On Monday, Google announced it is partnering with DonorsChoose.org to offer a significant holiday season discount for teachers: the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook for just $99. That’s a solid $300 off the already very cheap $399 laptop, and includes not just the hardware, but management and support as well.
Yet it’s not that simple. The offer is limited to full-time public school teachers in the US, and expires on December 21, 2012. If you meet the criteria, put in a request at DonorsChoose.org, where anyone will be able to make a donation to support your classroom. Only when you reach your funding goal will you’ll receive your Chromebooks from Lakeshore Learning.
The goal of the deal, according to Google, is to help budget-strapped classrooms across the country, hence why it is getting help from an online charity that connects donors directly to public school classroom needs. It also took the opportunity to reveal that more than 1,000 schools have adopted Chromebooks in classrooms, including school districts who have deployed Chromebooks to tens of thousands of students.
The company apparently picked the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook because it is “the most widely deployed Chromebook in schools.” That, or the Acer C7 Chromebook is already too cheap to discount at $199. Either way, the 12.1″-screen Samsung device is more powerful: it features an Intel Atom N570 dual-core 1.66 GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 16GB SSD drive.
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Google ended its announcement with a thank you and a suggestion that Chromebooks don’t get malware:
Thank you for your support in giving the gift of hassle-free technology to teachers and students. Working together, we can ensure “The virus ate my homework” is never uttered in a classroom again, and we can help classrooms get off to a strong start in the New Year!
If they get popular enough, Google will have to retract that statement. At prices like these, the company may actually pull it all off.
Image credit: Ivan Prole
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