Chris Betcher

So many times in schools I've heard people defend their choice of software for students by trotting out the old "industry standard" argument. They reason that schools should have their students using certain pieces of software because "it's what the industry uses". Aside from the fact that most of the people making these claims are often career teachers who have never worked in an industry outside of education, they often also neglect to condider that not all industries are the same. There is often a bizarre kind of expectation that all students will end up working in the finance/legal world of a bank or a lawyer's office, or in a narrowly defined "creative industry", both places where, yes it's true, you will sometimes find an incumbent piece of software that has been in use there since God was a boy. If I may tell a couple of stories to make a point… Story 1 When I was still teaching (computing subjects) one of the tasks I would get my ...

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are driving a ton of innovation in computing at the moment. AI is showing up in nearly every major technology, and seem to give our machines the impression that they are almost human, almost intelligent. But remember it's called Artificial Intelligence for a reason - it's artificial. While these technologies might seem mysterious and scary, they are like most things in technology - easy to understand if you have a basic idea of what's going on. This video aims to unpack the core idea behind Machine Learning - that if we can provide a machine with enough examples of something then it will eventually be able to recognise and draw conclusions for itself. Links to things mentioned in this video Quick, Draw! AutoDraw Teachable Machine Google's AI Experiments Have fun exploring! If you end up making your own experiments in the Teachable Machine, please leave a link in the comments below!

I was cleaning out a drawer in my home office this morning and found this collection of old USB memory sticks dating back quite a few years. Remember those days when you thought you were so cool because you had this little storage drive full of all your stuff in your pocket? I recall working in a school back in those days where we actually mandated that every student had to have a "USB"*, such was the apparent importance of these things. The intention was for students to keep their personal data safe and secure, but we used to constantly find them left behind in the USB ports of the classroom computers after a lesson. Or they would sometimes mysteriously just stop working. Or the kids would lose them. USBs may have been cool, portable and handy, but they were about the most insecure method for managing data I can think of. *(Side note: Calling them simply a "USB" seems stupid to me, because USB - or Universal Serial Bus - is a data interface standard, not a name fo...

It seems that yesterday's post where I listed some of my favourite extensions was quite well received, as I had a number of people contact me to say they found it useful. So I thought I'd add a Part 2 list with a few more. Remember, there are literally thousands of amazing extensions available in the Chrome Webstore, so do take the time to have a browse. In the meantime, here are a few more, again in no particular order... PixelBlock - Sending an email which includes a graphic is a technique that some companies use to track whether you open their email or not. Sometimes they do this sneaky thing where they hide an invisible single pixel in an email - you can't see it, but it helps them track you. PixelBlock does exactly what it says, and blocks that invisible pixel. Google Calendar - Gives you a nice glanceable preview of your Google Calendar, from any webpage, without needing to open your actual Google Calendar. But if you do want to open your actual Google Calendar, ...

I recently gave this keynote talk at the EdTechTeam Cape Town Summit, titled "Imagine the Possibilities". I've actually given this talk a number of times at Summits and other events all over the world, and this is likely the last time I'll use it, so I'm posting it here just for posterity.

I've been asked to present a keynote and workshop at the National Education Summit in Melbourne in August. The organisers of the event wanted to do an interview and ask a few questions as a way of promoting the event, which I did via email. This has been published elsewhere, but I thought I'd crosspost it here for the record. 1. What are some of the important messages for teachers in your presentation ‘The Track of the Storm’ at the National Education Summit in Melbourne? The title "Track of the Storm" was inspired by Part 3 of Charles Dickens' novel, "A Tale of Two Cities". The book opens with the famous lines ... It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we...

March is month three of my Beyond Belief project, and I was sitting at home debating which religion I should check out this month. As if by some kind of divine intervention, my doorbell rang and I answered it to find two ladies standing there. It’s as though religions are now being delivered to my door, like some kind of divine Deliveroo! They introduced themselves as Sandra and Beverley., and they thrust a brochure into my hands and asked if I knew about Jehovah’s plan for me.  I said I didn’t, and that I was a confirmed atheist, but that I was doing a project this year to learn about 12 different religions in 12 months. I suggested that they should tell me all about theirs, which turned out to be the Jehovah’s Witnesses . They were a little taken aback (in a good way) at the idea of someone trying a different religion each month and said they wished more people could be more open minded about religion. We stood at the door for quite a while discussing what the Jehovah’s Witnesse...

This is part two of my Beyond Belief project, where every month during 2019 I plan to experience a different religion that I know nothing about. This month its Sikhism . I have to admit, this one I knew absolutely nothing about. There is a large temple-looking place not far from where I live so I dropped in the other day to see what it was about. Turns out it is a gurdwara, which is a temple for Sikhs. The only thing I really knew about Sikhs was that they typically come from Northern India and they wear turbans (at least the men do). I'd never really thought that being Sikh was a stand-alone religion, and just assumed it was some offshoot of Hinduism. That's definitely not the case. When I dropped into the gurdwara to take a look, there was a guy with a beard and turban near the entrance measuring up a noticeboard, so I approached and explained that I am trying a different religion every month this year. He put down his measuring tape, then spent the next 90 minutes showi...

