10 Multimedia Things you can do on a Chromebook

Chromebooks have become (and continue to be) an important computing platform in many schools across the world. With speed, simplicity, and reliability as their goal, many schools have adopted Chromebooks as the ideal computer for students. A low price is often touted as the reason for their success, but I think low price is simply a benefit, not a feature. While it’s nice that Chromebooks are relatively cheap, to see them as simply “cheap computers” is to entirely miss the point. Chromebooks are succeeding for many other reasons that go far beyond price.

One of the myths about Chromebooks is that they are not very good for working with rich media such as audio, video, and graphics. While GSuite gives us marvelous tools for the core functions of word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations with Docs, Sheets, and Slides, there is clearly much more that we’d like students to be able to do with these machines.

Obviously, because of the way Chromebooks are designed to work, a stable Internet connection is pretty important for using any of these applications, and it’s fair to say that if a school has poor connectivity then that would need to be addressed first before any large scale Chromebook adoption can successfully happen. However, it’s probably also fair to say that even conventional Mac or Windows computers are far less useful without being connected to the internet, so regardless of which computing platform you choose, having a good solid internet connection is an important place to start!

Creating multimedia is important to students. Every student I’ve ever taught with has loved working with text, graphics, audio and video. Combining media in ways that help them tell their stories, explain ideas, demonstrate understanding and explore their world is an important literacy and creative outlet. We want students to be able to do more than just write, crunch numbers and present ideas (although these are all still very important skills to develop).  But media literacy and being able to confidently share stories through digital media is just as important, so as more and more schools move to Chromebooks we need to ensure that we can still meet these needs.

It’s worth pointing out that if you (and your students) plan to work in the professional graphic design or media production fields one day, there’s no question that the “real world” uses high-end applications from Adobe, Apple, Avid and others. Right now, you’re out of luck there, because tools like the Adobe suite are not available on a Chromebook as you can’t install conventional software on a Chromebook. (However, you can bet that some very smart people over at Adobe are working on ways to address this, and we are already seeing some browser-based versions of these creative tools with things like Spark)

In the meantime, here are 10 amazing web-based tools that can provide you with a surprising amount of rich media functionality in “just the browser”.

Pixlr Editor – The closest thing to Adobe Photoshop on the web, Pixlr Editor supports layers, brushes, masking, cloning, adjustments such as curves, levels, saturation, and vibrancy, as well as a collection of filters and transforms. If you have used Photoshop, then Pixlr is pretty easy to understand.

Polarr – For advanced photo editing, the kind of thing you may have used Adobe Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture for, you should take a look at Polarr. This incredibly capable image editor really gives you detailed control over your images, again with full control of curves and levels, individual management of specific hue and saturation levels, cropping and vignetting, etc. It also has some useful filters if you just need quick results.

Gravit Designer – If vector graphics are more your thing, take a look at Gravit Designer, a full-featured vector design tool that is becoming a respectable alternative to Adobe Illustrator. With full support for layers, bezier curves, fills and borders, alignment and all the tools you’ve come to expect. It also now features a useful built-in graphics library.

Adobe Spark Post – Spark is part of Adobe’s move to a more web-friendly set of design tools. Spark Post allows you to quickly create fun graphics and text based on an almost limitless set of choices for colour, font, and style. It’s free and runs entirely in the browser, making it perfect for Chromebooks. Check out Spark Page and Spark Video while you’re there!

Canva – Somewhat similar to Spark, Canva is great for creating quick designs for graphics and other publications. It offers a range of templates to get you started, but set your imagination free and create from scratch.

Book Creator – Originally an iOS only app, Book Creator is now available for Chrome. It features all the same capabilities, including the ability to create digital books, add images and text, add audio, and then export as an ePub format eBook. Offers amazingly simply opportunities for student publishing and is a great platform for students to really show their learning.

Google Slides – Although Google Slides is usually seen as an easy presentation alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint, you can wrangle it to be a pretty decent page editing tool simply by creating a custom page size instead of a standard slide. Pages made in Google Slides can have text, shapes, images, and even video, added to them, so Slides becomes a surprisingly credible tool for making posters, flyers, brochures and much more.

LucidPress – If your desktop publishing on a Chromebook needs to get a little more serious, then Lucidpress is likely to be your answer. An astoundingly capable browser-based layout and design tool, LucidPress gives you a ton of great templates to start with, or you can just create from a blank page. It provides full control over every element of the page, and can even import Adobe InDesign (.indd) files. It is fully collaborative for students to work in teams, integrates with Google Classroom, and is both simple yet powerful. One additional feature of LucidPress is the way it can create not only for print but also for interactive online formats at the same time.  No need to create two different versions for print and online – both can be generated from the same LucidPress original file. That’s a great feature!

