Chris Betcher

I was at the ACEC Conference in Adelaide recently where I bumped into the ABC Splash team and got chatting with the wonderful Annabel Astbury. We were talking about getting kids coding and the importance of digital technologies in schools. One thing led to another and I was given an opportunity to write a series of three blog posts on the importance of coding for children as part of ABC Splash's buildup to the Hour of Code. If you'd like to read them you can find them here... Part 1 - More than a Game: Why Coding will help kids for life Part 2 -  Programs to help students with key coding concepts Part 3 -  Coding: something for everyone (and here's the proof!) As well as these three written posts I was also interviewed for a video series on the importance of coding, which was released as part of the Hour of Code promotions. Thanks to Annabel and the team for the opportunity to contribute to what I think is a very important conversation to have. Our cu...

You hear of so many security compromises and hacks these days. There are major security breaches happening, with millions of passwords being stolen and used to steal or damage your stuff. So what can you do about it? With so much of our lives now being lived in online spaces, losing a password, losing an account, having someone get into your stuff online,  would be a nightmare. What would happen if someone got into your Google account? Your Facebook? Your bank account? I lost my original Twitter account (betchaboy) last year after a password breach and have never been able to get it back. These security breaches DO happen. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to turn on Two Factor authentication. Sounds complicated? Its not. It basically means that there are two passwords required to get into your account instead of the usual one... there is the normal password that you usually use, plus a second one that changes every 30 seconds or so. Even if the bad guys were to get your...

The following press release  was written by Dr Jason Zagami, president of the ACCE, in response to the recent review of the Australian Curriculum. This review, undertaken by Ken Wiltshire and Kevin Donnelly on behalf of the Liberal government makes a number of recommendations that are hard to understand in their inconsistency and lack of vision. Here is Jason's press release. Please spread it around. For immediate release Australian Council for Computers in Education has deep concerns with inconsistent support for school computing in the government's response to the Review of the Australian Curriculum ACCE has considered the Review of the Australian Curriculum Report and Supplementary Material, and is deeply concerned by some of the recommendations being considered by the government in the Initial Australian Government Response. While ACCE acknowledges concern about a perceived overcrowding of the primary curriculum, there are many ways to address this other than a return to ...

Bless me father, for I’m about to commit an act of heresy. Whenever I say what I’m about to say, I get a reaction that ranges from raised eyebrows to outright hostility and arguments. But I’ll say it anyway. I don’t like the hashtag chat format on Twitter. And I don’t like the timed presentation format used for Teachmeets. There. I said it. Maybe I’m just becoming a cranky old man as I get older, but I don’t like either of these formats and for much the same reason. I find they dumb down the conversation. I know that both of these formats are very popular at the moment, and I know that many people seem to like them. But I just can’t warm to them, and I wanted to write this post to explain why. Feel free to condemn me in the comments. Let’s start with Twitter hashtag chats. That’s where you pick an abbreviation, slap a hashtag in front of it, set aside an hour or so, and off you go. Instant “conversation”. I know this form of conversation on Twitter is insanely popular right now, but I ...

In 2013 Google released Hummingbird, perhaps the most significant update to their search algorithm since the search engine launched. From the Search Engine Land blog, here's how they describe it... "On September 26, Google announced a new algorithm impacting more than 90 percent of searches worldwide. They called it Hummingbird. Google’s Amit Singhal later said it was perhaps the largest change to the algorithm since he joined the company back in 2001. Hummingbird allows the Google search engine to better do its job through an improvement in semantic search. As conversational search becomes the norm, Hummingbird lends understanding to the intent and contextual meaning of terms used in a query." http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-the-keyword-what-you-need-to-know-to-stay-ahead-175531  In plain English, this means that the conventional wisdom of the way we teach search - identifying important keywords, eliminating unnecessary terms, removing the conversational p...

After a successful iPad trial at school last year, the teachers all agreed it was working really well.  So this year we asked our year 5 and 6 students to bring an iPad to school and I've been working with the teachers and students in those classes to help ensure we get the most from this arrangement. I think it's been working really well; the kids have been incredibly responsible and have been producing some really interesting work with them. I had an email from a Year 5 parent a few weeks ago asking some questions about the iPad program, in particular about required apps, the rules and expectations for their use, the use of games (including one called Goldrush that she was concerned about), impacts on socialisation, responsibilities for backing up data, etc. In particular, this parent had a few concerns about using the iPad for playing games versus using it a a learning tool. I wrote a fairly long and detailed email in reply, and I'm republishing it here (anonymised of co...

