Chris Betcher

The things you discover by accident... I was sitting at home watching late night TV tonight and there wasn't much on that I thought was interesting, so I started flipping channels. We don't have cable or satellite, just free-to-air TV, and to be honest I usually just stick to the handful of "standard" channels - 7, 9, 10, ABC and SBS. Since we got a digital TV, it's been nice to get the High Def versions of these channels, but the other thing about free-to-air digital is that it also gives you a whole lot more free channels outside the standard ones. Flipping through, I discovered a new channel I'd never seen before - Teacher TV. It had an interview with an Australian teacher talking about literacy strategies and how to give kids opportunities to express themselves in other ways than just traditional writing activities. She was talking about how important it was to offer ways to create and express, not just pass tests. This got my attention... I had no i...

We hear a lot about the notion of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, a concept originally suggested by Marc Prensky in a paper by the same name .  It makes a presumption that those born after the widespread introduction of digital technologies are somehow out of step with the world of technology, while those who were born and raised in the digital age are naturally able to function within it.  Prensky contends that these younger folk - the "natives" - are born into a technology rich environment and are therefore akin to those who grow up natively speaking a given language, immersed in its use and able to converse fluently with it, while the "immigrants" are like those who come to a foreign land and need to learn to speak a whole new language. He argues that the immigrants will always have a digital "accent", and therefore their non-native heritage will always be conspicuously obvious. To be a native implies that you are not only comfortable, but know...

There is a Twitter phishing scam going around at the moment that I'm unhappy to say I fell right into. This quick post is just a warning to anyone who reads it to hopefully help them not do the same thing. I'd been off the grid for a few days so I hadn't heard the news about this scam, but it's been floating through the Interwebs for 2 days apparently. It did strike me as odd when i clicked on it that I had to relog in to Twitter, but I'd been playing with different browsers so the fact that it was asking me for a password didn't seem all that unusual. Of course, I should have taken more notice of the URL that was in the address bar, but I was too late. I got a direct tweet from John Pearce that said... "fixed it.. hehe here is that blog i wanted to show you http://twitterblogs.access-logins.com/login" I know John. I trust John. So I clicked it. It asked for a password, which as I mentioned, was not unusual considering I was trying a new browser (...

I'm in a hotel in Montreal, Quebec at the moment, just about to leave to spend the day with Sharon Peters at her school. But before I leave I wanted to share this little note that was left in the hotel room. "To our guests, Because this hotel is a human institution to serve people, and not solely a money making organisation, we hope that god will grant you peace and rest while you are under our roof. May this room and hotel be your second home. May those you love be near you in thoughts and dreams. Even though we may not get to know you, we hope that you will be comfortable and happy as if you were in your own home. May the business that brought you our way prosper. May every call you make and every message you receive add to your joy, and when you leave, may your journey be safe. We are all travelers. From birth to death, we travel between the eternities. May these days be pleasant for you, profitable to society, helpful for those you meet, and a joy to those who know and ...

Yes, it's meme time again.  A meme , according to wikipedia, "comprises a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices; such units or elements transmit from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena."  In other words, it's a way to help spread a culture. The blogosphere occasionally sends these memes around as a way to spread this culture of online community... sort of like a "getting to know you" exercise that you might do with students on the first day of class.  A topic is chosen, people respond to it and then pass the meme along to others to contribute to.  By tagging others like this, the meme spreads quickly. I was tagged a couple of days ago in a meme called 7 Things You Don't Need To Know About Me, by a PE teacher in Victoria named Jarrod Robinson , or mrrobbo to those that know him.  He was tagged by Rodd Lucier from Canada, otherwise known as thecleversheep .  (I find it interesting that Rodd...

I was just doing a tidy-up of my hard drive and I found this video that I'd almost forgotten about, so I thought I'd put it up on YouTube so I know where to find it in future. Back in 2006, I spent a yea r teaching in Oakville, Canada, as part of a teaching exchange.  I really enjoyed the whole experience, which was life-changing in many ways.  In fact, I'm back in Toronto at the moment and despite the -24 degree temperatures this really is like my second home. When you go on a teaching exchange you act as somewhat of an ambassador for your country, taking whatever opportunities you can to share some of the culture of your own country with the locals.  So one day, I decided to let my Grade 9 BTT101 class experience the classic Australian taste of Vegemite .  Most Aussie kids grow up with Vegemite , a yeast based spread that usually goes on toast, crumpets and crackers.  Seeing the reaction of non-Aussies makes me realise that it's somewhat of an acquired taste, but it...

It seems so easy to make global connections these days. Tools like Twitter , Skype , podcasts, blogs and even good old fashioned email make it easy to build connections with others. But they also make it easy to overlook the fact that behind each tweet, IM or email there are real people. Although the online world has made us the most connected we have ever been, at the same time the sometimes faceless, disembodied nature of it can also allow us to be quite disconnected if we let it. One of the things I've really enjoyed doing over the last couple of years is to take every opportunity to make real connections with the people behind the avatars. I remember the first time I bumped into Judy O'Connell at a meeting in Sydney... although I knew of HeyJude and had read her blog for a while there was still this sense of "wow... so you ARE real!" when I finally met her. Since then, I try to make a point of meeting other members of my online world in the real world wheneve...

I take a class of kids with some pretty severe learning difficulties once a week to do some computer stuff with them.  A few weeks ago, one of the girls finished her work early and since there was only a few minutes till the bell she asked if she could play Tetris online .  A moment later when I walked by she was playing the game and she was totally awesome at it!  I mean, I was blown away at just how fast and accurate she was...  this is from a student that usually really struggles with many other intellectual tasks. Tetris, although based on a simple concept, is a game that requires a good sense of spatial awareness, timing and multitasking to play well... and this girl was playing really well! I called her regular teacher over and pointed out how good this girl was at the game.  Her teacher had never actually played Tetris before and wasn't quite sure how the game worked, so I asked the student to give her teacher a lesson in how to play it.  It was gre...

One of the many things that continually impresses me about my current school is how consistently we try to expose our students to big thinking and authentic, real-world experience.  It shows in lots of ways, from our focus on employing teachers and support staff that are passionate and committed to being the very best in their fields, to the way we manage to set the bar of expectation as high as possible for our kids.  Many studies confirm that the best way to get kids to excel is to give them great teachers who have high standards and expectations, who know their stuff, who model expertise and passion, and who create situations for our students to shine. This video, which I recorded on my Nokia N95, is the world premiere performance of a piece of music commissioned especially for the school and written by Australian composer Paul Jarman .  It was performed by our students and staff in the main concert hall at the Sydney Opera House. Being new to the school this year, it...

The K12 Online Conference is well and truly over for another year (well, in as much as a virtual, permanently archived conference can ever be "over"), but I thought I'd re-post this presentation I made for it.  It's called I Like Delicious Things and looks at how tagging works in systems like Flickr and Delicious , and how tags can accumulate into complete systems of organisation called folksonomies. I know it's already online at the K12 Online website, but I recently uploaded a slightly bigger, higher res version to Vimeo .  I'm guessing that there are still lots of people who never saw this on the original K12 Online site, so here it is again if you're interested... I Like Delicious Things from Chris Betcher on Vimeo .