Chromebooks for Education: A Student’s View

As a high school senior and an intern at Newmind Group I see the need for technology in education and the struggles that many people face with it. In school these days, not having a computer can put a student at a severe disadvantage. Teachers expect you to type papers, create slide shows, and accomplish other tasks that require a computer in your free time. This can be a struggle for students without a computer of their own.

2 major struggles that I’ve had include:

• Finding a device to work on
  While using computers at school or at a library is an option, it is inconvenient and the environment is not always conducive to accomplishing school work. Not to mention availability is always an issue when dealing with publicly accessible devices.
• Saving & Transporting Files
  You also have to worry about how you save & transport files. Every teacher that I know stresses the importance of saving every document three times to guard against data loss. Without a personal device I’ve had to email myself, save to a USB drive, or to my Google Apps account at my school. (That last one isn’t so bad as I can get to it anywhere I have internet access, which is what I’ll touch on in a little bit.)

The problem escalates as I look forward and begin to think about college, where a laptop/PC is considered a necessary tool for learning. A 2012 study by Google found that 86% of all college students supplement what they learn in class with digital media, today I would assume that number is even higher. A computer therefore becomes a necessary tool for a college student and therefore a necessary expense. The same study found that 45% of college students pay for all of their college costs (tuition, room, board, books, and other expenses). This means that most students will choose a computer based largely on the cost of the device, even if the device is not ideal for their needs.

As a student I love the features of the Samsung 303 Chromebook that I’m using. It is very light and has an average battery life of seven hours with constant use, or about three days when in standby, which makes it extremely portable. I am a pretty heavy user and usually have anywhere from ten to fifteen tabs open at a time while I check my email, edit documents, spreadsheets, and do research simultaneously. I mainly use my Chromebook for work so I am constantly editing spreadsheets, doing research, creating documents, and writing code. Despite this heavy usage, the Chromebook has always remained lightning fast.

The greatest advantage of saving my work in Google Drive, which automatically saves changes while I’m working on a document, is the ability to access it wherever there is an internet connection, with any computer, while still having it saved to my Chromebook for offline access. By using Google Drive I can share my work with any other Google user and collaborate with them on documents. When I collaborate with other users we can all simultaneously edit the document and add comments to communicate. I use the collaboration feature constantly when a teacher assigns a group project. In fact, my AP Government class actually used Google Drive to create a unified copy of our notes so that we could compare them and help each other. (I also used the collaborative features in Google Drive to get help editing this post.)

The compelling feature to many students may be the low cost, with the Samsung 303 Chromebook starting at $249 compared to a basic laptop that starts around $300. Most laptops/PCs that would be adequate for student use are closer to the $400-$500 range. A chromebook also has the added advantage of coming with an extra 100 GB of Google Drive cloud storage free for two years, a service that would usually cost $4.99 a month.

This table shows the cost of ownership of a Chromebook vs a low-end and midrange Ultrabook and Macbooks over four years. I chose to use Ultrabooks and Macbooks for comparison because they are the devices that are similar in size, weight, and battery life; aspects that are very important when you are carrying it all day.

Device:	Samsung 303 Chromebook	Dell Inspiron 14z Ultrabook (it’s pretty basic)	Dell XPS 12 Ultrabook (this is a midrange model)	Apple Macbook Pro with Retina Display 13”	Apple Macbook Air 13”
Longevity: (years)	2	2	3+	3+	3+
Cost:	$249	$549	$1,199	$1,499	$1,099
Extras:	100Gb Google Drive Storage**: $4.99/mo	Office 365 University: $79	Office 365 University: $79	Office 365 University: $79	Office 365 University: $79
Total: (Over 4 years)*	$738	$1,178	$1,278	$1,578	$,1178

* Totals assume the replacement of devices every 2 years.
** New purchases of Chromebooks come with 100Gb of free Google Drive space for 2 years, but I’ll calculate the cost as if I was paying for Google Drive Cloud Storage.

As I finish high school and move to college I know that I will be taking a Chromebook with me because of its portability, price, and features. Using a Chromebook will allow me to easily guard against data loss, and allow me to access my data through Google Drive from any computer with an internet connection. Google Drive will also provide a suite of applications for collaborative and creative use that is easily accessible and free. A chromebook will also be extremely portable at 2.4lbs with a seven hour battery life, while still saving me more than $500 over four years.

