Chris Betcher

YouTube has been around for quite a while now, and apparently I've been part of its history for much of that time. The domain, youtube.com , was registered in February 2005 and I joined YouTube just over a year later in May 2006. I uploaded my first video in August 2006. So I guess that makes me an early adopter? Google bought YouTube in October 2006 for USD$1.65 Billion. I recall that the tech press was stunned by the purchase price at the time, as that seemed like a ridiculous amount of money. Of course, by the silly standards of some tech purchases since then (like Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp for $19 Billion, for example) YouTube was quite a bargain. YouTube mainly makes money by showing ads, although I must admit I spend pretty much all my YouTube time in Google for Education accounts where there are no ads, or in my personal Gmail account where I pay for YouTube Red, which again, has no ads. So I still get a little surprised when I watch YouTube on someone else's...

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...

One of the most common questions I get asked by teachers is how to include video in their online resources. Whether it's including video clips in Moodle or embedding a video into a wiki or blog, the use of video can be a powerful tool for helping students learn. As someone once said to me "Give me 3 minutes and the right piece of video, and I can teach you almost anything". Working with video has a reputation for being complicated. I remember doing an online video project about 13 years ago with a school in Japan and we were literally air-mailing VHS cassettes to each other each because it was the "simplest" way to get the job done. Indeed, it's true that even just a few years ago, working with video was still relatively difficult... the file sizes are huge, the editing process can be complex, and storing video files for playback on the web has traditionally involved a bewildering array of codecs and other technical-sounding choices. It's all too much fo...

If you like, you can skip right to the bottom of this post and just watch the video, but I always find the story behind the story kind of interesting. So I thought you  might like to know a little bit about how and why this video was made. It started out with a simple tweet from my buddy Kim Sivick in Philadelphia.  It started a conversation that went something like this... Do I know anyone who might make a quick Welcome to Australia video? I sure do. And besides, I owe Kim a favour. When I was running blogging workshops with our staff last year I was hoping to tap into the experiences of some very blog-savvy educators by getting them to Skype in and talk to our teachers about the realities and the practicalities of using blogs in the classroom. When I asked for volunteers on Twitter (where else?) Kim Sivick  was one of those who generously responded and agreed to spend time talking with us to share her expertise. I also got to meet Kim in person at ISTE in Philadelphia ...

There was an interesting article in The Age newspaper the other day titled  Teachers Online eLearning Mocking Fears , which was basically about some tensions being felt at some Australian universities between students who were asking (or demanding) that lectures be recorded and placed online , versus lecturers who were resisting this idea because they feared that students would capture, remix and republish their mistakes using social media.  The lecturers in question did not want their "mistakes" being made public to the world.  You can read the whole article for yourself. But to me, it begs the following line of reasoning... IF the nature of a "lecture" is simply the delivery of information... AND the students want to be able to watch a recording of the "lecture" at their leisure... AND lecturers are concerned about producing a "perfect", mistake-free lecture... THEN why don't lecturers just create a prerecorded version of the lecture, wit...

This is my application video for the Sydney Google Teacher Academy.  Google have run a number of these events for teachers in the USA, but this is the first one to be held in Australia (and I thought I read somewhere it was also the first to be run outside the US, but I could be wrong about that). Regardless, I have wanted to attend a GTA for a long time now, and even contemplated going to the States to attend one.  As you can imagine, I was pretty excited to hear that it was coming to Sydney. Part of the requirement for the application is to make an original one minute video based on either of the following topics: " Motivation and Learning " OR " Classroom Innovation ".  They said to try and be creative. The video is designed to demonstrate your technical ability, your resourcefulness, your commitment, and your unique personality and interests.  My first thought was "What? All in the same minute?"  Seriously, minute-long videos are hard to make! No doubt...