chromebox OPS upgrades classroom displays to run ChromeOS, improving integration with Chromebooks.

Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.

Education is continuously evolving, and the physical and digital spaces where students learn must adapt to prepare them for a changing world.

We envision the future classroom as a place where students collaborate, create and actively engage, with a shift from a primary focus on teacher-led instruction to an environment designed for student-centered exploration, facilitating critical thinking. ChromeOS is designed to enable this shift across hardware and software. Read on to hear about what’s new and coming to classrooms everywhere this year.

ChromeOS is designed for everyone, from students with tablets or convertibles, to educators with front of classroom displays and Chromebook Plus.

A new set of ChromeOS tools for educators and students alike

• Make the most of class time with Class tools: Today, we’re launching Class tools, a new teaching mode for managed Chromebooks that lets educators share content to and from students’ screens. With Class tools, teachers can connect directly with students via Google Classroom (or a code) to share a workbook of resources like videos, articles, slides and quizzes.

  Class tools also lets teachers broadcast instructions to students’ screens with captions so they can read along at their own pace and even change the language of the broadcast. This can be especially helpful for second-language learners and students who are hard of hearing or building executive function skills. Teachers can also showcase students’ work to the class or check in on a student’s progress with a live video feed of the student’s screen. We’ve been piloting Class tools with schools to get early feedback and help us improve the product. "Setting student devices to focus, which allows teachers to restrict browsing to specific tabs, is very valuable for keeping students on task." said Michael Steinberg, Assistant Director for Technology at Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake. Read more about the Class tools pilot here.

Class tools is available now for teachers assigned a Google Workspace for Education Plus license whose entire classrooms are on Chromebooks, including educators.

• New app options, including a universal document camera app: If you use a document camera to project paper worksheets and handwrite math problems in front of the whole class, you probably know that most document cameras come with companion apps, but many were previously incompatible with Chromebooks. Coming soon is a universal document camera app, Camera Studio, optimized for ChromeOS, that will work with all common document cameras. You can use this app to present, store and share, annotate, freeze, zoom and mirror on your Interactive Flat Panel Displays in the front of the classroom.

  Camera Studio will be available in the Google for Education App Hub in the coming months as well as in Admin console where admins can force install the app to teacher Chromebooks, and you can find document cameras in the Works with Chromebook program. Some even go beyond documents and can record people and objects (like science experiments).

12+ new Chromebooks, Chromebook Plus and Chromebox OPS

• Teach from anywhere in the classroom with Chromebook Plus: Available as modern and sleek convertibles with long battery life; touchscreens with stylus; or detachables, Chromebook Plus lets you move around the classroom. It also offers educators and staff up to two times more memory and performance. Hear it firsthand from Hillsborough Township Public Schools who moved their teachers onto Chromebook Plus to help drive deeper teaching and learning experiences. And no matter which Chromebook Plus you choose, advanced AI-powered features can boost teaching and productivity, like Quick Insert with Image Generation, which lets you automatically generate high-quality AI images to add to emails and lesson plans, and Text capture, which helps you quickly extract information from anything on your screen and receive contextual recommendations on next steps.

  For one option, check out the brand new Lenovo Chromebook Plus (14”, 10). It's the world's first Chromebook powered by MediaTek Kompanio Ultra processor with an integrated NPU (neural processing unit), dedicated to handling AI workflows, and built-in NPU-enabled features. It delivers 50 TOPS, or trillions of operations per second, to process AI features faster and more efficiently. This device also has the longest battery life of any Chromebook and comes with Google AI including exclusive features like Smart grouping to improve daily organization across your open windows, tabs and apps, and On device image generation to effortlessly edit images and place them into emails, slides and more. You can also explore our new Chromebook Plus options from ASUS on our updated device discovery page.

• Teach with front of classroom displays with Chromebox OPS: Chromebox OPS is a plug-in device that maximizes existing teaching technology, like by upgrading Interactive Flat Panel Displays to run on ChromeOS for better integration with Chromebooks and other devices. This allows educators to use their large classroom displays as giant ChromeOS touchscreen computers with the same OS and apps as students. And by using Chromebox OPS with Class tools, teachers can easily showcase student work in the front of the classroom for peer feedback or to highlight exemplary work. With new Chromebox OPS devices from LG, AOpen, CTL and Newline, you can get your preferred hardware from a reseller today.
  
• We’re sharing many updated resources, including webpages for Chromebooks and device discovery (with a selector experience coming later this year), an updated Chromebooks for educators training course and Class tools professional development sessions that districts can access with one of our professional development partners.

We’re excited to see how educators and schools everywhere use these new tools to make learning and teaching with ChromeOS easier than ever this school year. For more information on our launches, check out our launch guide.