Online classes really picked up over the past two years, completely transforming how education is being imparted to learners. It provides greater control thereby enabling students to personalize their learning. It gives them more autonomy and intellectual freedom, enables them to explore their options before choosing the right course, and even makes parent-teacher collaboration more positive and transparent. In order to maximize benefits from online education, you need to buy the right laptop.
Budget: You don’t have to break the bank for buying the right laptop for online education. As most of the processing in online education happens on the servers, you don’t really need to install too many applications on your local device. So a device like HP Chromebook 14A G5 will do, which only costs around Rs. 28,000.
Productivity Apps: One thing you do need locally is an office suite, like G Suite or Microsoft Office 365. Machines like the HP Chromebook come with a G suite, meaning you have access to all basic productivity tools like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets, Docs, Slides, Hangouts, and Vault. Students might want to have apps that are basic and necessary for online learning, so choosing a laptop with pre-installed apps that are needed in online learning will be smart work. HP Chromebook provides education apps like Duolingo, Google Arts & Culture and Khan Academy for students to enjoy their learning experience.
Spill and Pick Resistant Keyboard: Students would tend to eat and drink to fill their grumbling tummies while attending classes or working on assignments. So it is important for the laptop to have spilt and pick resistant keyboard. There are laptops that come with keyboards that resist minor spills and have smaller gaps around the keycap with an internal overlap to help prevent keys from being picked.
Noise Cancellation Mic and HD Screen: Students attending online classes also need to participate in various activities, answer questions asked by the teacher, copy notes being shown on the screen to name a few. Many times, they’re not able to participate in class activities due to a lot of background noise. So, look for laptops that come with an echo cancellation mic and HD screen.
Lastly, one might not get shut off while attending classes or working on an important project. So it is important for online learning laptops to have a long battery life so that users are not interrupted in their journey.
As you can see, students also have many specific requirements for online learning and therefore need a laptop that meets those requirements. The HP Chromebook as we’ve mentioned above offers all these features and might be a worthy consideration for students.