Chris Betcher

I was asked to present at a conference recently and I willingly agreed. I was quite aware at the time that there would be no direct payment involved for presenting but the conference was relevant to me, I thought I had something worthwhile to add and I figured I would enjoy presenting... so I said yes. Besides, the organiser is a longstanding friend of mine and I am usually happy to help out. I've presented for this person at a number of other conferences and on each occasion my services as a presenter have been greatly appreciated, but have also been expected at no cost. Because of the good exposure it offers and because it ultimately looks good on my resume, I have willingly presented without charge and have usually not regretted doing so. But I'm wondering where to draw the line. I live in Sydney, and this particular conference is in a different state. So it means a flight, a hotel and a day away from work. It means a taxi to the airport. It means eating at restauran...

I never realised I was such an auditory learner until I became a podcast junkie. Now I listen to oodles of podcasts on all sorts of topics. My drive to work is a little longer at the new school this year and I'm rather pleased about that since I get to listen to more podcasts! Ever since starting my own podcast, The Virtual Staffroom , over a year ago I've enjoyed the opportunity to chat with other educators about school, learning and whatever else came up. Initially, the motivation for making the podcast was just to figure out how it was done, and I've been lucky to have had so many wonderful teachers offering to join me online for a Skype chat, which then ends up as a podcast. This week, in somewhat of a role reversal for me, I was invited to be on the interviewee's side of the mic for a change. I had the great pleasure of being a guest on the Ed Tech Crew Podcast this week, where Darrell and Tony had a chat to me about a bunch of things, but mainly interactive wh...

The regularity of my blogging has dropped off a bit lately, mainly because I'm in the middle of writing a book about the use of interactive whiteboard technology for teachers. Although I've got almost 20,000 words written so far, I am way behind deadline and really need to get the first draft finished so it can be submitted to the publishers in a few weeks. Until I get that done, every time I feel the urge to blog I have to remind myself that there is a (new) deadline looming and direct my writing efforts to the book instead of the blog. I feel bad that my blogging has been suffering lately, but I really need to get this done. So there you have the reason I've not been updating lately. However, I simply had to take a few minutes to share this wonderful new tool I've found called Scrivener . It's an incredible tool for anyone taking on a large writing task and I really can't believe I've never tried it before. I had heard the name mentioned but assumed...

What's the "right" number of followers/followees on Twitter? I've previously pondered what might be the ideal number to have in your network, but there is clearly no one right answer. The right number to have is whatever works for you. Some have suggested that Dunbar's Number - around 150 - is about right, but my own Twitter network has been steadily growing to almost double that and it still seems to be worthwhile and working for me so, for now anyway, I'll let it keep growing. Whenever someone follows me I've gradually developed a process to help me decide whether I follow back or not... basically I click the link to go to the new followers page, and look for a couple of key bits of information. Are they educators? Are they actively involved in ed-tech? How many do they follow? How many follow them? How often do they update? Who do they follow?  Taking everything into account, if it looks like this person can help add value to my network I'll...