Using Chromebook at Workshop

Worksheets, notes, videos, and web browsing has been a snap. I must admit that this was a daring move to use my new Samsung Chromebook as my only computing device at a week-long biology workshop offered by WestEd (wested.org) and sponsored by the Texas Regional Collaborative. The workshop is taking place at the Norris Conference Center in Austin, Texas. I've come to workshops here before and used both iPad and Macbooks. 

Could the Chromebook perform well enough to lessen the paranoia we often have when using a new device. I took a chance that the Chromebook might falter, but instead some of the iPads weren't able to bring up videos. Even better than that is that by the end of the day, I still had 77% battery charge left. I know that it claims to have a 9 hour battery life, but the way it works makes a big difference. When not in use, all I do is close the screen and when needed again it powers right up. My Macbook takes about a minute or even more to come back on line, losing battery life as it goes through the motion of waking up. The iPad doesn't have the battery life of the Chromebook and it requires some wake up time to boot. A drawback of the iPad is that even with a keypad it doesn't feel comfortable and the keyboard loses charge.

I've been able to take pictures with my phone and quickly upload them to an album for this workshop. I'll continue to add photos and write about the workshop in another post. For now, it seems that I've been happy with the results and have a full feel of the device after the whole five days.