Chris Betcher

I've never really been what you might call a perfectionist. Nor do I believe that it's ok to do a half-assed job of things. It's good to do things right and to the best of your ability, and if I had a choice between doing something badly or doing it well, I'd always rather do it well. But it's also easy to become paralysed with inaction when you feel that something needs to be done perfectly. I saw two examples of this recently... Our school has a very dedicated team of foreign language teachers, and we take our language education very seriously. Many of our students graduate with great proficiency in multiple languages, which I think is pretty amazing. Our languages staff are all deeply passionate about their language teaching and insist that any language should be taught using only the "proper" version of that language... so, for example we teach our French students how to speak Parisian French, and would never encourage them hear "improper" ve...

It's been said that you know when a 1:1 computing initiative is truly working in a school because you stop talking about it. The conversation stops being about the hardware - the computers, the tablets, the wifi, the network, etc. When all that stuff works the way it is supposed to, it begins to fade from the conversations that take place in the school. We stop talking about the devices and start talking about the learning that takes place with the devices. We stop thinking about the infrastructure required to make the technology work, and we just use it, fully expecting that it "just does". A good 1:1 program should be like oxygen. It becomes so ubiquitous that you start to forget it's there. Students and teachers begin to blend the use of technology into their daily routine in a way that becomes so seamless that it feels natural. Taking the technology away would be almost like taking oxygen away. You don't notice it until it's not there. How do you get to th...

It's been a while since I've posted here, which got me thinking about why that might be. I think the obvious answer is that it's just too easy to contribute on other platforms. When I first started blogging I used to post almost every day, sometimes a couple of times a day. It was to share a video or a picture that I found, jot down an idea, or just share a thought. These days, there are easier ways to do that than with a blog. For many, it's Facebook. For me, for a long time, it was Twitter (and it still might be if I could sort out this stupid password issue!) More and more it's becoming Google+, which really is emerging as THE social platform of the future. These services make it so easy to throw an idea out there quickly. And let's face it, for most people the level of engagement you get back on these platforms is probably higher. It's really no surprise that most of us are blogging less often. But having said that, I'm incredibly glad that I started...