Google Docs vs Obsidian for Student Notes: Which One for VCE?

Is Google Docs or Obsidian better for student notes?

For VCE, Obsidian is the better pick if you want fast notes that link together into a “second brain” and you want your files to live on your own device. Google Docs is the better pick if you want zero setup, you’re already using it for every school assignment anyway, and you need to share or get comments on your work from a teacher or a study group. Obsidian is plain markdown, free, and a little more DIY. Google Docs is instantly familiar but has no real linking between documents. Honestly though, the bigger truth is this: the app you pick matters far less than whether you actually make and revisit the notes. And neither one will tell you if your answers would hold up in a SAC, because neither knows VCAA. That part is a separate job.

I tried to make the “perfect note system” instead of just studying

I remember spending a whole weekend rebuilding my note setup, colour-coding everything, making it look beautiful, and then realising I’d done almost no actual studying. The system became the procrastination.

So before I tell you which app to pick, here’s the thing nobody selling you a “study system” wants to say: Google Docs and Obsidian are both genuinely fine for their own reasons. You will not fail VCE because you picked the wrong one. You’ll do better in the one you’ll actually open every day and write in. Pick fast, then move on to the part that matters.

That said, they suit different people, so here’s the honest version of who each is for.

I actually use both, for different reasons. Obsidian is where I keep my own note-taking system, because it’s plain text — I can point an AI tool like Claude Code straight at the files and have it read and precisely edit what’s inside them. Most AI connectors into Google Docs can only add or delete whole documents, not edit the content inside one. Google Docs earns its place when I’m working with someone outside my core team — it’s the better tool the moment collaboration is the point, not personal note-taking.

The 30-second difference

• Obsidian is a folder of plain text files on your own device. You write in markdown, link notes together with [[double brackets]], and it builds a map of how your ideas connect. It’s fast, free, works offline, and your notes are yours forever (they’re just files). The trade is a slight learning curve and you do more of the setup yourself.
• Google Docs is a document editor in the cloud that basically every VCE student already has, because schools run on it for assignments and shared work. There’s zero setup, it autosaves, and sharing a document or leaving a comment is instant. The trade is it’s a plain document, not a linked system — there’s no backlink panel, no graph of how your notes connect, just pages in folders.

One is a fast personal “second brain”. The other is the tool you already know, built for writing and sharing single documents, not connecting ideas.

Where Obsidian wins

Speed and friction. You open it, you type, it’s saved. No loading a workspace, no syncing spinner. For taking notes live in class or while working through a problem, less friction means you actually do it.

Linking ideas (the second-brain bit). This is the real reason students fall for Obsidian. When you link a note on, say, the chain rule to your notes on related rates, you start seeing how topics connect instead of treating each as an isolated fact. Over a year of VCE, that web of links becomes a genuine study advantage at revision time. (The full setup is its own walkthrough — see Obsidian for VCE Students.)

Your files are yours. Plain markdown on your device. No account required to open them, no platform that can lock you out or change the rules. If you care about owning your work, this is a big deal.

Free. The core app is free for personal study use.

Where it asks more of you: the blank-canvas start can feel bare, and it takes actual setup effort compared to something you already know how to use.

For VCE Methods specifically: when you link the related rates note to the chain rule note it depends on, and the implicit differentiation note to both of those, revision stops being “find the right folder” and becomes “follow the chain.” When you see how a Specialist complex numbers note links back to your Methods polynomial note and then through to your Specialist polar form note, you see the progression — not three isolated topics.

This is a pattern I see constantly with students learning something new: they can’t yet see how the new concept relates to what they’ve already learned, or how one idea affects another down the line. Making that relationship an explicit link, rather than leaving it as something they’re supposed to just remember, is what actually closes that gap.

Where Google Docs wins

Zero setup, zero learning curve. You already have a Google account through school. Open a new doc and start typing — there’s nothing to install, configure or figure out. For a student who just wants to get on with studying, that’s a real advantage over Obsidian’s blank-canvas start.

Sharing and comments. This is Google Docs’ actual strength. Share a doc with a study group and everyone can see and edit it live. Send your notes to a tutor or a teacher and they can leave comments directly on the page. Group assignments and shared class notes are genuinely easier here than in Obsidian.

