Chris Betcher

You may have heard the story about the penny doublng every day for a month , or the grains of rice on the chessboard . These stories are based on the principle of exponential growth, and exponential growth is a really amazing thing! You can use the same principle to spread information too. You tell a few, and they tell a few. Those few tell a few, who in turn tell a few more. Pretty soon, many know. The organisers of the K12 Onlline Conference would like to use this principle to spread the word about the event. As you may know, the conference kicks off on October 8 with David Warlick's preconference keynote address, delivered like all the other presentations of course... in downloadable digital format. It then has a full 2 weeks of presentations being released at regular intervals between the 15th and the 26th. See the flyer for more details. To help spread the word, we are passing it along in the form of a meme . Here's what you're asked to do... simply create a bl...

As the 2007 K12 Online Conference gets closer, it's time to start getting the word out to everyone about it. You may recall I blogged on it a few weeks ago, but since that time I volunteered to help out on an organising committee for the conference so I'm getting to see all the work that goes on behind the scenes of a conference like this. One of the things we've been working on is a printable flyer that can be copied and stuck on the noticeboards in your schools to help promote the event to your staff. You can get a printable A4-size PDF copy of the flyer here , (or click here for a Letter sized one if you're in the USA or Canada). If you're in a school, here's what you can do to help spread the word about the event... Download and print some copies of the flyer for your staff. Put them on the noticeboard. Put them in teachers' pigeonholes (that's inboxes for you North Americans). Leave them on the staffroom coffee table. Talk about the event ...

During the second plenary session at the AIS conference today, I was looking forward to hearing Pia Waugh speak. Pia is co-owner of Waugh Partners , vice-president of Linux Australia , and a huge advocate for both Linux and the Open Source Software movement generally. I met Pia last month at the CSTA meeting where we were both speaking, and I had a great chat to her over dinner about all sorts of things that any normal person would probably consider geeky in the extreme. Pia is a super smart lady and very passionate about the whole Open Source movement, so I really enjoyed talking with her that night. When I saw her in the auditorium today before her session I went to say hi, and was pretty surprised to see her holding a little green and white plastic device in her hands... after the initial g'days were exchanged, I said "Is that what I think it is?" She gave me a big grin, and said "yep!" Pia had managed to get herself one of the "$100 laptops" t...

I spent the day today at the NSW ICT Integration conference in Sydney, run by the NSW Association of Independent Schools .  The conference is an annual event for those teachers in the NSW independent school sector who carry the responsibility for assisting their colleagues integrate ICT into their work. There were workshops in all sorts of fairly hands-on topics, from wikis and blogs, to Moodle, to graphics tablets, maths and literacy startegies, and so on. It generally seems to be more of a practical how-to conference than a big-picture strategic thinking event. The keynote address this morning was delivered by James Farmer, owner of Edublogs.org . I interviewed James a few weeks ago for Virtual Staffroom , so when I found we were both going to be at the same event I was keen to meet in real life. James' keynote was really interesting, and focussed on the use of blogging as a form of macro-LMS, and he showed lots of examples of how teachers had been using Edublogs with their...

It's cool to see just how our networks of connectivity are letting us find each other so easily and spontaneously, and the conversations that are evolving out of those connections. While checking my mail tonight, my Twitter goes off. It seems that Jeff Utecht in China is hosting a chat session using something called Wiziq. A number of Twitterers are talking about it. I'm intruiged, but I didn't have Jeff on my Twitter list so I carry on with what I was doing. More conversation tweets out about this session, and I'm following along vicariously through everyone else's Twitters. Pretty soon I see another tweet from Kim Cofino (from Bangkok, Thailand) talking about how she's chatting with Graham Wegner (from Adelaide, Australia) and Chrissy Hellier (from Napier, New Zealand). By this stage, I feel like the party is going on without me, so I decide to have a guess at Kim's Skype name and do some gatecrashing. ;-) Next thing I'm in a text chat with Gr...