Soundtrap – Soundtrap is an incredibly powerful and collaborative music composition tool that runs entirely in the browser. With full support for both loops-based and MIDI-based editing, Soundtrap enables the creation of complex multitracked audio recordings, complete with a huge array of effects like delay, wah, reverb, compression and more. It comes with an extensive collection of loop samples to choose from, as well as a huge number of MIDI voices. You can plug in a microphone, or guitar, bass or external keyboard, and start creating your own musical compositions. For those who don’t have a musical background, the loops are a great place to start, as you can build up layers of pre-recorded looped sounds easily to create a composition. For those who have a little more musical talent, open up a virtual keyboard and play your own melodies and chords. The software includes sophisticated features like quantization and autotune, so you can really dive into some amazingly fun audio creation. The best part is the ability to work collaboratively so that multiple students can all contribute to the same composition. If making music is not your thing, then what about using Soundtrap to create podcasts and other audio recordings? Once you’re done you can publish to a range of online destinations, or just download the finished product as an MP3 file. It really is an astoundingly good piece of software for use on a Chromebook and you will find yourself saying “I can’t believe this is happening in a browser!”

Wevideo – In the early days of Chromebooks most people assumed that rich media such as video was simply not possible, but Wevideo changed all that. Working in just a browser, Wevideo is a fully featured multitrack video editor that can work with high definition footage to produce an astoundingly sophisticated video output. It supports all the usual video editing features such as transitions, titles, and backgrounds, all customisable for duration, transparency, scale, etc. You can add additional video tracks for the creation of cutaways, closeups, picture in picture and it also supports the use of chromakey (often just called “green screen”). Wevideo can also record the screen of the computer for making screencast style videos, as well as the webcam too. Additional audio tracks can also be added so that recorded sound, narration, music and more can all be layered into the final soundtrack, allowing for a surprising level of sophistication. When it’s time to export the finished edit, Wevideo can simultaneously output in full HD to YouTube, Google Drive, Facebook, Dropbox, etc, or just download to local storage as an MP4 file. Wevideo is easily comparable to other popular classroom video editing tools like Apple iMovie or Adobe Premiere Elements. And it works brilliantly on Chromebooks!

Year 1 students at PLC Sydney using Soundtrap to compose short musical pieces.

There are no doubt many other browser-based media production tools that work on Chromebooks, but these are just a few that I’ve found that works well for me. I’m continually amazed at what can be done in Chrome. Some people think that because Chromebooks are “just a browser” they are fairly limited when it comes to producing sophisticated creative multimedia, but those people are wrong. And as Chromebooks become increasingly more powerful, the future of rich multimedia production on Chromebooks is only going to get even better!

PS: I haven’t even touched on what’s possible with Android apps on a Chromebook, but for those newer Chromebooks that can access the Play Store, it opens up a whole other world of powerful touch-enabled, media production apps. More on that in a future post!

The Case For Chromebooks

I was asked via email recently about Chromebooks and whether I thought they were a good choice for schools. Here is my email response, posted here for anyone that might be interested in reading it…

I’ll start by suggesting that any resistance you get on Chromebooks from tech and IT staff will be made for reasons that have nothing to do with pedagogy. I think you could argue that by almost any relevant measure Chromebooks are CLEARLY a better choice for schools. (which is why they are now the number 1 device in US schools)

They are easier to deploy and manage, more secure, more robust, and less expensive. They do everything that a student would need them to do. They integrate directly with Google Apps for Education and are easily shared between students in ways that other devices are not.  They boot fast (under 7 seconds), save work automatically, are completely immune to viruses, and are fast to use. ChromeOS does not slow down over time like other operating systems, and to completely wipe and reset a Chromebook to a fresh configuration takes about 40 seconds. They can be easily managed via the GAFE console, where you can enforce policies and restrictions if needed, install apps, and monitor usage.It’s true that Chromebooks are less expensive, with quality machines available for only around $300 to $500. But price should NOT be the deciding factor here.  The fact that they are cheaper is a great benefit, but it’s not the reason you should consider them. You should consider them because they are arguably better for school use.

I am using my own Chromebook to respond to this email, and in fact my primary computer is now a Chromebook.  I think ChromeOS is the best option for my own use (and I have access to Macs and PCs if I want them).  ChromeOS is not a cheap compromise of an operating system…  it is an excellent, fast, stable operating system that rivals major OSes in terms of functionality and usability. Anyone who tells you otherwise simply has never spent any time with ChromeOS to make an informed decision.

If you are a Google Apps for Education school, Chromebooks make enormous sense.

