Our products are revolutionary.

CTL continues to amaze with its innovative computers and technologies. We recently brought home the 2018 Best of Show award for our CTL NL7TW from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. It took place in Chicago where we were honored with Tech & Learning’s most prestigious award. We were recognized for being innovative as well as producing Chromebooks that are excellent and made of the highest quality.

ISTE Draws a Phenomenal Crowd Yearly

The ISTE Conference and Expo is known throughout the world as the most widely recognized and comprehensive conference dealing with educational technology. It draws a crowd of 16,000 people, which consists of company representatives, library media specialists, educators, policymakers, and coordinators of technology programs. The conference sets the stage for companies such as ours to introduce our products to attendees and explain what makes them ideal for classrooms.

The annual ISTE event sees thousands of entries each year. Tech companies, as well as programmers and designers, show off their products where they are judged and awarded accordingly. After rigorously testing the CTL Chromebook NL7TW, it was announced that our company won Best in Show. We will be featured in Tech & Learning magazine’s August issue.

To learn more about the event, interested parties can visit the ISTE website. There they will find all the information that they seek about the conference, its objectives, and cost. They’ll also learn more about what it takes to become a member and the different perks that come with membership.

There are Individual, Group, Affiliate, and Corporate members. You’ll feel right at home along with ISTE’s many members. It’s certainly worth looking into if you have an interest in technological teaching and learning opportunities for the classroom.

Being recognized by our peers is the height of all honors. We are so happy to bring a rugged Chromebook to K-12 classrooms where they get used daily. Adding to our success is knowing how crucial our products are in how students learn. Being part of the future of education is very important to us.

Who is CTL?

Our Portland, Oregon-based company manufactures innovative Chromebooks, laptops, desktop PCs, monitors, and servers that are sold to schools throughout the world. We’ve been in business since 1989 and pride ourselves in being forward-thinkers and problem-solvers. We take the idea of technological learning very seriously, and it shows in the amazing products that we create.

The CTL Advantage

See for yourself how our technologies transform classrooms. Take a look at our products to see which are best for you. CTL Chromebooks are durable, versatile, and future-ready. Give your students a distinct advantage by investing in technology that changes their lives.

Our CTL computers can revolutionize the teaching experience for you. They’re meant to simplify complex processes, provide students with a means of expressing themselves, and are a bonafide learning tool. Having a classroom with Chromebooks can significantly give students an advantage by providing them with access to a tool that changes the way they think about learning.

While technology leasing programs are becoming increasingly popular with customers across industries, many K12 education customers. For example, a school may choose to lease Chromebooks for a 1:1 schoolwide deployment rather than purchase the Chromebooks in order to better manage their technology refresh cycle.

We’ve put together this essential list of insider tips for organizing, navigating, and customizing your Chromebook to get the most out of your Chrome OS experience.

Stay Organized

Use Google Drive Offline

We are always asked if customers can use their Chromebooks offline, and if you’re looking to work in your Google Drive, the answer is yes! To enable this option, go to the landing page of “My Drive” in Google Drive, click on the gear icon and choose Settings, then check the box next to Offline labeled “Sync Google Docs, Sheets, Slides & Drawings files to this computer so that you can edit offline.” Now any changes are automatically synced up when you connect back to the internet.

Use Folders to Organize Like Apps on Your Chromebook

If you want to keep your gaming apps separate from your finance apps, a great tip is to organize your apps into folders. This can be done by dragging one app on top of another to create a folder which will store both of these apps.

Manage Multiple Chromebook Users and Their Permissions

If you’d like to keep your personal Chromebook settings apart from your students or other potential users you can restrict sign-in to specific users. By doing this you can use a third-party supervising software like Securly or GoGaurdian to manage permissions to websites or apps that may be deemed inappropriate for sensitive users, you can also make sure that students aren’t going to log in with a guest account to bypass these restrictions. To access this go to Settings > People > Manage other people and enable Restrict Sign-in to Following Users.  

Navigate with Ease

Chromebook Keyboard Shortcuts

Ever wonder if there is a Chromebook shortcut to navigate your Chrome OS? Next time, try “Ctrl + Alt + ?” This will pull up a cheat sheet for all the Chromebook Use shortcuts of your dreams.

Lock Your Chromebook Easily

If you’re a teacher who wants to make sure that you can easily lock your Chromebook with a quick keystroke so students can’t access your sensitive information, click Search + L which will instantly lock your Chromebook.

Missing Your Caps Lock on Your Chromebook?

Instead of a Caps Lock key, you get a search key which is great since your Chromebook is a powerhouse for searching google. But don’t fear, there is still a caps lock. Selecting Alt+Search will enable your caps lock.

Take a Screenshot on Your Chromebook

Taking a screenshot on your Chromebook is not only possible, it’s easy! Just select Ctrl + Switch Window key.

Optimize Your Chromebook  

Unlock Your Chromebook with Your Smartphone

By enabling Smart Lock in your Chrome OS settings, your Chromebook will automatically unlock when your phone is unlocked and nearby. All you’ll need to do is navigate to your Settings and select “Show Advanced Settings”. Once there, you should see an option for Smart Lock. Click set up and it will walk you through this option.

Utilize “OK Google” on Your Chromebook

Like most devices these days, OK Google allows you to operate your Chromebook with just your voice. Now you can say, “OK Google, What’s the weather today?” and you’ll get a response from the Virtual Assistant. To use this feature on your Chromebook, just go to your Chromebook settings, enter into the Search Settings, and check the option marked: Enable “OK Google” to start a voice search.

Access the Chromebook Task Manager to See What’s Running on Your Chromebook

If you’ve grown fond of Activity Monitor on MacOS or Task Manager on Windows to manage your CPU, have no fear if you aren’t sure of where to locate this handy tool on your Chromebook. You can access the Chromebook Task Manager by typing Shift+Esc.

Personalize Your Chromebook for You

Customize Your User Photo

Adding some personality to your Chromebook user account is as simple as going into your settings and under People, select the account you want to customize. Once inside you can select the camera icon to take a picture with your webcam, or click on the file icon to select an image on your drive. There are also a variety of Chrome-provided icons to choose from as well.

Change or Customize Your Wallpaper

Want to set that great picture of your family from your summer vacation to your Chromebook’s Wallpaper? Under settings, navigate to Settings under Appearance and you’ll see the Wallpaper option. Select Custom and add your own image from your drive, or you can choose from some of the beautiful aerial shots provided by the Chrome OS.

Let ChromeOS Choose a New Random Wallpaper Image for You

If you get bored of seeing the same image every time you log into your device, let Chrome surprise you each time you log in by accessing the settings >

Wallpaper and choosing “Surprise Me” checkbox at the bottom of the

window.

For more great tips and tricks for Chrome OS, Google Drive, and education management and apps, you can find a wide variety of past and upcoming webinars from CTL at http://ctl.info/webinars/. Two of our most popular webinars on Chrome OS tips include Google Drive Tips & Organization and Chromebook Tips and Classroom Management. All our webinars are free and open to the public with a focus on professional development for educators.

To find out more about how Chromebooks are a great option for your classroom, contact a sales rep at CTL today!