The education sector in Australia is catching up with the likes of New Zealand, the US and Canada with Deputy Chief Minister for the ACT, Yvette Barry announcing the purchase of 15,000 Acer Chromebooks for use in schools across the nations capital.
The ACT purchase includes the Acer Chromebook Spin 11, an education focused, rugged, convertible Chromebook that comes with a Wacome EMR (electro-magnetic resonance) stylus. The Acer Chromebook Spin 11 is powered by an Intel Celeron N3450 processor Quad-core processor and 4GB RAM. The 11.6″ HD resolution display can ‘spin’ around giving the Chromebook additional form factors, allowing it to be used in tablet, tent or Chromebook modes.
Rod Bassi, Oceanic Region Sales Director for Acer Australia saying
Acer is thrilled to have been selected as the hardware vendor of choice. Our incredible Acer Spin 11 product solution, our strong supply chain and reference ability in other large Education departments across Australia together with our team partnership with Datacom ACT made our approach and solution a true team partnership. Acer is proud to be such a large part of Minister Berry’s technology initiative and we look forward to making it a great success.
Chromebooks in the education sector have been growing in popularity globally since Google launched them in 2011. The low cost of ownership combined with ease of management for IT administrators through the Chrome management dashboard, education focused applications such as Classroom and of course millions of Android apps makes for an ideal educational tool.
What’s the deal with Chromebooks in Australia? I recently purchased an Acer R11 and had to source it overseas. They just don’t seem available anywhere and it sucks because I love Chrome OS and I’d probably buy a pixelbook if they were sold here.
I think many people would consider that too, Tim. Sadly, Chromebooks in Australia virtually don’t exist in retail anymore.
Does the Spin 11 have access to Android apps?
Sure does according to their support page https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
It would have also been nice to know which grade levels will receive these. Still, an excellent choice of machines that should please everyone.