Here we go with part one of my Beyond Belief Project , where I plan to experience and learn about a different religion every month for all of 2019. I'm a little late posting this one, as it was for January, but better late than never. I spent nearly five week in Bali over the December/January period, so Balinese Hinduism seems like an obvious place to start. As part of Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country, Bali is a religious outlier with nearly 85% of the island's population identifying as Hindu. Its version of Hinduism is a little different to that traditionally found in India, which is polytheistic (believing in many gods), and it has quite a different feel to the other Muslim parts of Indonesia. Balinese Hinduism claims to be monotheistic, with only one god, although it seems to me that in practice this is not always the case, based on so many different statues I saw everywhere. There were statues of Vishnu and Ganesha and many, many others that I didn't recognis...

For many years, we had a beautiful Golden retriever named Buzz.  He was a really lovely dog. We got him through Golden Retriever Rescue NSW and he was pretty special to us. He eventually  became quite old and unwell, and we had to put him down last year just before Christmas. I was a little surprised today when I saw an article on a French news site about a Golden Retriever . It was a fairly sad story of a Golden who went to the vet for an operation and was accidentally euthanised. Whilst it was a sad story that brought back some painful memories of the night we lost our Golden boy, I was a little surprised that the photo being used was one of my own, taken of Buzz a few years ago. Because I believe in sharing as a default, I published the photo on Flickr under a Creative Commons BY SA licence, as nearly all of my photos are. So this French news site has every right to use my photo as long as they respect the CC guidelines under which I published it, namely the BY (Attribution...

It seems like it wasn't that long ago that the music industry was still resisting any attempt at allowing consumers to access music in any way other that buying CDs. So many other industries have been disrupted by digital technology, and while a few notable ones stuck doggedly to their "principles" until they literally vanished (I'm looking at you Kodak and Blockbuster), most industries either embraced the disruption or eventually waved the white flag and gave in. One of the industries that probably should have most logically embraced the opportunities of being digital was the music business. After all, with a product that is essentially just a collection of digital bits, the decision to move those bits directly to consumers via the Internet should have been a no brainer. Yet the record company cartels fought the inevitable digital transition for years.  Rarely have I seen such a group of people with so little vision for the future be so obstinate about protecting the...

As many of you know, my current role is working with EdTechTeam in Australia and New Zealand. It's a role I enjoy and I know we make a difference to many teachers both here in ANZ and globally. As a team of educators working in the field of ed ucational tech nology, I have always thought the name " EdTechTeam " is a good one.  It seems clear and unambiguous and I feel like it describes who we are and what we do. So one thing that has always puzzled me is the way people consistently get our company name wrong. We commonly get called just "Edtech", "Ed Tech", and even "Edutech", which is something entirely different. We sometimes get "EdTech team" or "Ed tech team", both of which are close, but no cigar. Say it with me. EdTechTeam . I have lost track of the number of times I have received emails referring to us as Edtech, or been introduced as Chris from Edtech, and while I try to politely correct the error, I truly am as...

I was turned onto this rather cool new tool that I think has a ton of great potential in the classroom. It's called Flipgrid . It's a way to collect short video responses to a prompt. As well as looking great, it works on mobile (with the Flipgrid app), doesn't require a login, and is super simple to use! I've embedded a link to an example. Just click the container below and it will take you to a topic page. Then just click the big green plus button to start recording (and you'll probably also need to click "allow" to give permission to your camera). Then just record your message, add your name and a poster frame, then submit it. As more people submit theirs you can revisit the site to see what they add. Give it a go! After you click the button, say who you are, where you're from, what you teach, and how you might use this with your students. You have 60 seconds! Go! The direct link to the topic page is  https://flipgrid.com/2a35ea The administrator of...

I was recently asked to be a guest on the Be Smart On Air podcast by Niilo Alhovaara. Niilo is a fan of The Google Educast and was keen to catch up to talk about podcasting, technology in education, and the good old days of the internet. I thoughts I'd cross post the recording here, because, well, that's just what the Internet does. You can Tweet Niilo at  @niiloa  and check out his other interviews on  his YouTube Channel .

I was asked via email recently about Chromebooks and whether I thought they were a good choice for schools. Here is my email response, posted here for anyone that might be interested in reading it... --- I'll start by suggesting that any resistance you get on Chromebooks from tech and IT staff will be made for reasons that have nothing to do with pedagogy. I think you could argue that by almost any relevant measure Chromebooks are CLEARLY a better choice for schools. (which is why they are now the number 1 device in US schools) They are easier to deploy and manage, more secure, more robust, and less expensive. They do everything that a student would need them to do. They integrate directly with Google Apps for Education and are easily shared between students in ways that other devices are not.  They boot fast (under 7 seconds), save work automatically, are completely immune to viruses, and are fast to use. ChromeOS does not slow down over time like other operating systems, and to c...

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 ...

I've been doing some work recently with a school that's using iPads with their kids, and was asked to give a talk on the topic "The place of iPads in teaching and learning". This post is just a bit of thinking out loud about that question. Let me start by saying that I think the iPad is an amazing piece of technology. I dispute the common claim about iPads just being "consumption devices". That's a load of nonsense. Used wisely, iPads open up incredible opportunities for creativity. This point was driven home during my recent 365 project, The Daily Create , where I made a creative "thing" every day during 2014. Although this project wasn't specifically based on using an iPad, the truth is that at least 80% of what I came up with over the course of the year was made on an iPad. Whether it was photo editing, making graphics, editing movies, composing music, building animations and 3D objects, or even just writing, the iPad was a perfectly cre...

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...