The Whys and How-Tos of Tracking School Chromebooks

Whether your school has used Chromebooks for years or they are just now choosing to launch the program, the need for keeping track of each Chromebook is becoming increasingly apparent. 

But, can you track a Chromebook? Can you track Chromebooks passed out to multiple students? 

We’ve got those answers — along with some valuable tips — right here for you. 

Read on to find out how to track a Chromebook, why schools should track their Chromebooks, and much more. 

• Go-Box: Making the Chromebook Enterprise Enrollment Process Easy 
• Can You Track a School Chromebook? Two Types of Tracking Defined
• 4 Tips for Schools on How to Track a Chromebook
• Why Is It Important for Schools to Know How to Track a Chromebook?
• Go-Box: A Solution to Chromebook Enrollment That Is Effective and Economical 

Go-Box makes enrolling Chromebooks fast and easy. Gone are the days of manually enrolling each Chromebook and then overwhelming your team with wiping and re-enrolling them all the next year. 

With Go-Box, enrollment and configuration are automated. Just plug in up to 16 Chromebooks and let Go-Box handle the hard parts. 

Traditional Chromebook enrollment is costly. Be ready to pay tons of expensive “white-glove” fees, ranging from $5 to $10 per laptop. Those fees add up quickly. 

With Go-Box, you get “white-glove” quality without the fees. Once you purchase your Go-Box, you can use it year after year without ever having to pay again. 

Tracking which Chromebooks are ready to go versus which are not just got a whole lot easier because now you can prep a table full of Chromebooks instead of having to do it one by one. 

When someone is looking for a way to track school Chromebooks, they are usually looking to do one of two things. Either:

• Track a lost Chromebook to find its location; or

• Keep track of who is in possession of each Chromebook, each year. 

Both of these queries have complicated answers. 

Without additional software/hardware, you can’t track a lost Chromebook. 

At best, you can find the city it is in but the Chromebook must be turned on and connected to wifi just to get that information. 

If a school Chromebook is missing, the best thing to do is talk to the IT department. Even then, there is little that they can do unless they have some sort of additional trackers installed. 

Thanks to modern technology, it is possible to place trackers on everyday items. If your school uses a tracking system that tags each Chromebook, you will likely be able to locate the missing laptop. 

The other form of tracking Chromebooks has more to do with Excel sheets than it does GPS trackers. 

Schools need a way to keep track of who they loan Chromebooks to and where each one is. This tracking system includes checking in and out as well as keeping tabs on them while they are checked out. 

While this might sound pretty simple, it’s not. Especially if you have a large fleet of Chromebooks or a large school district, this can be a pretty daunting task. 

Keeping track of school Chromebooks isn’t easy but it is possible and there are several ways that you can do it. 

Every school has a different set of needs when it comes to Chromebooks. Before launching your Chromebook program, consider some of the following questions:

• Who will get a Chromebook? Every student? Only one homeroom or grade? 
• Will students be permitted to leave school grounds with their Chromebook? If not, where will you store them?
• What is your budget for tracking the new laptops? 
• How many should you have in stock for students to use while their current laptop is being repaired? 
• When do you plan to distribute the Chromebooks? 
• What type of system do you want to use for distribution?

Answering these questions will help you get a better idea of what your needs are and what you should be looking for when it comes to tracking. 

Keep all of your information in one place. When tracking school Chromebooks, you have a ton of moving parts to keep up with. You need to know:

• Who gave out each laptop
• Which student got which laptop
• When were they given out
• When they must be returned
• Which Chromebooks have been returned for servicing
• Which Chromebook was given in place of a broken one
• How many Chromebooks you have overall
• What condition they are in at the start of each new year

If you have several different systems for keeping track of each aspect, wires are bound to get crossed and you are setting yourself up for mass miscommunications. 

Whatever system you decide to use, do your best to keep everything in one place.

Send out frequent reminders to parents regarding the Chromebooks. If you need to update a batch of laptops, send out several reminders with clear due dates for the parents to note. 

Throughout the year, send occasional reminders to parents reminding them of when and how they need to ensure that their student’s laptop is returned at the end of the year. 

Remember, over-communication beats under-communication every time.

In the end, the simplest way to track Chromebooks is with an automated system. 

There are multiple options available that use some combination of:

• Barcodes
• QR codes
• Serial numbers
• Student IDs
• Tracking software

Even if you have a great paper or spreadsheet system, you will likely find that you are missing information and that the process is far too complicated to manage well. 

If your school has the budget space, you should investigate automated tracking options for your Chromebooks. 

With how difficult finding a good tracking system can be, you might be wondering … is it actually worth trying to track all the Chromebooks? Considering the time and effort involved, wouldn’t it be a better idea to just cut the losses and move on? 

Especially in today’s world, it is no secret that schools often struggle in the funding department. Knowing how to track a Chromebook is incredibly important for the financial well-being of schools. 

Any time you have assets in an organization, protecting those assets is a top priority. Your Chromebooks are one of your school’s major assets and it is important to make sure you have a firm grip on where they are and what condition they are in. 

Protecting your organization’s assets and their individual value is vital to remaining financially viable. 

Chromebooks, like any other type of electronic, depreciate over time — it’s inevitable. However, by keeping track of them and making sure they remain in good condition, you can help slow down the depreciation. 

Tracking Chromebooks is a great way to reduce depreciation because it allows you to make sure they do not go missing. A good tracking system can also help you spot problem areas and handle issues before they become giant problems. 

While Chromebooks are one of the cheaper options when it comes to laptops, they are far from cheap. 

Chromebooks today average somewhere between $100 and $1,000 with most fitting into the $200 to $500 range. When you are looking at supplying these to hundreds or thousands of students and faculty, the dollars add up quickly. 

Once you purchase the laptops, there are more expenses to consider such as:

• Maintenance and repair
• Replacement
• Enrollment costs 
• Wiping and re-enrolling costs

The cheapest way to replace a ton of missing Chromebooks is to never lose them in the first place. That’s why tracking Chromebooks is so important. 

Some costs are unavoidable. Each Chromebook will need to be enrolled in your school’s program each year and wiped and re-enrolled the next. That is just the school Chromebook cycle of life. 

But there is a cheaper, faster, and more efficient way to handle the process.

Chromebooks are a great resource for schools and it is important to have a way to set them up that is efficient and affordable. 

If you are looking to make your school’s Chromebook management process easier and cheaper, Go-Box has the solution for you. 

Purchase Go-Box Chrome today and level up your school’s Chromebook management system.