Chris Betcher

Feel like letting your imagination run wild for a moment? Imagine what sort of class projects you could attempt if every student in your class had access to their very own digital camera that they carried with them at all times? Or what about if every student in your class had their own personal video camera? Or perhaps a Global Positioning System? Or a podcast player? Or voice recorder? Or mobile Internet device? Or messaging system? Or classroom voting system?  What if, instead of having to wait their turn to use these tools, students had access to their very own device which could do all of these things? What sort of interesting projects could you come up with if each student had a small, lightweight device that did all (or even some) of these things? A device that fit into a pocket and could be carried anywhere, ready to whip out to snap a photo or record a video or audio grab? Something that could identify the coordinates of their global position, or allow them to quickly check a ...

My son Alex, who is 16 years old and just starting year 11, attends Hurlstone Agricultural School .  It's a school that's been around for over 100 years, and has a couple of features that make it a fairly unique place to go to school. For a start, it's a state-run government school, but it also happen to be a boarding school.  There are, to the best of my knowledge, only two government boarding schools in all of NSW.  Secondly, it's an academically selective school.  This means that for most students to attend the school they have to have a proven track record of academic achievement and some evidence that they are relatively bright.  Thirdly, and perhaps the thing that makes it most unique, is that it is an agricultural school. As such, it offers mandatory (up to year 10) courses in agriculture, and the school is located on 276 acres of beautiful rolling farmland.  It is, in fact, a fully working farm, complete with a commercial dairy, as well as raising cattle, chick...

Seems that Twitter is starting to gain some traction with new people lately... after an interesting couple of posts on the OzTeachers list, I thought I'd throw in some tips and suggestions that have become more obvious to me now I've been using it for a while... Here's a snip from the email I sent back to the list...  take from it what you will.  Arguments welcome in the comments.  :-) --- I can understand the sceptics about Twitter... I was one for a long time. However, I've also been getting incredible personal and professional value out of Twitter for quite a while now... So here's a few thoughts that might help you get your head around it... You might like to start with my original explanation of Twitter. The first advice is this... Don't even think about evaluating the worth of Twitter until you are "following" at least 40-50 people. Twitter works because it invites diversity and traffic. If you only follow a few people, you'll get neith...