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Tyler Triemstra is a new intern at Newmind Group. He works on internal improvements to make the sales process more efficient, but mainly, he is learning a ton from the team at Newmind. He has a passion for technology and enjoys being part of a team that helps businesses use technology effectively.

Tyler is a senior in high school who enjoys reading, traveling, and volunteering. He can’t wait to graduate from high school and is busily searching for a college to attend.

IT at the Small and Growing company

This post was originally published to Daniel Jefferies' Medium blog feed.

“A company this size can’t afford mistakes.”

For the last 13 years or so I’ve been working on IT with great folks in small, mid-sized and large organizations all over the country. In that time I’ve noticed that just as businesses change as they grow so do the IT departments that serve them. As the business changes, the IT challenges change. Sometimes the IT department keeps up with these challenges and sometimes they get stuck in the ways of the past. I want to start today by looking at the IT needs of Small and Growing businesses which many times have no IT department of their own. In future posts I also plan to cover lessons learned in working with IT in Mid-Sized and Scaling businesses as well as Large and Transforming organizations.

Impact Athletic builds quality work surfaces and storage equipment for Athletic Trainers.

Impact Athletic builds quality work surfaces and storage equipment for Athletic Trainers. I’m a entrepreneur at heart. I love to meet people that are starting something new. Kevin Mcleod and his company Impact Athletic are great examples of this type of small and growing company. Like most small organizations they have no IT department of their own.

“I love tech, I love shiny new things, but I was absolutely frightened by what we had to tackle in IT.” recalls Kevin.

Like many small companies, Impact started out using whatever consumer technologies were at hand. Personal email accounts, a copy of Quickbooks and whatever hardware seemed to be the best deal at the local big box electronics retailer or online. This approach works great at the very beginning but as the company grows this “just use what you have” approach begins to breakdown.
Kevin realized very quickly that he needed an IT partner to get him set up with the right tools so his team could “move fast.” Kevin selected Newmind to be that partner and in Kevin’s words Impact had “infrastructure overnight.”

When I asked Kevin why he had chosen to invest in an IT partner he said, “A company this size can’t afford mistakes.”

I really like working with companies like Kevin’s but not all small companies his size make the smart decisions he did. I’ve noticed that they usually have some common challenges and some make common mistakes. Here are the challenges and mistakes that I have observed other companies making in IT during their small and growing phase.

3 Challenges

1. Can’t afford the IT help that they really need.
2. Need good IT to stay productive and win against larger competitors.
3. Often the owners of the company aren’t strong on IT and feel frustrated having to make decisions without advice from a trusted and experienced advisor.

3 Common Mistakes

1. Most business owners wait too long to find an IT partner that can be a trusted advisor and take the IT workload off the owner’s shoulders.
2. Many small companies develop defacto IT people. Sarah in accounting knows a bit about IT so all the questions go to her. Before you know it she is spending half her time on the accounts payable and half on IT. Her accounts payable workload is suffering and the IT work isn’t getting done very well either. She’s probably frustrated as well and thinking of leaving because no one appreciates all the extra work she is doing.
3. In the early stages companies tend to work harder not smarter. They hire more people to do labor intensive manual tasks rather than getting IT help to make the people they have more productive. From a cost perspective they end up spending much more than they would have if they had made a larger investment in IT at an earlier point in time.

3 Recommendations

1. Find an affordable IT Partner early in the life of the business.
   Your people will be more productive and happy and you will have more time to grow the business and fewer IT headaches to distract you.
2. Invest in the right tools for your team.
   Many small business owners have tight budgets. When it is time for a better email system, a customer relationship management (CRM) system or other tools they tend to drag their feet because of the cost. If you have an IT partner as a trusted advisor early on this can help you make an informed decision. They will probably tell you that to attract the right people you need the right tools. Failing to invest in the right tools can create a frustrating environment and make it difficult to retain your best employees.
3. Stay flexible.
   Look for an IT partner like Kevin did and sign a flexible agreement with them. Choose IT tools that are flexible and have short term commitments, a la carte pricing options and trial periods. Your business is growing fast and you need to be able to make changes quickly if needed. If you are a small business owner or manager I hope some of the information in this post validates some of the great decisions that you’ve made regarding your IT. If you see some mistakes you’ve made I hope I’ve given enough information to help you make corrections. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me by leaving a comment or on twitter @heydjeff.

