by Donna Golightly

There are so many extensions available these days that it’s very easy to find yourself getting carried away with installing way too many of them. It’s an important skill to be able to filter these effectively. Ask yourself what exactly do you need an extension to do and why do you need to install it? This blog post will focus on three chrome extensions that are helpful for students to use.

by Samantha Vardanega

Samantha is a trainer at Using Technology Better. She is passionate about helping others find better ways to teach, learn, research and work together.

Although Google Drive has a very powerful search feature, my training sessions always have participants who are having difficulty finding files in Google Drive. This is usually because they are just typing a keyword in the search box and hoping for the best! In this blog post, I’ll share my top five tips for searching effectively in Google Drive.

by Samantha Vardanega

Samantha is a trainer at Using Technology Better. She is passionate about helping others find better ways to teach, learn, research and work together.

Microsoft OneNote is an excellent tool for collaborating on and collating meeting minutes. However, when you utilise the connection between OneNote and Microsoft Outlook email and calendar, it becomes even more powerful! In this blog post, I’ll show you how the two tools work together to make taking and sharing meeting minutes quicker and easier.

by Lara Kirk

With so many resources available online it’s important to know how to effectively manage and organise digital content that you rely on. Bookmarking frequently visited websites or documents is a great way to be more efficient when working online. Here are five key things to know when you are using bookmarks in Chrome.

by Samantha Vardanega

Samantha is a trainer at Using Technology Better. She is passionate about helping others find better ways to teach, learn, research and work together.

When I ask people what their biggest frustration with Google Drive is, the overwhelming response is always ‘keeping it organised!’. That’s why I am so excited about Google Drive’s Priority page. In this blog post, I’ll explain what it does, how it can keep you focused and efficient and how you can use Workspaces to organise the files you use the most.

by Donna Golightly

Being aware of the wider world around them is important for our students today, but often the news sites can be inappropriate for younger learners. The challenge is how to make them aware of what’s occurring without exposing them unnecessarily to situations beyond their understanding.This blog will share four sites that are written especially for our younger people.

by Donna Golightly

Besides the students in your school, one of the next most important groups of people are your student’s parents. Building positive relationships with parents is not always an easy journey - but there are some things we can do to help establish positive relationships with them. Here are five ideas to help with this.

by Samantha Vardanega

Samantha is a trainer at Using Technology Better. She is passionate about helping others find better ways to teach, learn, research and work together.

I recently spent three days working with staff and students at Waipahihi School in Taupo, New Zealand. While helping the teachers to introduce Google Classroom to their grade 3 and 4 students, I noticed that a lot of time was spent directing students to particular websites and assisting them to change settings on their Chromebooks. In this blog post, I’ll be sharing these five ways to customise Chromebooks to eliminate these time wasters.