Chris Betcher

I've been keen to get more of our staff blogging, since I know from first hand experience what a powerfully reflective process it can be. I've always found that taking the time to write causes me to think more deeply about what I do, it makes me more aware of the ideas and approaches that I'm using with those I teach, and it's also made me a much better writer than I once was. I'd argue that blogging really helps improve your communication skills on many levels while building a stronger foundation for understanding your own beliefs and convictions. There is something both magical and affirming about putting your thoughts down in words, and even moreso when you decide to publicly share those words with others. As you can probably tell, I'm a bit of a fan of blogging (or connective writing, to borrow a phrase from Will Richardson ) During 2011, our school had the opportunity to apply for an AGQTP grant. This grant program is funded by the Australian government...

I've never understood why people send spam mail or leave spam comments on blog posts (in the same way I don't understand why people scribble graffiti tags on trains and walls), but I know that for spammers who really take it seriously there is big money to be made. I suppose in that sense, I DO understand why people create spam if there is the opportunity to make money from it... I guess what I don't understand is how there continues to be constant stream of people who are gullible enough to take action on the messages and, in doing so, continue to generate an income for the spammers. Let's face it, the thing that keeps spam propagating and growing (and therefore making it worthwhile for the spammers to keep sending it) is the fact that there are enough gullible, stupid people in the world who keep responding to it.  If we all were much better at identifying and recognising spam as soon as we saw it, then the spammers would eventually go away because the f...

2011 has been an interesting year for blogging. I feel like my own personal blogging has been really suffering lately, not just from being really busy at work, but also from the endless distractions of Twitter and Google+ which, if I let them, could easily become my sole places for sharing stuff online.  Certainly, there are some people, like Mike Elgan , who use Google as their sole online presence and funnel all their other online stuff into G+.  It's a potentially intriguing strategy, as the engagement factor on G+ is certainly very high.  You could also argue that Twitter has replaced a great deal of sharing that was one done via blogs, and there's little doubt that between the "Big Three" of Facebook, Twitter and Google+, the nature of blogs and blogging  has shifted considerably since I first started using them back in 2005.  I'm blogging less, for sure, and it definitely leaves a void that I miss filling. However, this was also the year when I ...

On January 1 this year, thanks to a bit of prodding from my mate John Pearce , I started a 365 Photo Challenge... whereby I planned to take a photo every single day this year and post it to the web. I'd tried doing this once before but never made it longer than a few days before I lost focus and let it slip away.   So here we are nearly 11 full months into my 365 Days of Light Photo project and I'm pleased to report I haven't missed a single day yet! ( I've been late to post them a few times, but never more than about 48 hours behind schedule either, which I think is pretty darn amazing!) I post them all to a Posterous site I set up called 365 Days of Light , which in turn crossposts to Twitter, Identica,  Flickr. and PicasaWeb (which is really Google+).  It also used to post to Facebook until I quit my account there).  Here is a link to the collection so far ... (minus the first few days of January which I forgot to include back then) Part of the challenge for me wa...

I'm in Toronto, Canada, at the moment, which is somewhat of a second home for me. My lovely partner Linda is a born and bred Torontonian, and although we both now live in Sydney, Australia, we try to travel back here at least once a year to visit friends and family.   Our current visit was unplanned and not for the usual reasons we like to be here though... Linda's father Ron passed away a few days ago. He'd had a number of health challenges for quite a while, and although he always maintained a positive outlook and a cheery disposition, things had been getting increasingly difficult for him over the last few months. Early on Wednesday morning Toronto time, the day before his 82nd birthday, Ron decided enough was enough and passed away quietly in his sleep. May he rest in peace. Although I never got to spend as much time with Ron as I would have liked, he was a lovely gentle man, and every time I met him he was always smiling, always taking an interest in those around him. ...

I just posted my final status update on Facebook... Dear Friends, As some of you know, I have been wary about the direction Facebook has been taking for quite a while. Their everchanging and confusing privacy settings, the dubious way they treat your personal information, the sneaky way they phrase things in their terms of service... the list goes on... in short, I have gotten to the point where I simply no longer trust Facebook with my information.  The recent (and soon to be released) changes like the Timeline View and the "frictionless sharing" that Zuckerberg talked about at the recent f8 conference have started to change Facebook into a service that I'm no longer willing to use.  Articles like this one ( http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2114059/Your-Facebook-Data-File-Everything-You-Never-Wanted-Anyone-to-Know ) make me feel entirely distrustful of the whole thing. Despite reservations I've had about it, I've really tried to like Facebook. I've enjoye...

Last weekend, I was in Yokohama doing some workshops with Kim Cofino for various groups of teachers in the Tokyo/Yokohama area, including the current COETAIL cohort. It was a heap of fun, and I'll write more about that later. On Monday, I spent the day running PD for staff of Yokohama International School , and I was asked to do a short presentation to get things started. The brief was just to present "something inspirational", whatever that meant. To be honest, my mind was drawing a complete blank and was quite lost for an idea. I went back to the hotel room on Sunday night - my last night before returning home to Australia - and started working on my presentation. I was really quite stuck for an idea, but I was also keen to get it done so I could go out exploring some of the Japanese sights on my last night there. I got to the point where if I stayed in the hotel room working I knew I wouldn't see anything so I just decided to go out exploring anyway and hopefully...