Daniel Jefferies is the founder of Newmind Group. Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Newmind Group began as a small, regional IT company in 2003. Since then, we have opened offices in Charleston, Minneapolis, and Silicon Valley, and have grown in scope and size to become a national provider of cloud computing solutions for businesses of all sizes. Our specialty is moving legacy systems to more cost effective and reliable cloud based systems hosted by Google, Amazon, and Rackspace.

BYOD to COPE: The Mobility Spectrum

This is part 2 of our look at mobile policy strategy and the great mobility debate. Be sure to read the first post, "BYOD vs Standardization - Understanding Your Mobile Strategy," to explore device standardization.

Environment & History

Look around the office of 10 years ago, and you’d probably find basically the same place as today. Sure, we have better computers now, but those are basically the same boxes as before.  So, in terms of tech, what’s changed?  For that answer we need to look in our pockets.

10 years ago, if you needed your work email on the go, you got a Blackberry.  Spreadsheets Presentations?  ThinkPad.  Fast forward to now, and you probably have a device in your pocket that an do all of that, and faster.  Wireless devices - whether phone, tablet, laptop, or any of the hybrids in between - have become indispensable at work.


So how to balance the needs of a mobile business community with security concerns, financial overheads & employee morale?  If we imagine the different possible configurations on a graph, it might look something like this:

What are my Mobile device policy Options?

With BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), the risks of unmanaged devices accessing and housing company data are mitigated by IT implementing management controls.  When this happens on an employee’s device, it can negate the freedoms BYOD is championed for.    The amount of employee satisfaction drops sharply, due to feelings of being hijacked.  When implementing BYOD try not to mandate controls on the devices, but instead look to create data access controls. This will keep morale up and also productivity.

Using the COPE (Corporate-Owned Personally-Enabled) model, the sweet spot for installing management software and controls is larger.  Since the device (and mobile plan) is paid for by the company, and since employees can customize it to their liking,  most workers are more apt to graciously allow a moderate level of company management without that nagging feeling of being boxed in or watched over.

Further options

You’re not relegated to BYOD or COPE.  There are a plethora of other options you can explore them and find the best fit for your culture.  Here are a few:

• CYOD (Choose Your Own Device)
  A liberated form of standardization, employees select a device from an approved list
• CLEO (Corporate Liable, Employee Owned)
  Reverse BYOD, where employee owns hardware and company pays for service
• BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud)
  Not a mobility policy itself, but can be used to augment an existing setup

Criteria for Deciding

All the above are really different configurations to the same end: accessing data ubiquitously. Company culture and data access needs will be major factors in deciding how to form a mobile policy.  Here are some points to consider when shaping yours.

• What platforms can your IT staff support?
• What level of data mobility does each employee group need (CRM, financial, legal, procedural, everything)?
• What security requirements do you have for each type of data?
• How valuable is data ubiquity to your workers?
• How important is device freedom to your company culture?

Beyond these, there are bound to be company-specific criteria you’ll need to consider as well.  The best answer may end up being a full commitment for a specific model, or you may find choosing different models for different employee groups makes the most sense.  The point is to select the plan that best conforms to you.

Conclusion

As we all move forward into this tech-rich future, there will be new devices that again change the standard business paradigm.  To get the most out of these nascent capabilities, remaining aware of the full spectrum of options and how others are implementing them will be key to a future-ready company.

Part 3 of this series can be found here, "BYOD vs Standardization - SaaS makes it easy"

Luke Reynolds is a new member of Newmind's IT managed services team. Previously he worked with schools, not-for-profits, and businesses to help them acquire and deploy Google Chromebooks on the enterprise level.

Luke Reynolds enjoys writing, music, film, and any form of radical human expression. He's also a rabid proponent of Kalamazoo's local roller derby team, the Killamazoo Derby Darlins.

Newmind Summer Party 2013

Thank you Laura for taking the time to craft these amazing
Minion cupcakes! 

