Chris Betcher

Our school is just about to provide Netbook computers ( Lenovo S10 s in case you're interested) to all of our Year 6 students.  This is part of a project to provide an immersive technology-rich year at an age where we think it will do the most good.  Lots of Web 2.0 and open Source software tools, use of Open Office and Google Docs as their main productivity environments, access to school hosted blogs and wikis, etc.  We are trying to make use of these tools to promote creativity, productivity and higher order thinking. We want to expose them to the many great digital resources out there, while teaching them the information literacy skills needed to navigate through the massive amounts of information available.  The kids and their teachers are SO excited and, to be honest, so am I. So when I stumbled across this video this morning I really had a giggle.  The students who made this clip did a great job of pointing out the limitations of non-digital media in a very funny way.  It...

There is a backstory on this video, but to be honest, it probably doesn't really matter all that much.  It was made by Matt Harding , the famous " wherethehellismat t" guy from YouTube. The real point for me is that life is for living and that people all over the world want basically the same things - to be loved, to feel happy and to enjoy life. Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo . I look at that video and love seeing the sheer joy on people's faces that comes from just being happy. Enjoy.  I'm off to dance!

I spent today, pretty much by accident, at a forum-style discussion of the issues surrounding the Australian government's proposal to filter the Internet access of all Australian citizens .  I say "by accident" because the invitation to attend an " Internet Filtering and Censorship Forum " appeared in my email a couple of weeks ago, and without reading it too carefully, I thought it was going to be an educationally focused discussion about the filtering issues that schools face.  That would have been useful and interesting, but I didn't realise that the discussion would actually be centred on the bigger issue of the Australian government's proposed Internet filtering scheme.  I'm glad I went. Look, there is no argument from me that we need to keep our children safe online.  We absolutely need to protect them from the things that are clearly inappropriate, obscene or undesirable.  I remember the first time I realised my son had seen things online that...