Some people compare Chromebooks to Windows by listing their features and looking at what Chromebooks supposedly don’t have that Windows does. They are missing the point. The advantage of Chromebooks is that they are NOT Windows. Again, anyone who attempts to make a decision about Chromebooks by comparing them to Windows is completely missing the point of what Chromebooks are all about.

In terms of managing Chromebooks in a school domain they are TRIVIALLY easy to manage.  Because they are managed via a web interface and can be placed into OUs (organisational units) they can have different policies and settings easily applied remotely. Managing 5000 Chromebooks literally requires no more effort than managing 1 Chromebook.  That is NOT true of Windows or Mac. New Chromebooks are added to your domain with a simple keystroke, and then all settings, including wifi details and all apps, are automatically configured. I used to manage a large Windows network in a school and I speak from some experience.  Chromebooks are astonishingly simple to manage!

You will hear all sorts of conflicting opinions about Chromebooks, mostly from people who have never actually used them. Many IT people are not keen on them (why would they be? Chromebooks are so simple to deploy and manage they threaten their jobs!) Many school leaders are ignorant about them because they often simply don’t know any better (and have usually been taking their advice from the IT people; see previous point)  In short, when it comes to Chromebooks there are a lot of ill-informed people out there.

You’ll see from the responses you got in the original thread where you asked about Chromebooks that there is a great deal of enthusiasm and positive attitudes from many people who use them. Seriously, once you go to Chromebooks in a school you’d NEVER go back to the old ways of traditional PCs.

They do require rethinking the way you approach your computing tasks. Chromebooks are different. Not worse, not less capable, not more limited. Just different. And perfectly suited for schools.

I’ve Seen The Future

I just had a couple of thoughts on Chromebooks that I wanted to share. There has been a growing interest in Chromebooks over the past year or so. I ran a Chromebook session at the IT Managers Conference in Canberra earlier this year and there was quite a bit of interest there, and I hear of a growing number of schools here in Sydney that are starting to look at Chromebooks as a possible option for student devices.

At PLC Sydney we started with a small set of 10 Chromebooks about 2 years ago, and have been steadily adding more, mainly in our junior school. They have been a major success with students and teachers alike. Easy to deploy and manage. Robust and reliable. Simple to use, and they do most everything we need.

You might notice I didn’t tout price as the advantage… while Chromebooks are quite inexpensive (around $300 each) I think it would be a major mistake to view them as nothing more than “a cheap alternative” to a “proper computer”. Being inexpensive is a nice benefit, but it’s just that; a benefit, not a feature.

The real features of Chromebooks are all the other reasons I mentioned above. We are choosing to use Chromebooks, not in spite of the fact that they don’t have a full blown conventional operating system, but BECAUSE they don’t. The speed, security and simplicity of ChromeOS is the real attraction, not just the cheap price.

After dabbling with cheap Chromebooks over the past 2 years, I bought myself a Chromebook Pixel 2 when I was in the US a few weeks ago. The Pixel is often criticised as being far too expensive for a computer perceived as being “just a browser”. At $999 USD for the cheaper model (the one I got) it works out at over $1300 AUD, which many might say is stupid expensive for what it is.

That said, even after just a week of use I have to say the Pixel is the best computer I have ever owned. It has the best screen, the best build quality, is fast, responsive, and delightful to use. I love it, and although it seemed expensive at first, and a bit of a luxury purchase, I now think it was actually very reasonable for what it can do and how it does it. I can see it redefining the way I use a computer.

Which got me thinking about the place of Chromebooks in schools over the next few years. I think the Pixel is a glimpse into the future of computing. I predict that over the next few years, as the hardware on Chromebooks grows exponentially better and the cost of producing a quality Chromebook drops exponentially lower, and the capability of what you can do in a browser grows exponentially more amazing, that this will be the future of modern computing. The Pixel is a little glimpse into that future right now.

2 years ago, based on the Chromebooks I was seeing at the time, I would not have said this. The idea of working in nothing but a browser, and all the limitations that implied at the time, was simply not good enough to be my primary machine. Now, when you look at browser based applications like Wevideo, Soundtrap, LucidPress, Polarr, etc, as well as the increasingly powerful core applications in Google Apps for Education, and you see just how incredibly capable these apps are running in nothing but a browser… well, it’s kind of mind blowing.

Right now, the difference in “going Chromebook”, compared to what was possible even 6 to 12 months ago, is astounding. And I have no doubt that the difference between the Chromebook experience now and what it will be in 1, 2 or 5 years from now will be even moreso. Right now, ChromeOS on cheap commodity hardware is adequate. But the Pixel has shown me that running ChromeOS on great hardware can be simply amazing.

I feel like I’ve seen the future.