It’s already where your schoolwork lives. Most VCE students are writing SACs, essays and assignments in Google Docs already, inside their school’s Google Workspace account. Keeping notes in the same place means one less app and one less login.

Where it asks more of you: there’s no linking between documents, no backlinks panel, no map of how topics connect — just individual pages in folders. As your subject notes grow across a year, it’s easy to end up with dozens of separate docs and no structure connecting them, which is exactly the problem a “second brain” system is built to solve.

It’s also just free and already there — no separate account, no new app — and for a lot of people the interface is genuinely nicer to work in than a folder of raw markdown files, which is what Obsidian actually is under the hood.

The honest catch: the app isn’t the hard part

Did you notice both sections ended the same way, in different words? A note system, however good, is only as useful as whether you actually write in it and revisit it. That’s the real risk, and it’s bigger than the choice between these two.

A beautiful, perfectly organised note system that you built instead of studying will not get you marks. Messy notes you actually wrote, reviewed, and turned into practice will. The students who do well aren’t the ones with the tidiest folder of docs or the most elaborate Obsidian vault. They’re the ones who made notes and then used them to practise.

So whichever you pick, the workflow that actually works is two steps:

1. Capture and connect in your note app (Google Docs or Obsidian): get the concept down, and where you can, link it to related ideas.
2. Test whether it would hold up under exam conditions: real VCAA-style practice, marked the way VCAA actually marks.

Your note app is brilliant for step one. Neither Google Docs nor Obsidian can do step two, because neither knows VCAA, and notes feeling clear is not the same as your answers getting the marks.

So which should you pick?

Quick version:

• Pick Obsidian if you want speed and no friction once it’s set up, you like the idea of linking ideas into a second brain, you mostly study on one device, you want your notes to be your own files, and you don’t mind a short learning curve. It suits the student who wants a fast, durable thinking tool.
• Pick Google Docs if you want zero setup, you’re already using it for school anyway, you need to share notes or get comments from a teacher or study group, and you don’t want to learn a new system on top of everything else. It suits the student who wants the tool they already know.
• Pick either and stop overthinking it if you’ve been deciding for more than an hour. Genuinely. The hour you spend choosing is an hour not studying. Both work. Go make notes.

If you’re not even sure how to take good study notes with AI in the first place, start with the hub guide (How to Take Study Notes With AI) before you commit to an app.

If you’re asking me point blank: for your own note-taking system, go Obsidian. The reason isn’t really about which looks nicer, it’s the file format. Obsidian notes are plain .md files, the exact format AI tools are built to read and work with easily — so if you ever want an AI chatbot to actually help you study from your own notes, rather than you copying and pasting into a chat window every time, Obsidian is set up for that in a way Google Docs or Word aren’t. If sharing and comments matter more to you than that, Google Docs is fine too.

Where EquateIt fits (and yes, it’s ours)

Here’s the straight version, because I’d rather just tell you.

Google Docs and Obsidian are step one: capturing and connecting what you’re learning. EquateIt is step two: the part that decides your marks. Every VCE Maths Methods and Specialist topic is broken into practice questions, marked the way VCAA marks, with worked solutions you can trust. It’s not a notes app and it’s not trying to be one. It’s the thing your notes app can’t be: VCAA-specific, and right about the maths.

I built it because I was tired of bouncing between five tools and the open internet, never sure if any of it would actually hold up in an exam. EquateIt is meant to be the one place you practise and get marked properly, instead of stacking yet another app on top of ten others.

So: make your notes in whichever app fits you. Then come check they’d actually get the marks. Try it free →

The pattern holds regardless of which app a student uses: the ones who actually improve spend the majority of their time doing questions under real exam conditions, not reading about how to do them. Then they review the feedback, from a teacher, a practice question, a SAC, whatever, find the specific gaps it exposes, and go research and revise exactly those gaps. The note app organises what you know. Getting marked properly is what tells you where you’re actually wrong.

Google Docs vs Obsidian at a glance

The best note app is the one you’ll actually open every day. And no note app, however good, marks you the way VCAA does. That’s a separate job, and it’s the one that decides your score.