Chris Betcher

In previous posts , I've mentioned how nice it is to occasionally convert some of our online connections into real ones.  This week I had the opportunity to again meet up with someone I'd only ever know through the blogosphere. Susan Sedro is a teacher at the Singapore American School where she does ICT support for years 3, 4 and 5.  The first time I "met" her was during a group Skype call back in September last year and since that time we have read each other's blogs, chatted occasionally on Skype and, along with Kim Cofino , even recorded an episode of Virtual Staffroom together. I'd noticed that Susan was asking some very Aussie-centric questions on Twitter a while back, wanting to know the best places to go snorkelling on the Barrier Reef, etc, so I assumed she might be planning a trip down here.  We got in contact and I said if she was in Australia to give me a yell and we'd catch up.  Well, she yelled and we caught up. So last Wednesday night, Lind...

Another meme is doing the rounds of the edublogosphere at the moment, called the Passion Quilt meme. I was tagged to contribute by Woody Delauer , a teacher from Maryland in the US, and asked to keep this meme going. (I think I was tagged by this a few weeks ago by someone else but we were in the middle of moving house at the time so it slipped through the cracks - sorry!) The Passion Quilt meme works like this... Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons (or even find one marked as copyright but then write to the owner to ask permission).  You can also make/take your own of course.  This picture should capture the quality that YOU are most passionate for kids to learn. Give your picture a short title. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to the blog entry that tagged you. Include further links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow...

It's been quite a week in the educational blogosphere... A lot of the chatter (or rather, twitter) has been focussed on the sudden forced closure of Al Upton's classroom blog by his Year 3 students.  The closure was requested by DECS, the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services in response to a parent who was concerned about their kid being exposed to the dangers of the Internet.  Al's kids, well known on the web as the "miniLegends", have been blogging successfully for the last few years, and were just starting a new project where their blogging was being mentored by other teachers around the world. In theory, it sounds like a great idea... kids with a passion for writing being connected with other educators all over the world willing to help these kids with their writing, offering critique, advice, suggestions, support and generally acting as a volunteer tutoring service at no charge. Their blogging came to a screeching halt last F...

Some things make you proud to be Australian. As a nation with a relatively small population we have achieved some excellent results on the world stage. Sport. Science. The Arts. Even technology. One of the real success stories of Australia's technology achievement is Moodle . As an open source eLearning platform, Moodle started its life as a thesis project by a guy named Martin Dougiamas at Western Australia's Curtin University, and has quickly grown into a major player in the rapidly growing eLearning world. Importantly, Moodle has been designed from day one to support learning using a social constructivist philosophy . Dougiamas belief is that people learn best when they are networked and connected, able to share and communicate ideas, and this belief underpins everything about Moodle's design. I am currently half way through a 4 day Moodle workshop and the more I learn, the more amazed I am at the maturity and depth of Moodle. It's a relatively young piece o...

Until fairly recently, most of my computing was done locally using "real apps". By this, I mean they are cllient-side applications installed on the hard drive of my own computer. I guess I've always liked the speed and convenience of having my applications - tools like Office, email, calendar, feedreader, etc - right there on my hard drive where I could get to them running at full local speed. Once you've been spoilt by the responsiveness of locally-run apps, web apps that run from the Internet just aren't as snappy. Of course, many will say that locally installed apps are old skool; that if you really think with a Web 2.0 mindset, then running your key software directly from the Internet makes more sense. The world is certainly trending that way, with a proliferation of Web 2.0 apps that now run directly from "the cloud" and computing devices designed to work this way, such as the Macbook Air . Computing in the cloud started with obvious appl...

What a world we live in. I'm sitting here in Sydney Australia, watching Clay and Eunjeong getting married in Seoul, South Korea... They are quite literally getting married as I write this, with a live video stream being sent to viewers from all over the world using ustream.tv . To be sitting here in Sydney Australia, watching the wedding of someone I've never met, but yet feel I know, joined by a group of people who I also feel I know but have never met, is quite amazing. And yet, as amazing as I think it is, there is another part of me that says this is quite normal. After all, the technology that has enabled this event to be shared, and the technology that has enabled there to even be an audience with which to share it, have become an integral part of the world in which we live. This event is a wonderful day for Clay and Eunjeong, and it was an honour to be able to share it. Far from feeling impersonal, being able to share in their special day thanks to these networked t...

Interesting article from eSchool News ... A delegation led by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) recently toured Scandinavia in search of answers for how students in that region of the world were able to score so high on a recent international test of math and science skills. They found that educators in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark all cited autonomy, project-based learning, and nationwide broadband internet access as keys to their success. What the CoSN delegation didn’t find in those nations were competitive grading, standardized testing, and top-down accountability—all staples of the American education system. and this bit... Unlike in the United States, which has taken the opposite approach, Scandinavian countries have established national curriculum standards but have set fairly broad mandates, letting authority trickle down as close to the classroom as possible. Local school officials have the flexibility to provide education services according to their students’ uniqu...

I was doing some stuff on Voicethread this morning and spotted a Twitter from Alec Couros directing me to a very powerful use of Voicethread. Alec is a professor at the University of Saskatoon in Regina, Canada, and posed the question "What does your Network mean to you?" as a Voicethread and got a large number of responses from a wide range of educators. It's very interesting to scan through the responses and see what a wide range of ideas can be held within a single Voicethread. Take a look for yourself... [kml_flashembed movie="http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=67978" width="600" height="450" wmode="transparent" /]

I don't normally make requests like this but if you are reading this and you teach using any sort of Interactive Whiteboard , I have a small favour to ask... I am currently in the middle of writing a book about the use of IWBs in schools. I'm actually co-authoring it with Mal Lee, an ex-principal and one of the most knowledgeable guys around when it comes to interactive whiteboard research. Mal and I are trying to finish the book over the next few weeks (we have an actual book contract with the Australian Council for Educational Research... with a real deadline and everything!) It aims to be an overview guide looking at the appropriate pedagogy and logistical considerations to think about when you become an IWB user. We are trying to keep the book as brand-agnostic as possible, even though we are aware that the majority of readers will be on either a SmartBoard or an Activboard. The real focus is on pedagogy, logistics and other practical classroom considerations. Here...