Google expands Chromebook school programme in India

Hyderabad: Google is expanding to India an initiative to popularise the use of its Chromebook laptops in schools, starting with a pilot in four schools in Andhra Pradesh.

The internet search company that makes the world's most popular software for smartphones and tablets will initially make available 25 Chromebooks to each school and train the teachers and instructors in the use of the required software applications.

"The school instructors will teach core subjects using applications and software. We believe with interactive learning, the student will understand better and will take interest in the subjects," Ponnala Lakshmaiah, the state's minister for information technology, said.

Chromebooks require an internet connection to use, and most of the data, such as files that users work on, are stored on Google's storage network connected to the internet. Earlier this month, Samsung released a Chromebook model specifically for the Indian market. Schools are among the most popular market segments for the Chromebooks.

Google is running this programme in some 3,000 schools in the US, Singapore and Malaysia, a Google executive with direct knowledge of the plan to expand it to India told ET. The executive requested not to be named as Google was yet to announce the plan.

"Google aims to increase access to information and knowledge for all students, and encourages tools that support effective teaching and learning in the classroom, but we have nothing to announce at this time," a company spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

The pilot project, in collaboration with Andhra Pradesh department of information technology, will start next month, a senior government official said. It will be launched in three government schools and one private school in Jangaon in Warangal district.

After the pilot, which benefits students of grades nine and 10, discussions are on to expand the programme statewide, the government official said.

The state's IT department will provide the schools with Wi-Fi internet connectivity with 1 Mbps speed and power backups for unhindered use. Each school will be assigned dedicated mentors who would train the teachers and instructors, the official said.

Training will include using the Google Apps Training Center, an online learning environment that offers six modules including Google Apps Education Edition, Apps Mail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, and other tools

Google Chrome Beta Now Supports C/C++

Google has been working on Native Client (aka NaCl), an SDK that brings C/C++ functionality to browsers since at least last year, and now the latest Google Chrome beta version includes NaCl. NaCl uses an API called 'Pepper' that provides HTML5 bindings for C or C++ . (NaCl is the molecular formula for salt. Salt and pepper. Get it?)
Google has also promised to make NaCl available as a plugin for other browsers. What this means is that cloud-based applications may be able to execute code at a desktop level of sophistication, and that Google Chrome OS will soon be able to run these types of applications as well. It's further blurring of the lines between Web/cloud and desktop applications.
According to Google's announcement:
Native Client allows C and C++ code to be seamlessly executed inside the browser with security restrictions similar to JavaScript. Native Client apps use Pepper, a set of interfaces that provide C and C++ bindings to the capabilities of HTML5. As a result, developers can now leverage their native code libraries and expertise to deliver portable, high performance web apps.
Google also announced the Web Audio API, which brings advanced audio capabilities to JavaScript. This will further break down the barrier between what it is and isn't possible for browser based applications to do.
Google first previewed NaCl for Chromium in May of 2010.