Chrome App for schools

Good afternoon,

I'm working with several middle schools in the Los Angeles/Orange County areas to develop an elective computer science course. Many of these students have access to chromebooks or other chrome OS devices at school. I am interested in using Arduino with about 30-40 students. What would the bulk cost be in order to purchase the Chrome app for these students to use. Please let me know. Thank you.

Dear @wfplump
we are working on pricing plan and bulking installation option for schools, we will post on this forum page as soon as we are ready to launch. Thanks!

Our middle school at Collegiate School in Richmond, VA are 1:1 Chromebook and use Arduinos extensively with Macs in the classroom, which has proven problematic at best. We'd like to use our Arduinos with our Chromebooks, but are currently unable to even install the app and try it out, let alone purchase it, which we are very interested in for at least 100 users. Our domain extension, though Google Education, is not @gmail.com, but @collegiate-va.org. Could this be source of the issue of not being able to install? I've attached a screenshot of this from the Chrome store. Please advise.

Hi @dan_bell,

You'll have to wait until the bulk option for schools is ready.

In the meantime if you'd like to try it out, I suggest you create a @gmail.com Google ID and try out the Chrome app with it's 5 day trial.

dear person,

What is the time frame for the bulk option to be available?

Hi @dan_bell,

The current planned timeline is end of November.

It's now December. Is there any update on this? A school-friendly Chromebook app would be a very useful tool.

We are on it! Updates on a launch date next week. Thanks for your interest and patience

Any update?? New semester starts January 3.

Hello @pwelte,

We started a private beta program and are going to invite you later today.
Thank you for waiting.

How do we sign up for this Beta? I am losing my middle school program because the Codebender Edu site is failing so often lately that students are not able to program with Arduino in their class. I have Arduino in the curriculum from 6th-12th grade but I am stuck on Chromebooks in 6-8.

Hi @tsemko,

Now Arduino Create is a very stable platform and have incredible uptime. We invested a lot in stability and we already have good uptime (99.98% in the last year for the first page and 99.95% from a functional point of view of the main components of the Editor, our goal is 99.99% for 2018).

My colleague is writing you too and please tell to other schools we now have a working and reliable solution for all Chromebook users.

Thank you!

I am trying to switch my school to the Arduino Create app, but I can't install it. When is the solution for schools going to be available?

Or, could you invite me to the beta test?

Thanks.

@RodneyG

The public version is going to be available very soon, so I would kindly ask you to wait for another week or so,
we will make a proper announcement via the Arduino Blog when everything is ready to be used.

Thanks a lot for your interest in Arduino Create.

Updates: we are really close! Everything works, we are just fixing the way invoices are made and then we should be able to release the Chrome App to the public this week.

Thanks for your patience!

We are finally live, still refining a few details but you can go ahead on Arduino Digital Store and get a licence for your school. Please provide any feedback opening a thread on this Forum section.

Thanks!

The public app seems to be working great, with one caveat: I initially signed up about 10 students but I have gotten 2 new students so I need to add them to the plan, but I cannot find out where to go to add students to the plan or manage my subscription! Where do I go? I tried going into my profile page but that only allows me to change my email/password, etc. Nothing there about my subscription. I need to add them ASAP!

Hi @azaubi,

You can add members via:

  1. Arduino Digital Store
  2. Log in with the same Arduino ID you signed up for plans
  3. Click edit plans
  4. Click add members
  5. Select existing team from drop down
  6. Add emails

With the educational plan, are you able to load custom libraries for use by the team? We currently use edu.codebender and needed to load some "PS3" libraries. I reached out to them and they said they couldn't load them.

So I'm hoping this solution allows us to load libraries for use by all the students or by team within the plan.

Regards,
Jim Tinsman