Chris Betcher

 When Web 2.0 and the explosion of the social web happened back in 2006, I was all in on it. I signed up for everything I could try, out of an excited curiosity and a hopeful expectation that the social web had the power to bring people together in ways that were previously impossible. I reasoned that the more we could connect, and the more we could build community with others regardless of where they were in the world, the better our world would be. And for many years, I passionately believed that was the case. Like so many others, my world expanded and I got to know many more people. Cynics would say people you meet online are not really "friends", but that was not my experience. I have many real friends as a result of online connections. I've gotten to know many people I first came into contact with thanks to the social web, and many of those in person. I've shared meals and drinks and travel and adventures with people that I met as a result of online connecti...

"What do you get with Google Workspace for Education Plus, and is it worth paying for?" It's a good question, especially since there is a totally free version of Workspace called Fundamentals which any school can use at no cost. So it's not surprising that schools would want to know exactly what comes with the Plus edition in order to decide whether it's worth paying for the upgrade. Google does provide a comparison page that lists out what you get in each of their Workspace for Education editions , but I find it leaves out many of the finer details. Details that I think makes a difference, so in this post I am going to run through all the additional stuff you get in Workspace Plus, so you can decide if it's worth it for your school. (Spoiler alert, I think it probably is!) This post is a follow-on from my previous one about the history of Google Workspace , and how we got here. I think it's useful to set the stage for what you're about it r...

Lots of educators use Google Workspace at their school, but many are unaware that Workspace comes in three different editions, each with a slightly (or substantially) different set of features. The three editions are Fundamentals , Standard and Plus . In a future post I want to unpack the additional features in the Plus edition of Workspace and explain what you get for your money that's additional to the other editions. Before we go there though, let's have a quick history lesson to put this all into perspective. Google began providing cloud based software to users way back in 2004 with the release of Gmail. Two years later in 2006, they added a calendar and a beta version of an online word processor based on the acquisition of Writely, and which came to be known as Google Docs. They also added Google Spreadsheets (which would become simply Sheets) and Google Docs Presentations (which would become Google Slides) in 2006, and gradually kept adding tools to the suite. Thes...

I just made the final post I'll ever make on Facebook. I'm ready to close the door on Zuckerberg and his cronies once and for all. I've also downloaded all of my content from Facebook, everything I've ever put there. The process is easy (although not exactly obvious) and you get all your historical content in a self contained html package that can be browsed offline. I've been reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Willams , the book that Meta tried to ban , where she lays out an insider's story of the incredible hypocrisy, lies, immorality, lack of ethics, and general cluelessness that Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Kaplan, et al have inflicted on the world. I highly recommend the book. So many examples of unethical, greedy and self-interested behaviour by the billionaire class, people for whom enough is never enough.  I have never been a big user of Facebook, because I've never really trusted the people behind it. But Wynn-Willams' revelations about the inner w...