In an effort to expand the educational functionality of the Chromebook, Google announced a new feature set for the budget education notebooks. Google will be partnering with Clever to provide a new login solution that will allow young students to log into their netbooks with a little more autonomy. Using a “Clever Badge”, students and administrators can access the Chromebooks by flashing a badge at the built-in webcam.
It might not seem like much, but according to Google, it could have a huge impact for kindergarten-aged students, who will now be able to log in without any help from adults. This, Google claims, will be an important milestone for young students, who will be able to securely use the Chromebook.
“I can’t tell you enough how awesome it is to watch my learners logging into Chromebooks with their little piece of ‘magic’ and the teacher’s face of absolute relief as to how easy it is,” said Mrs. Kiefer, a technology integration specialist, speaking with Google.
Another education-facing integration for the Chromebook line comes in the form of a system that allows young students to create their own passwords — without the risk of those same young students forgetting their password.
Google integrated support for a system called the Cool Picture Login, from Netherlands-based Cloudwise, which allows students to create a password by choosing a series of simple, easy-to-remember pictures.
“This login enables all students to easily and safely log in to their Chromebooks. Teachers can focus on teaching,” said Rijk van Ommeren, director of Margrietschool in Woerden, Netherlands.
It’s an easy way to introduce password security to young students and also allow them to engage with their own education and be a little more autonomous, Clever claims.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Speech-to-text apps have flooded the App Store, making it easier than ever to type on our Macs with just our voice. I have previously covered one such app called TypeWhisper. However, there has been a dearth of good text-to-speech models, and most of the good ones are locked behind a subscription.
Ollama, an open-source app that lets you run local AI models on your computer, wants to change that. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and your prompts are never stored or used for training.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?