Chromebook Apps

[mowgli82]

What apps do people use on their Chromebooks for Education, we currently have a mixture of iPads and Chromebooks. The Chromebooks are used more as cut price laptops but with the price of iPads as they are I want them to use the Chromebooks for more than Google Docs and Web Browsing

[sted]

do the chromebooks you have even support apps i know atm mine dosent and i suspect at this point probably wont ever

[mowgli82]

Apps from the Chrome store?

[sted]

Apps from the Chrome store?

i was thinking of from the play store (android) which certain models now support

[mjk]

We mostly let the teachers direct the apps but we do have some pre-installed ones such as:

 

Screencastify

Read and Write for Google

Vernier graphical analysis (for science data collection / analysis)

picAXE blockly (for programming micro-controllers in tech lessons)

geogebra (maths graphing)

overdrive (library system which our local authority uses)

 

We also 'roll our own' apps ( eg moodle and student management systems ) , which are essentially links which we put in the taskbar.

https://developer.chrome.com/apps/first_app

Edited April 28, 2017 by mjk

[FN-GM]

@mowgli82 As you have iPads, have a look at this thread - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/182294-android-tablets.html

[mjk]

Also must say that the "share to Classroom" app is well worth installing.

[LRSFC_DanJ]

We also 'roll our own' apps ( eg moodle and student management systems ) , which are essentially links which we put in the taskbar.

https://developer.chrome.com/apps/first_app

 

How do you do that? I am struggling with that very problem at the moment (we want to put links to our Office 365 tenant in our Chromebook taskbar). I've got the manifest.json and the 128.png and all that jazz but can't figure out how to get it into G Suite to be pushed out to the Chromebook. I tried uploading it as a Private App to the Chrome Web Store but it was rejected.

[mjk]

I've had apps rejected too if they violate copyright​. So it might be because an automated app recognised "office 365" and rejected that. In my case i opened a support case and they let it through. Mind you with office 365 they will probably tell you to stick it!

[jamesleonard]

If students have G Suite accounts, you can push out Chrome apps (such as O365 Chrome apps) and extensions within the user settings in the admin console: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/2657289?hl=en. Should be easy and instantaneous. You can also use managed bookmarks in Chrome user settings to this end.

 

If students do not have a G Suite Account but are using Chromebooks to access the web/O365, consider setting up a public session kiosk with certain Chrome apps pushed/pinned as a part of the kiosk settings. More info here: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/3017014?hl=en

 

For the devices that support Android Apps on Chromebooks (list here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps) you can whitelist, push, and pin Android apps to supported Chromebooks from the Admin console as well. More info here: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7131624?hl=en

[LRSFC_DanJ]

If students have G Suite accounts, you can push out Chrome apps (such as O365 Chrome apps) and extensions within the user settings in the admin console: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/2657289?hl=en. Should be easy and instantaneous. You can also use managed bookmarks in Chrome user settings to this end.

 

If students do not have a G Suite Account but are using Chromebooks to access the web/O365, consider setting up a public session kiosk with certain Chrome apps pushed/pinned as a part of the kiosk settings. More info here: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/3017014?hl=en

 

For the devices that support Android Apps on Chromebooks (list here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps) you can whitelist, push, and pin Android apps to supported Chromebooks from the Admin console as well. More info here: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7131624?hl=en

 

I managed to get G Suite federated with Azure Active Directory, so students effectively have G Suite accounts. However, while there does exist an official public Microsoft Office 365 extension for Chrome, it requires the user to sign in again in order to use it.

We want to take advantage of the fact that we have the SSO cookie from the sign-in to send users to the Smart Links that go directly to our tenant. So basically we want to have a taskbar icon that just goes to a specific URL. Google's documentation suggested we could create a private Chrome app for this but my attempt to do that was unsuccessful (it worked in testing but was rejected when I tried to upload it for pushing out over G Suite).

 

I don't think the devices we will be using are compatible with Android apps.