Chris Betcher

If you’re not blogging in this day and age, are you at a disadvantage? I can see a day in the not too distant future (if it's not already here) where your "digital footprint" will carry far more weight than anything you might include in a resume or CV. It's perhaps not so relevant (yet) in the public education sector where the criteria for employment is not always  based solely on a meritocracy, but in the independent sector there is a definite awareness of an individual's digital footprint as a way to gauge their involvement, passion, engagement and understanding of their chosen field. It may not yet be happening in the public sector because of unionisation and the existing promotional structures in place, but in the outside world where people are employed, promoted and recognised by their actual contributions and not just by the amount of time they have been in a given role, the notion of knowing about an individual because of the trail of ideas they leave behin...

With millions of Twitter messages floating through the Twittersphere each day, you can use the search tool at http://search.twitter.com to find references to ANY word that gets uttered there. So a search for the word "dog" will find every tweet that contains the word dog, and so on. You can even search for your own twittername and see any time your name is referenced online. Many companies now use this search feature to find out whenever anyone mentions their products or services on Twitter. The search tool for Twitter is really quite powerful, and can also be used to generate RSS feeds that can then be embedded into other pages and services. There is some awesome potential there. However, Twitter's ability to search for words being mentioned out there becomes less useful when you search for a really common word, since the search results will invariably turn up lots of stuff you probably don't want. When you're attending a conference for example, you could fi...

The Internet has made it easier than ever to find virtually any digital resource we might want. The ability to locate, download and use a piece of music, a passage of text, a video or a photo for our own use is so trivially easy to do that in the excitement of knowing we CAN do it, we sometimes overlook the question of whether we SHOULD do it.  The idea of the Internet as a place where things are freely shared has become so much a part of our thinking that we sometimes believe we have a right to reuse whatever resources we happen to find online. One of the casualties of this cavalier approach to sharing can be a loss of respect for the intellectual property of others. In a world where everything appears to be so freely available, it is easy to overlook the fact that someone, somewhere, owns these resources.  We tend to rationalise our use of them, reasoning that if people put them on the Internet they must be willing to share them.  And that’s not always true.  Some ...

One of the unavoidable buzzwords of Web 2.0 is the term “tag”. Everywhere you look online you come across the term, and everything from photos to news articles to blogposts are getting “tagged”. But what exactly are “tags” and why are they such a big deal these days? To understand the importance of tagging, first let’s consider the problem that tagging sets out to solve. There was a time when everything in our lives existed only in the physical world. Books sat on shelves. Photos were in photo albums. Music was stored on CDs. Life was simple. If you wanted to find that photo of your sister-in-law Wendy wearing a silly hat at last year’s family Christmas party you simply went to the family photo album and flicked through the pages till you found it. The photo was a real physical object that existed in one real physical location. Storing a photo in a family photo album seems pretty obvious, but the problem is that this method of storing, finding and accessing an object does not scale...

I was in New Zealand recently for a conference and thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Land of the Long White Cloud. I got to meet other passionate educators, talk geeky edtech stuff and just generally hang out with them for a couple of days.  As part of the fun of hanging out with fellow geeks, I made a short video from my Nokia N95 using the live streaming ability of Qik.  The live stream was just a bit of fun, and went for a total of 5 minutes and 15 seconds.  Apart from the brief live stream, I also checked my email twice using the mobile Gmail client, and also checked my location on a Google Map while wandering through the streets of Napier. While in Napier, a text message arrived from my carrier, 3 Mobile , saying that my account balance for the month has just reached $535.  What??!!  I mean, I know that mobile roaming can be expensive, but surely this had to be some sort of mistake!  I switched my phone off and left it off until I returned to Australia. When I arrived back home ...

My daughter Kate loves to sing. She discovered this ability a few years ago when she came home from school and announced that she wanted to try out for a solo part in a local performing arts concert. Although we always thought she had a nice voice that could carry a tune, we had totally missed the fact that she was actually quite talented vocally and so her intention to sing solo at this concert was a bit of a surprise. Long story short, she has discovered her voice and is working hard at developing it further. She's done workshops and music camps and is now working with a singing coach. She really does love to sing. She was recently selected to be part of the Talent Advancement Program (TAP), a program for kids with musical talent aged 13 to 18. For the 23 kids selected to be part of TAP, it's a pretty special group to be take part of. They get to learn and grow by actually performing in front of people. Tomorrow, they are all performing at the Sydney Royal Easter Sh...

Of all the tools that are shaping our new information landscape, perhaps none is more controversial than Wikipedia . As an encyclopedia that can be written and edited by anyone, it certainly attracts its fair share of skepticism. There are even some educators who refuse to allow their students to use Wikipedia as a research source, claiming that there is no verifiable level of authority in its articles and that it is far too easy for it to contain information that is inaccurate, misleading or just plain wrong. They argue that students should not trust an encyclopedia written by just anyone. Others take a more positive view, believing that the overall level of quality in Wikipedia is as good, and possibly better, than commercially available encyclopedia products created by qualified professionals. Both viewpoints are, to some extent, valid. It’s true that Wikipedia has the potential to be full of errors, silly facts and misinformation, and that anyone, even an anonymous user, can edit ...

Our school is just about to provide Netbook computers ( Lenovo S10 s in case you're interested) to all of our Year 6 students.  This is part of a project to provide an immersive technology-rich year at an age where we think it will do the most good.  Lots of Web 2.0 and open Source software tools, use of Open Office and Google Docs as their main productivity environments, access to school hosted blogs and wikis, etc.  We are trying to make use of these tools to promote creativity, productivity and higher order thinking. We want to expose them to the many great digital resources out there, while teaching them the information literacy skills needed to navigate through the massive amounts of information available.  The kids and their teachers are SO excited and, to be honest, so am I. So when I stumbled across this video this morning I really had a giggle.  The students who made this clip did a great job of pointing out the limitations of non-digital media in a very funny way.  It...

There is a backstory on this video, but to be honest, it probably doesn't really matter all that much.  It was made by Matt Harding , the famous " wherethehellismat t" guy from YouTube. The real point for me is that life is for living and that people all over the world want basically the same things - to be loved, to feel happy and to enjoy life. Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo . I look at that video and love seeing the sheer joy on people's faces that comes from just being happy. Enjoy.  I'm off to dance!

I spent today, pretty much by accident, at a forum-style discussion of the issues surrounding the Australian government's proposal to filter the Internet access of all Australian citizens .  I say "by accident" because the invitation to attend an " Internet Filtering and Censorship Forum " appeared in my email a couple of weeks ago, and without reading it too carefully, I thought it was going to be an educationally focused discussion about the filtering issues that schools face.  That would have been useful and interesting, but I didn't realise that the discussion would actually be centred on the bigger issue of the Australian government's proposed Internet filtering scheme.  I'm glad I went. Look, there is no argument from me that we need to keep our children safe online.  We absolutely need to protect them from the things that are clearly inappropriate, obscene or undesirable.  I remember the first time I realised my son had seen things online that...