How Acer Chromebooks revealed as the best solution in Escuela Paidos, Spain

Acer Chromebooks are the best solution for schools to upgrade and enhance their educational practice. Escuela Paidos, in Spain, decided to integrate more than 150 Acer Chromebooks in its pedagogical plan. 
Escuela Paidos is an education centre placed in Sant Fruitós de Bages, Barcelona, whose project aims to empower the development of cooperative learning and the digital competences between students. This is carried out following the environment strategy 1×1 that has been developing in Catalonia for 10 years.
These ‘one child, one computer’ politics to introduce laptops in the classrooms and to incorporate little by little electronic books instead of paper ones have the goal to facilitate to each student a bunch of tools that can make their learning and adaptation processes easier. The computer is an additional tool that the student will have to use to face the methodological transformation that the education is living, but an essential one.
In the case of ESO courses (obligatory superior education), the school decided to get some iPad devices to take advantage of their multimedia potential and their speed of start-up and use. During the second year of use, they found two weaknesses when working with this device: the lack of functionality of Google applications for Apple and the poor level of security and control over Apple devices by the center and the Technology department.
The problem of compatibility with the iPad appeared in the workgroups of the classes of Synthesis in the ESO: the works had to be realized in G-Suite and multiple problems of functionality arose in the Apple terminals.
The Fundación Tr@ms, as a declared entity of educational utility, proposed a new collaborative project together with Escuela Paidos, through the distributor FDOS Software SL, to develop this program 1×1 also in the Secondary (ESO) courses.
Acer Chromebooks: a brand new solution for Escuela Paidos
At the end of the 14-15 course, a pilot test was conducted with Acer Chromebooks through the Fundación Tr@ms. Escuela Paidos decides to acquire that same year up to 30 units to start its 1×1 project in High Cycle courses, 5th and 6th of Primary education, to integrate the educational applications of Google (Google Docs, Google Forms, Gmail, Google Presentations …) in all the Subjects from the cycle (Science, Mathematics, Catalan, Spanish, Plastic, English …). This project allows to have at the disposal of the students 1 personal device with access to their data in a fast and agile way, and with a good control by the teachers.
Since that year was a success, Escuela Paidos decided to introduce Acer Chromebooks also in Secondary classrooms during the 2015-2016 course. In addition, the school worked with 15 Chromebooks computers for the development of activities and materials in the classes at the beginning of the 2016-2017 course, and had access to test material from Acer to find the Chromebook plug-in that best matches with their tasks – like tablets or different models of Chromebooks.
The performance of the courses increased and a project was carried out with a school in Perth (Australia), where the students grouped together in teams of mixed work between both schools to work the topic of the light through the scientific method. The combination of Google tools and Acer Chromebooks were the perfect tool for the task. Thanks to them, the communication was constant between the students from both centers and different documents and presentations were elaborated about the experience.
The effort and collaboration between Acer and Escuela Paidos has resulted in the adoption, both by Primary and Secondary students as well as by the teaching staff of the Escuela Paidos, of the Acer Chromebooks equipment as tools to facilitate work, motivate the students and generate new itineraries within the teaching, besides contributing to the development of a line of research in educational technology. Currently, the school has 150 Acer Chromebook computers distributed among the different courses.
The choice of the model Acer Chromebook 14 CB 3-431 was the most suitable for the students of Secondary and Superior Cycle of Primary. It is a very portable computer with many functions and up to 12 hours of battery to last more than one day of class on a single charge. In addition, it has a 14-inch anti-reflective screen – with HD or Full HD options, a webcam with enhanced colors (HDR) to show the sharper images and a fast wireless connection for a high-performance Internet experience.
Even the Acer Chromebook 11 C-730 was very appreciated from the Spanish students: it has autonomy of 8.5 hours – enough for an entire day of class with a single charge – and a very fast start of session of only 7 seconds. Its portability makes it perfect for Primary students.
The benefits of the adoption of Acer Chromebooks
With this action, it is clear that Acer Chromebooks are the best solution for schools that wish to incorporate new tools and technologies into their educational practice. The enormous possibilities offered by these devices as tools to develop projects of cooperative work among the students have been highly satisfactory. Among the opinions that the students gave about the use of these equipment, the majority stated that they liked the ease with which they could connect to the Internet without any restrictions, and the advantage of having a physical keyboard instead of digital writing.
Students can access to web pages in a simpler way and share the equipment among their peers without having to make advanced configurations. Its cloud storage platform also allows the collaborative work inside and outside the classroom, so learning is not limited only to the physical space of the classroom, now it extends beyond it. In addition, the motivation that produces in the student the use of new technologies facilitates learning and a fast and much deeper assimilation of new concepts.
“Another great advantage of Acer Chromebook is to work with different users without the need to create files in the terminal. Each device can be used by several students and their files and documents are linked to their Google account, so no one else can access to this content”, considers Escuela Paidos.
If you want to obtain more opinions from Escuela Paidos about the benefits of Acer Chromebooks you can click here, here and here.
Collaborative Linguistic Project between Paidos and the Fessenden School
“One of the star projects of the course was to develop an English language project jointly with an educational center in Boston”, says Felip Echarri, teacher from the school. The communication and control facilities offered by Acer Chromebooks have been a great help to this initiative. This is a clear example of how new technologies can transform the usual contents of the course, as in this case are English and science, in a totally new and more motivating way for the student.
This language project grew out of a collaboration between students from Escuela Paidos and The Fessenden School in Boston. The Spanish students needed a project where they could use the English language in addition to create a work that could only be done through information technology. The Fessenden School was the best option, as the contacted teacher from that center had also recently switched from iPad to Chromebook and was looking for a collaboration with a center that also used Google devices and tools for education.
The features of the Acer Chrome CB3-431 were very useful in the project: they could do Hangout communications simultaneously and smoothly, with good image definition and webcam capture. For both Paidos and The Fessenden School, it was very important that videoconferences could be made without disconnections or interruptions, a requirement that perfectly covered the Acer Chromebook.
Here some images from the collaboration between Escuela Paidos and The Fessenden School: