Google is clearly dominating the education technology industry while competitors like Apple are lagging behind.

“The newly insurgent king of this exploding education-technology market is the Google Chromebook, with Google announcing earlier this week that there will be “more Google Chromebooks in American classrooms by the end of the year than all other devices combined,” according to a BuzzFeed report, said Laura Moser of Slate.

“And, as more and more kids log work on their Chrome books, Apple continues to stumble: Last week, to avoid a lawsuit, Apple agreed to pay back $4.2 million to the Los Angeles Unified School District for its embarrassingly botched ‘iPad for every student’ program launched in 2013,” she continued.

Chromebooks do have the added advantage when it comes to affordability. Students have been using the tools that have essentially replaced textbooks, notebooks and even the need to go to a library and do research the old fashioned way thanks to Internet access. They are among some of the most popular choices and the versatility shows why.

“There are obviously plenty of great unknowns in the never-ending debate over the goods, or evils, of technology’s impact on impressionable young minds (to say nothing of the gaps in Internet access among poorer students),” according to Moser.

“There are the studies showing that readers had far worse plot recall with e-books versus paper books, and then there are the reports about the failure of the “digital apocalypse” to materialize as fully as feared, with digital book sales falling by 10 percent in the first five months of the year.”

It’s no secret that technology is making for more efficient classrooms and that students are learning through the technology introduced to the classroom. However, educators should not forget that they have a role in keeping a close eye on how much tech is being used and how it's being implemented in their individual classrooms.

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Article by Navindra Persaud, Education World Contributor