Chris Betcher

I guess many readers of this blog would know that I work as an ICT Integrator at a large independent girls' school in Sydney.  Large chunks of my day are spent working with our teachers and our students to help them understand a little more about technology and how it might be used to make teaching and learning more engaging and effective.  Of course, teachers always seem to be very busy, and one of the difficulties in trying to deliver some form of ongoing PD is simply getting them to find the time to do so.  I've tried a number of different models for delivering PD; some work quite well, others not so much. It usually comes down to finding time, and making it meaningful. In case it's of any use to you, I thought I'd share an email that I sent to all the teachers in our junior school (R-6) yesterday.  It's an outline of how I plan to be delivering ICT professional development to them next term.  I've found that this model seems to work best for our staff, and i...

I recently wrote about the Apple ITSC events that I was lucky enough to have been a part of.  They're all over now, and after having participated at ITSCs on the Gold Coast, Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne (as well as the one in my home town of Sydney) I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed being involved in them.  One of the best aspects of the way ITSC was run this year was the way they leveraged the unconference concept and tried to break away from the traditional "sit and git" model of learning at conferences.  The unconference model is a good model for learning because it attempts to meet people's needs for knowledge, allowing those with expertise to share it and those with questions to ask them.  The lack of rigid structure is what makes it work along with the fact that you learn more when you get actively involved in learning about things that are directly relevant to you. If you ever want to run an unconference, there is plenty of advice online about how...

I remember back in the mid 90s I started to hear more and more about this upstart operating system for computers called Linux. It was an alternative to Windows and Mac, and was based on an open source project started in 1991 by a student in Helsinki named Linus Torvalds .  I thought it sounded like a fascinating project and I liked the sound of it, since any alternative to Windows had to be a good thing.  In about 1997 there was lots of talk about this new OS and its potential so I wanted to give it a shot. I originally tried to install it on my trusty old Thinkpad using a copy of Redhat Linux that came free on the cover of a computer magazine, but I didn't have much luck so abandoned it at the time. Not long after that I heard the infamous John "Mad dog" Hall speak at a computer show in Sydney, where he passionately and logically espoused the virtues of open source software as a legitimate alternative to commercial software such as Windows and Office.  I recall he made ...