Chris Betcher

I've always been a big fan of Google Workspace, right from the beginning.  I like the way it works, the way it's cloud-based, accessible from anywhere, and collaborative so that files can be shared with others. I think Google has done a great job of building a set of tools that are accessible, easy to use, full featured and that just works as you would expect.  Starting with Google Docs (back when they bought Writely) and expanding the suite over the years with a presentation tool (Slides), a spreadsheet (Sheets), a website builder (Sites), and so on, the whole suite of tools has came to have everything you'd expect. Unless you expected a video editor. That was always the missing part of the puzzle for me. I remember years ago I got a call from a friend at Google asking if I'd like to do a Chromebook pilot at my school. We were a heavily Workspace school, but our computing devices were all Windows machines, so we would have been a great candidate for Chromebooks.  My fi...

"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...

Google Meet has undergone a number of changes recently to the way video calls can be made more secure for teachers and students. This video is a thorough guide to making sure your Meets are as safe as possible, by explaining everything you need to know, from the necessary admin-level settings, to the in-call settings like Host Controls and Quick Access settings. It goes into a fair bit of detail, including the important changes that need to be made in the admin console in order for the other settings to be effective.

Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, and just seeing some examples of what’s possible is a big help. To help you see the possibilities of Google Forms, here are two different examples that I hope you’ll find useful.  Did you know that there are actually 11 different types of questions you can ask with a Google Form? It’s not all just about Multiple Choice!  Understanding Different Question Types in Google Forms  This first one is a Form that has examples of every type of question that you can create with a Google Form, as well as some additional variations.  As you can see, there are LOTS of ways you can ask questions in Forms, and the real skill is making sure you are selecting the most appropriate question type for the type of information you want to collect.  Quiz Questions Galore  Of the 11 different question types, 7 of them can be set to automatically check the responses, making them ideal for creating self marking quizzes.   This...

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are driving a ton of innovation in computing at the moment. AI is showing up in nearly every major technology, and seem to give our machines the impression that they are almost human, almost intelligent. But remember it's called Artificial Intelligence for a reason - it's artificial. While these technologies might seem mysterious and scary, they are like most things in technology - easy to understand if you have a basic idea of what's going on. This video aims to unpack the core idea behind Machine Learning - that if we can provide a machine with enough examples of something then it will eventually be able to recognise and draw conclusions for itself. Links to things mentioned in this video Quick, Draw! AutoDraw Teachable Machine Google's AI Experiments Have fun exploring! If you end up making your own experiments in the Teachable Machine, please leave a link in the comments below!

One of the nice things about Chrome is how easily it can be enhanced with powerful and useful extensions. Extensions give the Chrome browser additional "superpowers" that it doesn't have by default, giving you the ability to add some really useful extra features to Chrome to suit the way you use your computer. Here are some of my favourite extensions, in no particular order... Extensity  - The one extension to rule them all, Extensity is an extension manager that gives you the ability to easily enable or disable your extensions. I find myself installing far more extensions than I really need to use at any one time, so I like to turn off any that I don't need to use right now. It's as easy as clicking on their name. Extensity also has a "master switch" to turn them all off, which is handy for those few times when you might need to troubleshoot some rogue extension that could be causing trouble. Text Blaze  - A amazingly useful text expander that can take ...

Google Slides is one of my favourite G Suite tools. Its versatility and ease of use offers lots of amazing visual possibilities for students to present their learning in creative and interesting ways.  Here are 10 tips for becoming a Google Slides wizard... 10. Master your design with Master Slides Did you know that you can make a single change in one place that then changes on every slide?  Whether you want to add a graphic to every slide, reposition a textbox on every page, or change the font through your entire presentation, you can do it on the master and it will update on every slide. Click on Slide >Edit Master, then make your change to whatever type of slide you want changed. It’s like magic! 9. Voice Type your speaker notes Typing is so 2019! So instead of typing all your speaker notes why not just talk to your computer and have the words magically appear in the notes section below the slide?  No special microphone or training required, just select Tools >...

I recently gave this keynote talk at the EdTechTeam Cape Town Summit, titled "Imagine the Possibilities". I've actually given this talk a number of times at Summits and other events all over the world, and this is likely the last time I'll use it, so I'm posting it here just for posterity.

Sydney is a great city. As well as being visually stunning, there is always something interesting going on. The Vivid Sydney Festival launched last week, which is definitely worth checking out. With my work at EdTechTeam I love being part of the crew that runs Summits all over the world, but as a proud Sydneysider I get especially excited when we bring the Summit to Sydney. And this year I'm especially excited about the Summit because of a few extras it brings with it, which I wanted to tell you about. First, the actual Summit itself is being held in a NSW public school for the first time. We've run the event in private and Catholic schools in the past with some wonderful host schools. But I've always wanted the public sector to be able to share the Summit experience too, so I am thrilled that this year EdTechTeam is able to partner with the NSW Department of Education and Anzac Park Public School to host the 2017 EdTechTeam Summit featuring Google for Education. The NSW ...

Back in April 2011 I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the Google Teacher Academy held in Sydney, Australia.  As part of this first Australian cohort, I was so excited to be part of this amazing team of educators from around the world and we spent two days deeply immersed in all sorts of Google nerdiness mixed with teaching inspiration. It was at this event that I saw a Chromebook for the first time, played with Android for the first time, learned about a bunch of new Google tools that I wasn't really aware of, and most importantly, met an astoundingly talented group of educators who shared brilliant ideas about pushing education forward.  To say that this event had an impact on my life would be a huge understatement. Becoming a Google Certified Teacher (now know as a Google Certified Innovator ) was not only highly relevant to my work at school, it also opened up opportunities to do work with EdTechTeam, travel the world presenting at Summits and wo...

