Chris Betcher

Imagine you could visit any place in the world. Where would you go? What would you like to see? What would you hope to experience? Imagine you are learning about India. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to visit the Taj Mahal and explore its wonders? What if your geography class is learning about coral reefs and could go diving in the Maldives or Hanauma Bay or the Great Barrier Reef to see what it’s like there. What would it be like to visit the South Pole, or Niagara Falls or the Palace of Versailles? There are so many amazing things to see and learn about in our world. While we would love to take our students on excursions to learn about the things they can’t experience at school, there are obviously many places that are simply too far away, too expensive, too dangerous or too impractical to visit. Meet Expeditions . Expeditions is a new tool in development from Google that uses the StreetView technology found in Google Maps to take students on virtual field trips to all sorts of exotic and ...

My friend  and prolific blogger Steve Wheeler issued an interesting blogging challenge the other day called A Twisted Pair . He proposed taking two different people with no apparent connection and writing a post about learning that somehow connects the two, which I thought was an interesting idea. Steve proposed a few possible pairs of names on his post to get our ideas started, and although there were many pairings that intrigued me, two that really stood out were both people who have always inspired me - Pablo Picasso and Sir Tim Berners-Lee .  So here goes... There are probably numerous ideas to explore in terms of how the concepts of learning are embodied by these two people. I'll try to begin with the obvious and then see if we can find other connections. Let's start with Picasso. Picasso was an incredibly prolific Spanish artist with a body of work that is profoundly extensive. Over the years his work moved through multiple phase...

During the month of October I'll be riding my bike to help raise money to support childrens' cancer research. It's all part of the Great Cycle Challenge , raising funds for the Children's Medical Research Institute , one of the major research bodies aimed at finding a cure for cancer. I think it's a worthy cause. So many people I know have been affected by cancer. We desperately need to find the solution to this awful disease and it can only be done with research, and research costs money. I've committed to ride 250km this month to raise $1000 for CMRI. So far people have been very generous and the fundraising has gone pretty well so I might revise that goal. I think the 250km will be enough of a challenge, but it would be nice to raise more money. If you'd like to support this great cause, you can head over to my fundraising page at  https://greatcyclechallenge.com.au/Riders/ChrisBetcher and donate whatever you feel works for you. And on behalf of the kid...