Some of you might have seen that I've been working on a daily blogging project this year called My Daily Create. You can visit it at www.mydailycreate.com (or click the link in the menu bar above). The basic idea is that I'm attempting to create something every day of the year during 2014. It could be music, a video, a drawing, a photo or a poem. It could be something practical and usable, or something retinal and frivolous. It doesn't matter what it is, I just plan to make something each day. So far it's going pretty well and I haven't missed a single day yet. Earlier this week I presented a keynote at the EduTECH conference in Brisbane on the topic of creativity at the invitation of the organisers. I find creativity an interesting topic to talk about, but it's usually one of those things that's easy to talk about in general terms but much harder to talk about specifically. I felt even more challenged by it because several of the other speakers were also t...

It's interesting that as you get older you become increasingly aware of your own influences. Aside from my parents and my direct family, who obviously had a major influence on my life, there are only handful of people whose ideas, thoughts and perspectives about the world have been so influential, so pervasive, so far reaching, that I can honestly say they have shaped the person I have become. We all have them. They are the people you would invite to your ultimate fantasy dinner party. The ones who are so interesting, so fascinating in their ideas and the way they think about things, that you would give anything to spend time talking with them, learning from them and being in awe of them. I only have a few people in that category, but one is Marcel Duchamp. For most people reading this, your reaction is probably "Marcel who?" I don't want to turn this into a history lesson, so if you want to know more about Duchamp, you can no doubt look him up . It's quite like...

I had the chance to take one of our Year 6 classes this morning while their teacher was away. This class is part of our BYOD iPad program where every student brings their own iPad.  Borrowing the Slam idea from the Google Summits, I got them to do an App Slam. Every student was given an opportunity to voluntarily participate, and they had 2 minutes to share an app, game, tool, tip, etc with the rest of the class. I said it could be anything at all, just something that they enjoyed using and would like to share with the class. I was amazed at just how eager they were to do this, and they were figuratively falling over themselves to add their name to the list of presenters. As they each did their slam (which of course they had to end by shouting the word Slam!) I added their name and the thing they demoed to a Google Form. After the last student presented I simply published the form, gave them the short URL to access it and let them vote for their 5 favourite slam...

I was asked by a colleague in another school the other day if I could give her a snapshot into what I actually do, and what the role of an ICT Integrator actually looks like (from my perspective anyway). Apparently she wants to talk to her school leaders about having an integrator on their staff and was trying to get an idea of what the role would entail from someone who does it. Whenever people I meet ask me what I do, they have often never heard the term "ICT Integrator". It's another one of those jobs that didn't exist when most of us were in school. We say all the time that we should be preparing our students for jobs that don't yet exist, and this role is a good example of that. I have a couple of  simple "elevator pitch" descriptions that I often use to tell people what my job involves... "I look at the stuff kids are supposed to learn in school and help teachers figure out where technology can help make that learning richer and more meaning...

Our school has a subscription to a  website called the Study Skills Handbook  which offers study tips to senior students. I'm sure it's a valuable resource; so valuable in fact that it's behind a $1200/year paywall that requires a login password in order to access it. What a bargain. I'm sure those tips wouldn't be found anywhere else on  the Internet for free at all. Anyway, I got an email from someone at school today promoting this resource, and amongst the several study tips it suggested, it listed this one... 3. DISCOVER OTHER RESOURCES: You could also ask your local librarian for any additional direction on where to look for resource material for your assignment. Librarians are often your best source of information. They know how to help people access relevant and appropriate information, in books, the Internet or computer based references. One of the challenging aspects of Internet based searches for school students is the complexity, language and pur...

At my school, PLC Sydney, we just launched a BYO iPad program for our Year 5 and 6 students. This followed on from a fairly successful trial of iPads last year and the subsequent decision that we wanted our upper primary kids to have full time access to this technology. We initially looked at the idea of the school providing and managing the iPads, but in talking to the students it turned out that a very large percentage of them already owned iPads, so it didn't seem to make much sense to spend a whole lot of money providing something that most of them already had. The general feeling from the parents was supportive of the BYO idea and the kids were keen of course. So this week we officially launched the BYO program. We invited all the parents and students to come to an information night where we explained exactly how we wanted things to work, and far more importantly, why we felt this was the right move to be making. The response from parents was very positive, although a few were...

