Chris Betcher

In these next few posts, I'm going to try and describe some of the projects we've been doing at school lately.  My role at PLC Sydney is ICT Integrator, and I very much see it as a role where I support, advise and consult with our classroom teachers about ways to enrich their lessons with technology. It's a hard line to walk sometimes, since it often forces me to cross that line between giving advice on how to use the technology and giving advice on how to teach. The nature of digital technology makes it a really good fit with the general principles of quality teaching practice... and sometimes that fit is so good that I find it difficult to suggest ways to use technology without also suggesting that the underlying pedagogy should shift to match it.  Fortunately, I work in a school where most of our teaching staff are willing to take such suggestions on board, be it simply just regarding the use of technology, or to actually shift they way they approach the job of teaching....

The school at which I teach, PLC Sydney , was in the news this morning regarding a recent assessment task conducted by one of our Year 9 English classes. The article from the Sydney Morning Herald talks about how this class is pushing the "open book exam" concept into allowing students to use resources that take them beyond the boundaries of the classroom and enable them to draw on outside sources - the web, other books, their own personal networks - using whatever tools they choose - mobile phones, computers, iPods, PDAs, etc - in order to be assessed on their learning. I actually had a meeting with their teacher, Deirdre Coleman, about this idea the other day and we discussed at length some of the pros and cons, what sort of tasks were best suited to this approach, where the boundaries lay between cheating and resourcefulness and so on. While the SMH article is mostly accurate in its reporting, some of the value judgments that appear from reading between the lines are a...

In previous posts , I've mentioned how nice it is to occasionally convert some of our online connections into real ones.  This week I had the opportunity to again meet up with someone I'd only ever know through the blogosphere. Susan Sedro is a teacher at the Singapore American School where she does ICT support for years 3, 4 and 5.  The first time I "met" her was during a group Skype call back in September last year and since that time we have read each other's blogs, chatted occasionally on Skype and, along with Kim Cofino , even recorded an episode of Virtual Staffroom together. I'd noticed that Susan was asking some very Aussie-centric questions on Twitter a while back, wanting to know the best places to go snorkelling on the Barrier Reef, etc, so I assumed she might be planning a trip down here.  We got in contact and I said if she was in Australia to give me a yell and we'd catch up.  Well, she yelled and we caught up. So last Wednesday night, Lind...