Chromebooks have been approved for use in NYC’s 1,800 public schools

The New York City Department of Education has announced that it has approved the use of Google’s Chromebooks in the city’s public classrooms, which consist of around 1,800 schools and provide educational services for roughly one million students, according to Tech Crunch, as well as the use of Google Apps for Education.

“Over the last year, we saw more and more schools using Google Apps for Education,” said Hal Friedlander, chief information officer of the New York City Department of Education, according to Google’s official Google for Education blog. “After evaluating it centrally we decided to add Google Apps to our list of approved and supported tools for NYC schools this year.”

“A number of factors drove this decision,” Friedlander continued. “First, a number of schools were already using Google Apps for Education. Second, since Google Apps doesn’t require special technical skills, schools were able to customize the tools to meet their specific needs. This included everything from fostering parent engagement, to managing classrooms, to creating and sharing online curricula.”

This announcement further demonstrates how Chromebooks are Google apps are starting to play a much larger role within the educational system in the United States. Sundar Pichai, a senior vice president at Google, announced that the American technology giant’s alternative to laptops is now the highest selling device in the United States, according to 9-to-5 Google.