Chris Betcher

I've been keen to get more of our staff blogging, since I know from first hand experience what a powerfully reflective process it can be. I've always found that taking the time to write causes me to think more deeply about what I do, it makes me more aware of the ideas and approaches that I'm using with those I teach, and it's also made me a much better writer than I once was. I'd argue that blogging really helps improve your communication skills on many levels while building a stronger foundation for understanding your own beliefs and convictions. There is something both magical and affirming about putting your thoughts down in words, and even moreso when you decide to publicly share those words with others. As you can probably tell, I'm a bit of a fan of blogging (or connective writing, to borrow a phrase from Will Richardson ) During 2011, our school had the opportunity to apply for an AGQTP grant. This grant program is funded by the Australian government...

I've never understood why people send spam mail or leave spam comments on blog posts (in the same way I don't understand why people scribble graffiti tags on trains and walls), but I know that for spammers who really take it seriously there is big money to be made. I suppose in that sense, I DO understand why people create spam if there is the opportunity to make money from it... I guess what I don't understand is how there continues to be constant stream of people who are gullible enough to take action on the messages and, in doing so, continue to generate an income for the spammers. Let's face it, the thing that keeps spam propagating and growing (and therefore making it worthwhile for the spammers to keep sending it) is the fact that there are enough gullible, stupid people in the world who keep responding to it.  If we all were much better at identifying and recognising spam as soon as we saw it, then the spammers would eventually go away because the f...

2011 has been an interesting year for blogging. I feel like my own personal blogging has been really suffering lately, not just from being really busy at work, but also from the endless distractions of Twitter and Google+ which, if I let them, could easily become my sole places for sharing stuff online.  Certainly, there are some people, like Mike Elgan , who use Google as their sole online presence and funnel all their other online stuff into G+.  It's a potentially intriguing strategy, as the engagement factor on G+ is certainly very high.  You could also argue that Twitter has replaced a great deal of sharing that was one done via blogs, and there's little doubt that between the "Big Three" of Facebook, Twitter and Google+, the nature of blogs and blogging  has shifted considerably since I first started using them back in 2005.  I'm blogging less, for sure, and it definitely leaves a void that I miss filling. However, this was also the year when I ...

On January 1 this year, thanks to a bit of prodding from my mate John Pearce , I started a 365 Photo Challenge... whereby I planned to take a photo every single day this year and post it to the web. I'd tried doing this once before but never made it longer than a few days before I lost focus and let it slip away.   So here we are nearly 11 full months into my 365 Days of Light Photo project and I'm pleased to report I haven't missed a single day yet! ( I've been late to post them a few times, but never more than about 48 hours behind schedule either, which I think is pretty darn amazing!) I post them all to a Posterous site I set up called 365 Days of Light , which in turn crossposts to Twitter, Identica,  Flickr. and PicasaWeb (which is really Google+).  It also used to post to Facebook until I quit my account there).  Here is a link to the collection so far ... (minus the first few days of January which I forgot to include back then) Part of the challenge for me wa...

I'm in Toronto, Canada, at the moment, which is somewhat of a second home for me. My lovely partner Linda is a born and bred Torontonian, and although we both now live in Sydney, Australia, we try to travel back here at least once a year to visit friends and family.   Our current visit was unplanned and not for the usual reasons we like to be here though... Linda's father Ron passed away a few days ago. He'd had a number of health challenges for quite a while, and although he always maintained a positive outlook and a cheery disposition, things had been getting increasingly difficult for him over the last few months. Early on Wednesday morning Toronto time, the day before his 82nd birthday, Ron decided enough was enough and passed away quietly in his sleep. May he rest in peace. Although I never got to spend as much time with Ron as I would have liked, he was a lovely gentle man, and every time I met him he was always smiling, always taking an interest in those around him. ...

I just posted my final status update on Facebook... Dear Friends, As some of you know, I have been wary about the direction Facebook has been taking for quite a while. Their everchanging and confusing privacy settings, the dubious way they treat your personal information, the sneaky way they phrase things in their terms of service... the list goes on... in short, I have gotten to the point where I simply no longer trust Facebook with my information.  The recent (and soon to be released) changes like the Timeline View and the "frictionless sharing" that Zuckerberg talked about at the recent f8 conference have started to change Facebook into a service that I'm no longer willing to use.  Articles like this one ( http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2114059/Your-Facebook-Data-File-Everything-You-Never-Wanted-Anyone-to-Know ) make me feel entirely distrustful of the whole thing. Despite reservations I've had about it, I've really tried to like Facebook. I've enjoye...

Last weekend, I was in Yokohama doing some workshops with Kim Cofino for various groups of teachers in the Tokyo/Yokohama area, including the current COETAIL cohort. It was a heap of fun, and I'll write more about that later. On Monday, I spent the day running PD for staff of Yokohama International School , and I was asked to do a short presentation to get things started. The brief was just to present "something inspirational", whatever that meant. To be honest, my mind was drawing a complete blank and was quite lost for an idea. I went back to the hotel room on Sunday night - my last night before returning home to Australia - and started working on my presentation. I was really quite stuck for an idea, but I was also keen to get it done so I could go out exploring some of the Japanese sights on my last night there. I got to the point where if I stayed in the hotel room working I knew I wouldn't see anything so I just decided to go out exploring anyway and hopefully...

It’s an interesting sign of how this connected world we live in actually works when I see people coming back to revisit an idea that was floated months earlier, still mulling it over and willing to come back and re-clarify things again in their own head, which in turn helps others (like me) to re-clarify things in mine. I'm referring to a post called Unlearning, Relearning, Learning by Graham Wegner, who was in turn responding to an earlier post written on this blog back in May this year. The conversation had basically turned to the idea of how people learn. Graham referred to another post from Dean Groom, where Dean talked about the idea of people being able to learn on demand, when they need it, by accessing the wealth of available online resources that are scattered across the Internet, produced by the millions of members of the online community. This mass-sharing has produced what Dean referred to as "the scattered manual", where the instructions for doing pretty mu...

It's been a big few weeks. I'm currently writing this while flying in an Air Canada Boeing 777, seat 40J, somewhere just south of the equator and slightly west of the International Date Line, chasing the sun around the globe on my way back to Sydney. I've been in Canada for much of the last few weeks, visiting our Canadian family and friends, something I wish I could do more often. But for three days I managed to slip away down to Philadelphia PA for my first ISTE conference . If you know me, or read this blog at all, you may know that I tend to get around to a few conferences in various places, but the ISTE Conference (and prior to that, a NECC) has eluded me so far. For whatever reasons, I haven't been able to get to this event so when the opportunity came up this year I jumped at it. And I'm glad I was able to… it is an amazing event. In thinking about ISTE 2011 to decide what to blog about it, there are a few notable things to mention, but for me, one really st...

I’m writing this from the Novotel Twin Waters Resort on Queensland’s beautiful Sunshine Coast.  It’s a hard life, I know, but someone has to do it. It’s been a spectacular day here, and I’ve managed to fill it with a bike ride along the beach, drinks at the bar, and lazing around the poolside area, so it hasn’t really been too hard to take. No need to feel sorry for me. I'll be ok. But it hasn't all been just lazing around the pool and soaking up sunshine... The real reason I’m here was to take part in the first Interactive Teaching and Learning Masterclass conference, run by the good folk at IWB Net. I had the privilege of being involved as a presenter, leading one of the Cohort sessions and doing the keynote on the  Saturday. The ITL Masterclass conference attempted to be different to a typical conference. Most traditional conferences have a pretty standard format… There is a keynote address in the morning, followed by a series of workshops or breakout sessions that are al...