Throughout the year Newmind Group brings together employees, family and friends for retreats to build friendship and community. Our time together is used to meet new friends, share stories, and recognize hard work.

This summer we gathered in Covert Park, MI and spent a weekend enjoying the Lake Michigan Beach!

For some of us, the retreat started with camping that included cooking over open fire, stories around a campfire, and a short midnight torrential downpour.

James Duke brewed homemade soda and grabbed
inspiration from historical soda labels to create custrom
Newmind Orange Soda!

The rain didn't drown our spirits and the next morning we awoke to enjoy friends and family!

Newminders from our Minnesota and South Carolina offices even made the trip to enjoy the camaraderie, tasty grilling, awesome desserts - like Minion cupcakes (Thanks Laura!) - Newmind Orange soda, and awards.

One of the most important aspects of the Newmind Group summer retreat is the unveiling of the results of the Newmind Group Peer Review. Every year Newminders rate each other in 5 areas measuring productivity, innovation, reflection, work/life balance, and teamwork. This is also an opportunity for Newminders to award each other with custom awards.

Congratulations to this year's "Co-Newminders of the Year"
Ryan Hawkins & James Duke.

The Newminder with the highest score in each category is recognized and the Newminder with the highest overall score is crowned "Newminder of the Year" - affording them bragging rights for a year and few other confidential perks!

Companies and organizations hold yearly gatherings for different reasons, but usually they're meant to help with bonding, team building, or maybe even management showing they care about their employees. At Newmind Group, we like planning regular gatherings and retreats because they give us time to Rest & Reflect. We get to joke about the past year and keep perspective.

Thank you for a great year and here's to more fun working together!

BYOD vs Standardization - Understanding Your Mobile Strategy Pt1

Mobile devices, collaboration & mobility, seem to be a hot topic recently. In just about everyone’s pocket is a device that gives them instant access to the Internet. A Nielsen study recently found that “66% of Americans 24-35 now own a smartphone.” With so many users owning their own mobile devices and bringing them to the workplace, its not surprising that IT departments and employees are clashing over ownership, data access and privacy.

Misconceptions

Employees aren’t waiting for IT & management approval to bring their devices to work. According to a CTIA study, “60 percent of IT professionals believe 25 percent or less of their employees are accessing work related information on their smartphone or tablet, while 57% of users said they access work related information on their smartphone or tablet at least once a week.” This may be why “smaller companies, with fewer than 500 employees, are less likely to communicate to their employees about BYOD and security.” Misconceptions about the workforce drive IT departments to prioritize the importance of strict mobile device policies, defaulting to device standardization. Standardization circumvents the grey areas of privacy and personal property, but comes with its own pitfalls.

Range of Device Standardization

Where does your organization currently stand?
Where do you want to be?

High device standardization
requires that everyone use the same type of PC (laptop vs desktop, Apple vs Microsoft vs Linux vs Unix), the same mobile phone (iPhone vs Android) even so far as to require the same model and software version (iPhone 4S or HTC ONE running Android v 4.1.2). This level of rigidity allows IT departments to specialize in a few devices and provide deeper levels of support, internally developing business operation platforms to obtain competitive advantage. High device standardization carries high device purchase costs and high technological debt, causing some enterprises to run outdated software.

Low (or zero) device standardization, BYOD, is essentially the exact opposite. Employees are able to use any device they like, creating an atmosphere that may have over 15 different types of devices, from different manufacturers, running different versions of software. This makes it difficult for IT employees to cultivate a high degree of proficiency in every device. Although IT staff may not be experts in all device types in an organization, this atmosphere opens the door for employees to create user groups and organize genius bars. The most important aspect of low device standardization is the high accessibility of data, which leads to greater gains and efficiencies, that we’ll explore in a later article of this series.

The Tipping Point is Mobility & Collaboration

As you’ve probably deduced, the conversation isn’t BYOD vs Standardization, but instead understanding the culture & needs of your workforce. If a high degree of mobility & collaboration is needed, then your data will need higher accessibility via more devices.

The goal is not to decide for your organization what level of mobility & accessibility is needed, but rather allow the organization and its members to dictate the level they require. Here are a few questions to help start to evaluate your organizational situation:

• Does your organization have employees spread geographically? 
• Is there a specific type of device the members of your organization already lean toward? 
• Do the software platforms and data formats in use require a particular device or platform for access?

