..and now it is time to do some damage–or not. My school just issued Chromebooks to all of its teachers. I have excitedly waited for this over the past few months because, despite the naysayers, it is a surprisingly functional tool. I will most likely churn out several Chromebook specific posts, but I decided to only include three features in this post–Google Cloud Print, Chrome Remote Desktop, and the “Keyboard Shortcut App” (which doesn’t have an official name). These three stood out to me as immediately usable as I began familiarizing myself with the device and making it my own. Hopefully, they are as useful for you as they have proven to be for me.
Google Cloud Print
So, Google Cloud Print. The name sort of explains everything. It allows you to print wirelessly using Google’s services. It is a feature universal to all Google products. You can use Google Cloud Print (GCP) with an GCP enabled printer or any printer connected to a computer with a Chrome browser. What makes this so vital is that you can’t directly connect a printer to a Chromebook. Connecting to a GCP equipped printer is as easy as opening a print dialogue (ctrl+p) in any chrome window or tab, selecting the printer, and clicking print. Unfortunately, my school doesn’t have GCP equipped printers. Fortunately, like I said earlier, you can connect to any printer using GCP as long as you have a computer connected to it that has Chrome–one more reason why you should make the switch to Chrome if you haven’t already.
To set up GCP at my school I did the following (which should be the same for anyone):
1. Open Chrome on your desktop (this is the computer connected to the printer)
2. From the Menu (it looks like this) select Settings, which will open a new tab.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the window and select show advanced settings.
4. Find the Google Cloud Print section (third from the bottom) and select “Manage”.
4.This will open up a new tab with the printer management dialogue. It looks something like this:
5. Select “Add printers”. This will bring up a menu where you can select the printers connected to your computer. (If your school uses network printers like mine, you will need to make sure they are installed on your desktop first.) The dialogue should look like this:
6. Select the printers you want to add, press “Add printer(s)”, and follow any other directions that follow.
Once this is done you can print from your Chromebook anytime you want as long as the printer and connected computer are on and awake.
You can also share printers with other users so you can stay logged into Chrome with your personal account on your home computer and still print from your Chromebook at home. Navigate to this tutorial for instructions.
Chrome Remote Desktop
There are all kinds of screen sharing applications out there. Some work better than others, but most require a purchase of some sort in order to get full functionality. Chrome Remote Desktop (CRD) only requires two computers using Chrome and an internet connections and you can remotely control your desktop from your Chromebook. You may ask why would you ever need to remotely access your desktop. Let me propose some reasons. A main complaint about Chromebooks is their lack of functionality, but you have the full functionality of your desktop when you remote in from your Chromebook. Maybe you saved something to your desktop instead of Drive. Remote in and you have access to all the files on your desktop. I have used it to update a Photoshop document on my iMac at home and a Excel spreadsheet saved on my desktop in my classroom, all while sitting in the teacher workroom waiting on copies. Now tell me that is not both cool and useful rolled into one ball of awesomeness. The process of setting everything up is a little involved (though easily accomplished even by novices), so I am just going to direct you to Google’s directions.
Keyboard Shortcut “App”
The keyboard shortcut “app” allows you to see what actions can be completed
with just a key combination.
Alright, so there isn’t an official name for this and I’m not sure that it is an app, but it works extremely well and is easy to use. This thingy-wopper brings up a visual, and interactive, layout of your Chromebook’s keyboard and allows you to see all the keyboard shortcuts your Chromebook can preform. There are a lot of keyboard shortcuts, and they make it so that you rarely have to take your hands off the keyboard to navigate the computer. You may not think much of it–lots of devices have lists of keyboard shortcuts–but this is the first I’ve seen that is both easily accessible and easy to navigate. To begin, press ctrl+alt+/. It will bring up the “app”. From there follow the instructions. When you are ready to exit the interface, you press ctrl+alt+/ again. You can access this feature from anyplace in your Chromebook.