You probably realise that when you search for something on your computer that your browser keeps a history of those searches (and page visits).  You can of course clear that browser history at any time.  (For those of you with paranoid tendencies, perhaps you should be using Incognito Mode?) You might also realise that a full history of your search and web browsing activity is kept by your search provider. In my case, that's Google. This search history is not kept on your own computer, but rather on the search engine's servers. You can also visit your web history page online to review (and delete if you wish) your search history or the pages you've visited. But what I think is not very well known is that you can also see the full history of all the voice searches you've ever made using your phone.  Yes, every time you pick up your phone and say "Ok Google", then ask a question, that search is recorded.  And by recorded, I mean the actual recording of...

I had a knock on our front door a few weeks ago. It was a young English guy going door to door for an electricity retailer, trying to get me to switch my power company.  As it turns out, it was his first day so he didn't really know a lot about what he was selling and couldn't answer many of my questions in detail. To be fair, I can be a bit analytical about these things and I don't think he was prepared for so many questions. His spiel was basically "You should switch to us because we are better", but when I asked about the rates they charge, all he could respond with was "We have really good rates". If you ever come knocking on my door, whether you're trying to get me to switch energy companies, make a donation to your cause, or convince me that Jesus loves me, you better be prepared to engage. I ask lots of questions. You better have answers. So I grabbed my most recent power bill, and asked him exactly what their rates were per KWh. He had never ...

Imagine you could visit any place in the world. Where would you go? What would you like to see? What would you hope to experience? Imagine you are learning about India. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to visit the Taj Mahal and explore its wonders? What if your geography class is learning about coral reefs and could go diving in the Maldives or Hanauma Bay or the Great Barrier Reef to see what it’s like there. What would it be like to visit the South Pole, or Niagara Falls or the Palace of Versailles? There are so many amazing things to see and learn about in our world. While we would love to take our students on excursions to learn about the things they can’t experience at school, there are obviously many places that are simply too far away, too expensive, too dangerous or too impractical to visit. Meet Expeditions . Expeditions is a new tool in development from Google that uses the StreetView technology found in Google Maps to take students on virtual field trips to all sorts of exotic and ...

In 2013 Google released Hummingbird, perhaps the most significant update to their search algorithm since the search engine launched. From the Search Engine Land blog, here's how they describe it... "On September 26, Google announced a new algorithm impacting more than 90 percent of searches worldwide. They called it Hummingbird. Google’s Amit Singhal later said it was perhaps the largest change to the algorithm since he joined the company back in 2001. Hummingbird allows the Google search engine to better do its job through an improvement in semantic search. As conversational search becomes the norm, Hummingbird lends understanding to the intent and contextual meaning of terms used in a query." http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-the-keyword-what-you-need-to-know-to-stay-ahead-175531  In plain English, this means that the conventional wisdom of the way we teach search - identifying important keywords, eliminating unnecessary terms, removing the conversational p...

Our school has a subscription to a  website called the Study Skills Handbook  which offers study tips to senior students. I'm sure it's a valuable resource; so valuable in fact that it's behind a $1200/year paywall that requires a login password in order to access it. What a bargain. I'm sure those tips wouldn't be found anywhere else on  the Internet for free at all. Anyway, I got an email from someone at school today promoting this resource, and amongst the several study tips it suggested, it listed this one... 3. DISCOVER OTHER RESOURCES: You could also ask your local librarian for any additional direction on where to look for resource material for your assignment. Librarians are often your best source of information. They know how to help people access relevant and appropriate information, in books, the Internet or computer based references. One of the challenging aspects of Internet based searches for school students is the complexity, language and pur...

I've never really been what you might call a perfectionist. Nor do I believe that it's ok to do a half-assed job of things. It's good to do things right and to the best of your ability, and if I had a choice between doing something badly or doing it well, I'd always rather do it well. But it's also easy to become paralysed with inaction when you feel that something needs to be done perfectly. I saw two examples of this recently... Our school has a very dedicated team of foreign language teachers, and we take our language education very seriously. Many of our students graduate with great proficiency in multiple languages, which I think is pretty amazing. Our languages staff are all deeply passionate about their language teaching and insist that any language should be taught using only the "proper" version of that language... so, for example we teach our French students how to speak Parisian French, and would never encourage them hear "improper" ve...

I just left a comment on Larry Ferlazzo's blog Websites of the Day , in response to a post called  The Best Alternatives To Google Reader Now That It’s Being Shut Down . As the title suggests, after Google dropped the bombshell today about closing down Google Reader, Larry was very helpfully suggesting some alternatives. And they are good suggestions of course, but I think this decision to shut down Reader is more far-reaching than just finding an alternative tool. Anyway, I left quite a long comment on the post with a few ideas that were on my mind, so I thought I'd crosspost it here as well, just in case it helps stimulate further discussion.  But please do go visit Larry's original post... Larry, I agree with you... I'm deeply disappointed that Google is shutting down Reader. And as good as these suggestions for alternatives are, I suspect most of them will be fairly poor replacements for Reader... a) Reader is a part of the Google suite of tools. When I'm logged...