Yesterday, I ran an all day iPad workshop for the teachers at my school. There were two things that were a bit unusual about it. One is that it was an all day event. Usually in a school - or at least in my school - it's hard finding time for staff professional learning that allows for any real immersion and play. The second unusual thing is that it was held on a Saturday.  (And not just any Saturday, but the Saturday of the first week back after the Summer break!) No coincidentally, the fact that it was a Saturday was the whole reason we were able to get that extended period of time for learning. When I offered it to our staff (as an entirely optional event for anyone that was interested in coming along) I thought maybe we'd get 3 or 4 teachers show up. Surprisingly, we had 25. Some even brought their children and spouses along. They didn't get paid for attending, and there was no pressure to be there. But 25 turned up. I was impressed. We had a fun day of learning what iPa...

Predicting the future is challenging. I remember reading Nicholas Negroponte's book Being Digital many years ago, and it's been amazing to see so many of his predictions come to pass. In particular, I remember reading about his "trading places" idea, or what become known as the "Negroponte Switch". It's basically the idea that we used to have static devices that don't move, like televisions, getting their signal delivered wirelessly through the air, while other devices that should be mobile, like telephones, required the use of cables in order to connect. The "Switch", predicted by Negroponte back in the 1980s, would be that telephones would one day get their signal wirelessly and televisions would get theirs via cables.  It took about 20 years for that to happen, but happen it certainly did.  Looking back now, if you understood the technologies that brought the changes, the signs were probably there and it made sense but it took someone l...

The following is a letter I wrote a couple of months ago to John Kouimanos, the head of Teachers Mutual Bank , just prior to the last AGM. My annoyance ( to put it mildly) is explained in the letter. To their credit, I did receive a communication back from the Bank about the letter, and I was going to leave it at that. But today I found out that this nonsense is still endemic to the way TMB thinks... They are making a promo video and have asked for members to take part in it... except any members that don't teach in the public system of course.  That really pissed me off, so I decided to publish the letter here on my blog.  I'd be interested in your thoughts in the comments. Dear John, I’m writing to express my profound disappointment at Teachers Mutual Bank’s continuing lack of will to create a fair and equitable entry point for ALL teachers to become members. I raised this concern two years ago at the Annual General Meeting, although I understand that many other me...

I'm not a big fan of Christopher Pyne. As far as I'm concerned, our new federal education minister has shown himself to be inept and completely out of his depth in his current portfolio. He continually implies that Australia's teachers are less competent than they should be and that our students are not receiving a proper education. The amount of political mudslinging every time he opens his mouth is just an embarrassment to any thinking person. In his interviews with that other redneck extremist lunatic, Alan Jones on 2GB, the two of them make complete asses of themselves as they bask in idiotic, inflammatory statements about Australian teachers. The thing that really ticks me off about Pyne is this phrase he continually uses... "back to basics".  In adopting this phrase he poo-poos "modern teaching methods" which he considers airy-fairy, and talks about how we need to get back to a direct instruction model where students listen to a teacher talk at the...

I was recently in Hong Kong for the excellent 21st Century Learning conference, where I had the very great pleasure of running some hands-on workshops in Google stuff, and also giving the closing keynote. As I mention at  the start of this talk, it was quite intimidating to think that I could say anything worth hearing after an amazing couple of days of learning from so many other amazing educators. (Having people like Stephen Heppell and Gary Stager in the audience didn't make it any less intimidating either) I actually didn't even realise these talks were being recorded so when I spotted this on Twitter today it came as a bit of a surprise. For what it's worth, here is a video of my talk, called Babies and Bathwater. http://youtu.be/d127FRlxVuY I go to quite a few conferences, and I'm always a little surprised at how few of them bother to video the presentations. Given the amount of time and energy that conference organisers put into running these events, you'd th...

As December 2013 came to an end I was considering doing another one of those 365 Day Photo Project, where you take a photo every day for a year. I've done these before, one very successfully where I actually did take and post a new photo every day for a year, and two other attempts that started well but eventually ran out of steam. Being disciplined is hard, at least, it is for me. These projects where you promise yourself that you will do something every day for a year are not easy. You miss a day here or there and then conclude that there's no point carrying on with it.  In truth, even if you only took 150 photos out of the 365 you're supposed to, you'd still have 150 photos! Not to mention a whole lot more practice as a photographer. This year I wanted to do something, but was looking for something a bit different to just taking photos. So I asked for some suggestions on Twitter and got a bunch of interesting ideas back. Taking these suggestions as a whole, I thought...