Use the questions above, and form other questions, targeting value-driving processes within your organization to gather data about your company’s environment & attitudes toward personal devices & data access. Use those insights to create a BYOD & mobile device policy and IT data access strategy that will be easier and more positively viewed by your workforce.

In the next installment of this series, “BYOD to COPE: The Mobility Spectrum ”

Daniel Proczko has been working with organizations and individuals to build & grow the entrepreneur community of Kalamazoo, MI. From organizing TEDx events, hack-a-thons, and documentary screenings to engaging with business leaders, Dan strives to inspire individuals with new ideas and better thinking.

Having always been interested in tech and understanding the value of innovation through IT, communicating the importance of strategic IT thinking is one of Dan's primary goals within Newmind Group.

Get Your IT Project Approved

At a tech event I attended recently I asked a room full of IT Directors if they would say that internally marketing and selling a technology project to their leadership was one of the main hurdles in keeping their company’s technology infrastructure healthy. The feedback was a unanimous yes.

This topic comes up over and over with IT Directors I come into contact with.

How does an IT Director go about getting a technology project approved by Operations and a budget allocated from Finance? And all within increasingly shorter time frames so that productivity gains can be made without falling significantly behind competitors who were quicker in snapping up [insert your favorite technology game-changer here]?

Current Environment

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that, according to a Gartner CIO survey, since the 2002 dot-com bust IT budgets have been flat to negative and for 2013 are expected to shrink. IT departments must also wrestle with lean human resource allocations and nothing to speak of as far as the luxury of an IT team member who is well-versed in sales and marketing and can create the business case for a technology project.

The scenario I see over and over is that the IT team knows how to select a solution and plan a project that will have favorable ROI results for the company, but not the time/expertise to articulate it to leadership.

Needing a Paradigm Shift

What it really boils down to are the non-IT people (aka the Operations and Finance folks). More often than not they still view their company’s entire IT budget as pure cost, which is why they want to cut it every year because in their mind technology dollars, like keeping the lights on, the roof repaired and the trash taken out is all about minimizing cost. Just find the cheapest option and we’re good.

The truth is that while a portion of an IT budget is to keep the phones ringing and the computers booting, increasing percentages of IT budgets are really strategic spends, not cost at all. By recognizing and allocating strategic IT dollars they enable the IT team to find, select, and implement technology that will increase the overall productivity and efficiency of the entire organization. If spent correctly a strategic IT budget can mean that for every dollar spent, two or even three dollars can be realized in efficiency benefits.

Wearing Someone Else’s Shoes

As IT actions become more important to the strategic success of companies, the IT team needs to be better at communicating to other departments.

One example that comes to mind is a client, that I’ve been helping over the last couple of months, who was looking for a new messaging and collaboration system to replace their aging Exchange environment.

After working with the IT Director to choose the right solution we both sat down and planned out the “sales plan” to make the case to the CFO. We worked together to create and provide the CFO with end-user demos and feature overviews of the solution, ROI calculations of the new solution (Google Apps for Business in this case) vs alternatives (a new Exchange server or Office365), a change management training plan, and a budget.

Because the right solution was chosen by the IT Director, the evidence that the analysis and collateral pointed to was a pretty straightforward “yes,” that the CFO was able to deliver with confidence, and the project was able to move forward.

Best Practice

When getting approvals from Operations and Finance for a technology project take the time to give them what they need to be able to confidently say “yes”. Concentrate on metrics that matter to them, ROI calculations, compelling feature-sets, comparisons of alternatives, provide them with the change management plan and scaling expectations of the new solution to meet the needs of the organization over time.

Michael Jefferies' passions include volunteering at orphanages in Asia to brainstorming with other Newminders on how to make workflows better. He is happiest when problems are being solved and work is becoming more fun and efficient.

Since joining Newmind in April 2012, Michael has been consulting with clients to discover their organizational objectives and working alongside them to identify, analyze, and implement technologies that can help take them there. He believes that IT budgets are not merely a cost of doing business, but instead an opportunity to increase fun, efficiency and profitability.

SMB Helpdesk Trends 2013 [Survey]