This is so cool... Found this image on Flickr via Digg of a guy who accidentally did a cmd+A in his Applications folder on his MacBook Pro, and then pressed Enter. In case that doesn't mean much to you, it basically opened every application on his computer at the same time! If you take a look at his Dock, that's a lot of applications! The amazing thing is that the machine didn't crash, which is an amazing testament to the power of OSX. I don't think I'd even consider trying that on a Windows machine... Tags: mac , apple , macbookpro

Ahoy there me hearties! If ye be looking for a fun story about the power of the Internet, and how it can enable individuals with an idea (even a fairly quirky one!) to make it a global reality then take a read of this story about how Talk like a Pirate Day came into existence. Yarr, 'tis a tall tale but true! It just goes to show that an idea + a communications network + the right connections can have extensive effects. Two guys playing racquetball having fun talking like pirates turns into a fun day that people all over the world take part in. My Twitter feed has been full of Ahoys and Yarrghs all day! It's an interesting read to see how this event came to exist, and makes you realise that it IS very possible to have an idea that spreads far and wide with amazing efficiency if you are plugged into the right networks. Yarr, matey!

Sorry to be picking on Kim Cofino so much lately, but she's blogging like a woman possessed! :-) Kim just twittered about a post written by Struan Robertson, one of her school admin team at the school where she works in Thailand. It's a great post Struan (who incidentally, started blogging after the Shanghai Conference on the weekend - good for you!) Given all the talk over the last few days about connectedness and how our networks of like-thought are linking us all together globally, this paragraph really jumped out at me. For those that may not know, Kim is an American teacher who was working in Malaysia until last year and now works at an International school in Thailand. And how does a school in Thailand find talent like Kim?... "I was also amazed at the impact of blogging. We met and hired Kim Cofino last year through blogging because we already knew how/what she thought. Are we “inventing” a new way to run our HR Dept.? We hire people because of how they think, ...

I was just playing around with Animoto , the fun online video creation toy that all the cool kids are talking about. It probably doesn't have a huge deal of educational merit (because aside from picking the photos and music, you really don't have any say over what it actually creates) but there is no argument that what it creates looks very funky indeed. And with so little effort! This was thrown together from some photos I had on my hard drive just to see how Animoto worked...  I'd forgotten I had these pics... they were of some of the great teachers I worked with last year on my exchange year to Canada when we were messing about with PhotoBooth one day... wow, I really miss you guys!! It's amazing just how a bit of music and a few special effects can make a presentation look so cool though. [kml_flashembed movie="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/46ef6fa73ea1c92a" width="432" height="250" wmode="transparent" /]

I just read a great quote from Kim Cofino's blog, Always Learning , as she was reflecting on the Shanghai Conference from last weekend... "I didn’t realize before how much blogging (reading and writing in collaboration with others) would change my life - not just enhance my professional development like reading a journal article, but change my life - the way I think, the way I interact with people, the way I work, the way I look at the world. It’s impossible to understand the impact of these technologies unless you are using them yourself." I totally agree. Even before Web 2.0, I experienced the same thing, albiet on a slightly smaller and slower scale just through email forums and message boards. I've been active on mailing lists and forums since about 1994 and cannot imagine what it would be like to not be connected to others. Now, with blogs and RSS and Twitter and podcasts and all these other incredible tools, the fibres that forms those connections are just g...

Because I was doing a bit of blog navel-gazing tonight writing that last post, I decided to take a quick look at the site stats just to see what's happening there. One of the figures that really jumped out at me was the one shown in this graph. As you can see here, the majority of browser share is now coming from Firefox! Of course this is only just the stats from my blog, and being an educational blog with a predominantly teacher audience I guess there may be a disproportionate number of users who don't use Internet Explorer, but I was still surprised to see Firefox edging out IE. Not so long ago IE had no competition at all, then Firefox came along and started to gradually steal market share, but last stats I read still showed it with a fair way to go before it could claim to have a greater share than IE. Based on these numbers, Internet Explorer 6 and 7 combined only account for 38% of the traffic! That's a huge drop and won't be making Microsoft happy at all. A...