It’s an interesting sign of how this connected world we live in actually works when I see people coming back to revisit an idea that was floated months earlier, still mulling it over and willing to come back and re-clarify things again in their own head, which in turn helps others (like me) to re-clarify things in mine. I'm referring to a post called Unlearning, Relearning, Learning by Graham Wegner, who was in turn responding to an earlier post written on this blog back in May this year. The conversation had basically turned to the idea of how people learn. Graham referred to another post from Dean Groom, where Dean talked about the idea of people being able to learn on demand, when they need it, by accessing the wealth of available online resources that are scattered across the Internet, produced by the millions of members of the online community. This mass-sharing has produced what Dean referred to as "the scattered manual", where the instructions for doing pretty mu...

It's been a big few weeks. I'm currently writing this while flying in an Air Canada Boeing 777, seat 40J, somewhere just south of the equator and slightly west of the International Date Line, chasing the sun around the globe on my way back to Sydney. I've been in Canada for much of the last few weeks, visiting our Canadian family and friends, something I wish I could do more often. But for three days I managed to slip away down to Philadelphia PA for my first ISTE conference . If you know me, or read this blog at all, you may know that I tend to get around to a few conferences in various places, but the ISTE Conference (and prior to that, a NECC) has eluded me so far. For whatever reasons, I haven't been able to get to this event so when the opportunity came up this year I jumped at it. And I'm glad I was able to… it is an amazing event. In thinking about ISTE 2011 to decide what to blog about it, there are a few notable things to mention, but for me, one really st...

I’m writing this from the Novotel Twin Waters Resort on Queensland’s beautiful Sunshine Coast.  It’s a hard life, I know, but someone has to do it. It’s been a spectacular day here, and I’ve managed to fill it with a bike ride along the beach, drinks at the bar, and lazing around the poolside area, so it hasn’t really been too hard to take. No need to feel sorry for me. I'll be ok. But it hasn't all been just lazing around the pool and soaking up sunshine... The real reason I’m here was to take part in the first Interactive Teaching and Learning Masterclass conference, run by the good folk at IWB Net. I had the privilege of being involved as a presenter, leading one of the Cohort sessions and doing the keynote on the  Saturday. The ITL Masterclass conference attempted to be different to a typical conference. Most traditional conferences have a pretty standard format… There is a keynote address in the morning, followed by a series of workshops or breakout sessions that are al...

By default, your computer's drives usually have creative names like "My Computer" or "Macintosh HD". Home wireless networks usually have equally uninteresting default names, like "linksys" or "netgear", or that ultimate of all default SSID names, "default". USB Memory sticks and portable USB drives often have even less interesting names, usually based on their brand, or a series of random characters. Some people give their computing equipment names that make them a little more interesting, or at least a little more unique and personal. I've seen people use names of planets, Greek gods, fictional characters, and many other esoteric collections as the source of inspiration for the names of their networks and computing gear. I once worked as the network manager in a Catholic school where all the servers were named after saints. IT geeks often have an unusual sense of humour, and it commonly shows up in things like this. As I was ...

I just read a post on a mailing list where the topic touched on teachers that struggle with technology.  The phrase that really got me going was something about making allowances for teachers who don't like or understand technology ( whether they are new grads or close to retirement) and how this is all a bit hard for them. This is something I feel really passionate about so I have to say it... Technology in schools is NOT a new thing. I just cannot accept excuses about technology being optional, whether it's from someone who is new to teaching or others who are close to retirement. There are children in those classrooms every day who deserve the best education we can offer them, and it is completely unfair if that education is less than it should be because someone wants to pick and choose which aspects of their job they feel are important.  No child should have to put up with out of date learning experience just because their close-to-retirement teacher is "taxiing to th...

He rolled his eyes and tried not to look distrustful. "I'm not sure about all this 'cloud computing' nonsense . It seems to me it's just a passing fad and a huge security risk.  I'd never trust my important stuff there. I'd only put my files on my own computer. I like to know where they are so I can get to them when I need them." His friend responded with a wry grin. "Do you have a bank account?", he asked. The cloud sceptic replied, "Yes, of course I do." "Well... what do you think that is?   Do you think your pile of money is sitting in your very own little personal vault somewhere with your name on it?", he smiled. "No", he continued, "your money is nothing more than a record in a computer database, a series of 0s and 1s kept on a server somewhere as a series of magnetic codes. You don't know where your money is kept or what sort of machine it's kept on, or who maintains it, or how often it's...

