Chris Betcher

I was asked via email recently about Chromebooks and whether I thought they were a good choice for schools. Here is my email response, posted here for anyone that might be interested in reading it... --- I'll start by suggesting that any resistance you get on Chromebooks from tech and IT staff will be made for reasons that have nothing to do with pedagogy. I think you could argue that by almost any relevant measure Chromebooks are CLEARLY a better choice for schools. (which is why they are now the number 1 device in US schools) They are easier to deploy and manage, more secure, more robust, and less expensive. They do everything that a student would need them to do. They integrate directly with Google Apps for Education and are easily shared between students in ways that other devices are not.  They boot fast (under 7 seconds), save work automatically, are completely immune to viruses, and are fast to use. ChromeOS does not slow down over time like other operating systems, and to c...

I just had a couple of thoughts on Chromebooks that I wanted to share. There has been a growing interest in Chromebooks over the past year or so. I ran a Chromebook session at the IT Managers Conference in Canberra earlier this year and there was quite a bit of interest there, and I hear of a growing number of schools here in Sydney that are starting to look at Chromebooks as a possible option for student devices. At PLC Sydney we started with a small set of 10 Chromebooks about 2 years ago, and have been steadily adding more, mainly in our junior school. They have been a major success with students and teachers alike. Easy to deploy and manage. Robust and reliable. Simple to use, and they do most everything we need. You might notice I didn't tout price as the advantage... while Chromebooks are quite inexpensive (around $300 each) I think it would be a major mistake to view them as nothing more than "a cheap alternative" to a "proper computer". Being inexpensiv...

A while ago I realised that my online life was in password hell. I was using literally hundreds of sites and services that required passwords, but they were held together with a confusing mess of old passwords that I'd mostly forgotten, numerous passwords which were being used on more than one site,  passwords that didn't meet the usual complexity rules usually required across the Internet, and so on. I often found myself having to do a password reset just to access a site, and of course that new password became yet another one I had to remember. Or forget. I felt things were a little bit out of hand so I finally took a few steps to clean up my digital life. First, using the same password for everything is an exceptionally stupid idea. Instead, I came up with my own system that helped me create hard-to-guess, but easy-to-remember passwords that I could apply to any site.  Having a clear system for this meant that when I signed up for some new online service I could quickly come...

You hear of so many security compromises and hacks these days. There are major security breaches happening, with millions of passwords being stolen and used to steal or damage your stuff. So what can you do about it? With so much of our lives now being lived in online spaces, losing a password, losing an account, having someone get into your stuff online,  would be a nightmare. What would happen if someone got into your Google account? Your Facebook? Your bank account? I lost my original Twitter account (betchaboy) last year after a password breach and have never been able to get it back. These security breaches DO happen. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to turn on Two Factor authentication. Sounds complicated? Its not. It basically means that there are two passwords required to get into your account instead of the usual one... there is the normal password that you usually use, plus a second one that changes every 30 seconds or so. Even if the bad guys were to get your...

He rolled his eyes and tried not to look distrustful. "I'm not sure about all this 'cloud computing' nonsense . It seems to me it's just a passing fad and a huge security risk.  I'd never trust my important stuff there. I'd only put my files on my own computer. I like to know where they are so I can get to them when I need them." His friend responded with a wry grin. "Do you have a bank account?", he asked. The cloud sceptic replied, "Yes, of course I do." "Well... what do you think that is?   Do you think your pile of money is sitting in your very own little personal vault somewhere with your name on it?", he smiled. "No", he continued, "your money is nothing more than a record in a computer database, a series of 0s and 1s kept on a server somewhere as a series of magnetic codes. You don't know where your money is kept or what sort of machine it's kept on, or who maintains it, or how often it's...

Thanks to everyone who came back to me with such positive responses to the last two posts... it's great to hear that other people were also able to benefit from some of the things I learned about Google Calendars recently. This final post will just tidy up a few loose ends and give you an idea of some of the extra things I'm doing with my calendars now they are set up the way I wanted them.  It's working far better than I anticipated, and certainly far better than Apple's MobileMe service ever worked.  And did I mention that Google Calendars are free? (I'm pretty sure I did!) We've touched on Gmail, Contacts and Calendars, and looked at how these can be synced to your iPhone and iPad. Naturally, they can also all be synced to your Android phone and tablet if you have one of those. But what about Tasks? In the spirit of GTD , it would really help to be able to have a decent task (ToDo) list that also worked with the rest of my digital (Google) lifestyle. Gmail d...