I put this slide together for the spot I did in Sheryl's presentation in Shanghai this morning. My bit was entitled Learning is a Conversation, and I was trying to get across the idea that a blog is a wonderful vehicle for getting conversations started, and that a blog is much more than just a website. Unlike a website - which is a very Web 1.0 concept - a blog is dynamic and changes often (or should!), it encourages conversation and interaction through the commenting feature, and it also enables the use of external feeds and services to help bring the page to life, making it far more than just static content on the web. You can click to enlarge the image, but the idea is that most of the sidebar features on this blog are dynamically fed by data from either the internal content management of the blog engine itself (past posts, archives, and comment management) and also from external sources such as Twitter, Flickr, Clustrmap, del.icio.us, YouTube, RSS feeds and so on. As I ad...

I have the pleasure tomorrow morning of joining Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach at the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai China. Sheryl is running a session called You are the Time Magazine Person of the Year and will be looking at how educators are using Web 2.0 tools to stay connected and learning. To assist her, she asked Allanah King , Barbara Dieu , David Jakes , Clarence Fisher and myself to each contribute a 5 minute spot to talk about how being connected and networked to other people has affected how we do our work. It was a nice surprise to be asked to contribute, especially in such impressive company! In thinking about this, I started jotting down some ideas. As many of you know, I can't just jot... it inevitably grows to a full essay! So for what it's worth, here is a copy of the notes I wrote for myself. (Thanks to David Warlick for his "learning is a conversation" line... I suppose if I read something he wrote and learn from it and use it, that's an...

Reading through some messages on a mail forum today, one particular message really hit me, and encapsulated what I find so “wrong” about our Higher School Certificate ... (and not just the NSW HSC either, but all forms of centralised, Standards based, high stakes testing)... The idea that our HSC (and by extension our entire system of schooling) does not encourage a “love of learning”, but rather a “what do I need to do to pass?” attitude. The notion that a learning journey should be kept within the tight boundaries of a restrictive syllabus, where certain concepts HAVE to be covered in specific degrees of detail (whether they are actually relevant or not), certain concepts have to be emphasised/de-emphasised (not based on student interest, but on what the syllabus says is their value), and that there is content that need not be covered at all (it might be valuable and interesting, but it's not in the syllabus so we leave it out completely). It just seems so counterproductive to ...

The more I hang around this thing we call the blogosphere, the more curious I become about it's inner workings.  I'm intrigued by the notion that people are so willing to spend their valuable time and energy to write so much incredible stuff and just "put it out there", usually for no material gain.  I'm intrigued that there is such a huge audience wanting to read all this stuff that others write, an audience who enthusiastically consumes content written by complete amateurs on some incredibly niche topics.  I'm intrigued that so much of this content is not just pretty good... some of it is amazing, insightful, witty and important!  I'm fascinated that so many regular people are finding their voice, and expressing themselves as titans of their very own media empires.  I'm in awe of the networks and communities and  conversations that just spring up out of nowhere, creating the most incredible streams of ideas that would have never surfaced without this...

We often talk about the need for schools to change, to become more relevant to the needs of the 21st century learner. And sometimes we talk about it like we know it's something that ought to happen because, well, the times they are a-changin' and maybe we should start change with them. But I think we need to start talking about it more in terms of this change being an imperative . The need for this change is quickly becoming not optional. Schools are becoming dangerously irrelevant to many of our students because we continue to focus on ways of doing things that simply don't connect to the way many of them see the world. I was browsing through YouTube tonight and I stumbled across some old footage of the collapse of the Berlin wall back in 1989. This video got me remembering a quote about education I once read from Seymour Papert . It was this... "I think that it might be useful to think of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think that seemed to be a system that was ...

As the K12 Online Conference gets closer, it's time to start thinking about how you plan to participate in it. As I mentioned in a previous post, last year's event was amazing and this years is shaping up to be even better, building on the successes and learning from the mistakes of the 2006 event. I've been fortunate enough to be part of the organising team for promoting the conference, and we are currently coming up with a bunch of ideas for getting the word out about it. How do we spread the message to as many teachers as possible that this conference exists and the wonderful benefits of taking part in it? Here's a couple of the main features of the event, as I see it... Our presenters will be some of the world's best, most creative, most current, classroom practitioners using Web2.0. Think of the big ideas you will be exposed to! The presentations will all be in a digital format, enabling you to watch or listen to them, download and save them. You can...