We all see the world through our own personal lens. Consequently, we all form our own opinions about the world and depending on the sorts of experiences you've had in the past, your view of the world and how it works can easily be coloured by those experiences.  Sometimes, we form opinions about things based on experiences that are limited or incomplete or biased one way or the other, and the interesting thing is that we still believe those opinions are correct, even when they can be completely wrong. There's a lot to be said for real expertise. One of my favourite examples of pitting a narrow opinion against broad expertise is from the movie Cool Runnings .  In one scene, the team coach Irving Blitzer (played by John Candy ) is having an exchange with Sanka Coffie (played by Doug E Doug ), where they are arguing about who should be the driver of the bobsled. Sanka is a Jamaican pushcart champion and sees himself as the obvious choice. But Jamaica is ...

There was an interesting article in The Age newspaper the other day titled  Teachers Online eLearning Mocking Fears , which was basically about some tensions being felt at some Australian universities between students who were asking (or demanding) that lectures be recorded and placed online , versus lecturers who were resisting this idea because they feared that students would capture, remix and republish their mistakes using social media.  The lecturers in question did not want their "mistakes" being made public to the world.  You can read the whole article for yourself. But to me, it begs the following line of reasoning... IF the nature of a "lecture" is simply the delivery of information... AND the students want to be able to watch a recording of the "lecture" at their leisure... AND lecturers are concerned about producing a "perfect", mistake-free lecture... THEN why don't lecturers just create a prerecorded version of the lecture, wit...

Thanks to everyone who came back to me with such positive responses to the last two posts... it's great to hear that other people were also able to benefit from some of the things I learned about Google Calendars recently. This final post will just tidy up a few loose ends and give you an idea of some of the extra things I'm doing with my calendars now they are set up the way I wanted them.  It's working far better than I anticipated, and certainly far better than Apple's MobileMe service ever worked.  And did I mention that Google Calendars are free? (I'm pretty sure I did!) We've touched on Gmail, Contacts and Calendars, and looked at how these can be synced to your iPhone and iPad. Naturally, they can also all be synced to your Android phone and tablet if you have one of those. But what about Tasks? In the spirit of GTD , it would really help to be able to have a decent task (ToDo) list that also worked with the rest of my digital (Google) lifestyle. Gmail d...

Ok, hopefully you're read Part 1 of this article and you now have your calendars all set up in Google Calendar instead of iCal..  Now let's get that all synced up to your phone. One of the biggest benefits of Apple's MobileMe service it the way it keeps your iCal calendars in sync with your iPhone. Unfortunately MobileMe costs $129/year here in Australia (even though it's only $99 in the US and our dollar is almost 1:1 at the moment... don't get me started on that!) The good news is that you can get exactly the same sort of synchronization at no cost by using Google Calendar instead of Apple's iCal, plus you get all the extra benefits of sharing calendars that only Google's cloud can offer. If you're a Google user then you've probably set up Gmail on your iPhone. The trouble is, when you set that up you probably did the obvious thing and went to Settings, selected Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then chose the Gmail option. That seems kind of obvious...

At the recent Google Teacher Academy in Sydney we were given a presentation by Danny Silva about making Google Calendar "sexy". Although Danny was probably being a bit tongue-in-cheek about it all, I have to admit it made me completely rethink my use of digital calendars. This rethink was also helped along by a late night geek-session with my buddy Roland Gesthuizen , another new GCT, who was showing me some of the cool things he does with integrating Gmail and Google Calendar. I'd been using Apple's iCal software that came with my Mac, which I generally quite liked. What I didn't like was the $129 it cost me each year for MobileMe in order to sync my calendar across all my computing devices. The massive benefit of a digital calendar is it's ability to set up a 2-way sync between computer to phone. Adding an appointment on my iPhone and having it magically appear on all my computers was definitely a killer feature. Of course, I also keep a work-related calend...

This post is a bit of a call for assistance from any schools in Indonesia . If you could assist we would really appreciate it. Our year 5 classes are just embarking on a thematic unit of work on Indonesia.  The students are doing research into life in Indonesia, learning about the culture, food, transport, religion and so on. It's being done as part of their HSIE strand.  By the way, HSIE stands for Human Society and it's Environment, for those outside NSW...  Oh, and NSW means New South Wales, for those outside Australia. See the joys of writing for a global audience? And that's the point really. Getting kids to think outside their own backyard, and realising that when they use certain words or abbreviations that they don't always translate across borders and timezones. Knowing that other people are asleep when you're awake, and that words and phrases you take for granted can be complete mysteries to people outside your own culture is, I think, a really important m...

What do you think of when you hear the name Google ? To many people, it’s just the place to go when they want to find something on the web.  You just type a few words into that simple text box and, hey presto, you usually find what you’re after. To the majority of users on the web, that’s just what Google does. If you’re a serious web user, you know they do a little more than that . Last week, along with 53 other amazing educators from around the world, I had the pleasure of attending the Google Teacher Academy in Sydney. It was the tenth GTA since the program started, but only the second to be held outside the USA. There was a selection process to be part of it, and many more applied than were actually accepted. There was a ton of hype and excitement leading up to it, with Twitter carrying the anticipation of both those who would be attending as well as those who wished they were.  So what was it like? I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from the GTA. I knew it would be a ...