Chris Betcher

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 ...

According to their corporate fact page , Google’s mission is " to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful " That's a pretty lofty goal when you stop and think about it, yet I find it fascinating to see just how successfully Google have been at achieving this enormous goal. Not just with the obvious "easy" stuff like web search, but with things that are slightly harder, like mapping . Seriously, you have to think pretty big to work on creating an accurate 3D model of the entire planet, populating it with 3D models of every building and structure, overlaying it with millions of geolocated photos and videos and live traffic data and all that other amazing stuff you find in the Google Earth layers! (Oh and while we're at it, let's build some cars with special cameras on the roof and drive along every road on the planet to take photos of what it looks like . Pretty amazing really!) When you look at so many of the other p...

Despite the fact that I know many teachers who would rank Twitter as the most valuable and powerful networking tool they have access to, there are still many more who simply don't "get" the value of Twitter. I've been to lots of conferences over the last few years where the enormous value of belonging to a Personal Learning Network was being touted, and Twitter is nearly always being suggested as the ideal tool for building that network. At one recent conference I asked for a show of hands for who was not yet on Twitter, and many hands went up... my response was "Why not? What are you waiting for? How many times do you need to hear people say that Twitter is the most valuable tool they have, before you actually try it for yourself?" I spoke to a group of preservice teachers recently who were basically told by their lecturers that they needed to join Twitter. Despite the fact that it was being promoted to them as a powerful way to learn and network with ot...

We have an amazing drama department at school. Each year they put on a couple of different productions in the school theatre, and they do an amazing job of it.  This year the senior school students performed a version of the very whimsical (and somewhat bizarre!) story  of Alice in Wonderland. It was a fabulous opportunity for the kids to perform, made especially fabulous by the school's very authentic approach to such productions. It's a joy to watch the students be part of something so professionally produced. It was a particularly joyful for me to watch, as my own daughter Kate had the leading role of Alice. It was a challenging role, performing in every scene and having lots of dialog (including the opening monologue). She worked really hard at rehearsals and when the final productions finally arrived, I was so very proud of her. Photo by Len Elliot