I just noticed that Betchablog has finally reached "comment tipping point"... I now have the same number of comments as blog posts!  (Well, until I publish this post - doh!) According to His Edublogness, James Farmer, most blogs have far more posts than comments, so I'm pleased that there is some dialog starting to happen here and there are people willing to engage in the conversation with me.  Thank you!  It's one of the things that make blogs so different to the old Web 1.0 way of thinking.

Ok, so I missed it officially... but better late than never. August 31st was Blog Day 2007, the third one ever held. I'd not heard of it before, but it's a great idea for spreading the blog love... Details can be found at the Blog Day 2007 website. But here are five, no, six blogs I enjoy reading on a regular basis... (what? only five?!) The Fischbowl - Karl Fisch Hey Jude - Judy O'Connell 2 Cents Worth - David Warlick The Unofficial Apple Weblog - TUAW Girl with a One Track Mind - Abby Lee Chris Loves Linda - Linda and my private blog, sorry you need a password for this one! ;-) Of course, there are lots more in my feedreader, but those are some of my faves... Tags: blogday , blogging , blogday2007

I'm sitting on a Virgin Blue 737-800 as I write this, flying home to Sydney after an excellent weekend at the 4th Australian Interactive Whiteboard Conference hosted by IWBnet and Emmanuel College on the Gold Coast. As I mentioned in previous posts it was a thoroughly enjoyable conference. It had "buzz"... a great general ambience and perfect location. I was fortunate to have been asked to present a few sessions at the conference too, since I always enjoy the opportunity to share ideas with other teachers as I find I learn a great deal from the experience myself. The feedback was also fairly positive, so that's a nice thing. Whether is was just because I got to hang out with great teachers, catch up with old friends, stay in a nice resort, or do canapes and cocktails from the observation deck at Q1 on Friday night, I thought it was a top conference. If you're interested in hearing a bit about what went on there you might like to keep an ear on The Virtual...

My good friends Brian and Wendy picked me up from the IWB conference and took me to stay with them in Brisbane. They used to live in Sydney and we got to spend lots of time together, but I haven't seen them much since they moved... so it was great to see them again. They took me to see Riverfire, a huge fireworks spectacular on the Brisbane River. It really was pretty spectacular. I took a bunch of photos and made a little slideshow, then put it on YouTube, then linked it here. Hope you like it. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZQO-mHQBaZE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] Tags: riverfire , brisbane , fireworks

At the IWB Conference on the Gold Coast today I met up with a bunch of teachers from the OzTeachers mailing list community, many of whom I have known for years but only met this weekend for the first time. What an interesting world we live in... we rounded up as many of them as we could to pose for a group photo in from of Bryn Jones' infamous "iVan". Standing, left to right, it's Margo Metcalf, Val Macauley, Bryn Jones, Mal Lee, Sue Green, Fiona Banjer and Kim English. In the front is myself and John Pearce. Kel Hathaway, Sue Burvill-Shaw, Adrian Greig and AnneMarie Loi were at the conference too, but we couldn't find them for this photo unfortunately... It was a great conference, and I'll blog more about it later, but for now I just wanted to say G'day to all the OzTeach members I met today... it was great to put a face to the names!  Thanks also to all those nice people who came up to me and let me know that they either read this blog, or listen to ...

 I'm currently on the Gold Coast at the 4th Interactive Whiteboard Conference.  It's a big event with  around 450 delegates, and about 120 different presentation sessions!   I had the pleasure this morning of presenting two of those sessions, and have spent most of the  rest of the day flitting around, checking out what else is on offer, looking at new products and generally enjoying the beautiful weather here on the Gold Coast.  Right now, I'm sitting here in a Web 2.0 workshop run by John Pearce.  John is teaching teachers how to set up their own blogs and wikis, so I figured this would be a good moment to add a quick blog entry myself.  There are a few photos in the Flickr sidebar, and I'll add more over the weekend.