Web 2.0 Educator

I chose to follow Chris Betcher. He’s a teacher in Sydney, Australia and has over 20 years experience. He first specialized in art, but because of his interests in graphics and designs he drifted away from being your everyday art teacher. He now teaches ICT integration support that focuses on the teaching of computers, multimedia and webdesign. He enjoys sharing his technical knowledge with others and has spoken at numerous conferences around the world.

In his blog entitled, “So What Should We Be Amazed By?” he emphasizes the fact that we are too impressed with the little things in life. We should not be so excited when a new word processor comes out or they update AOL, instead we should be amazed by how fast our students learn and grow. Without the ability to teach them finer technological skills, our students will fall behind. We must be inactive and engaging in order to “amaze” them and ourselves all the time. Earlier, he blogged about a visitor coming to his school in the blog entitled, “Seeing with Different Eyes.” This blog focused on the visit of a teacher from a school in South Africa. He and she both taught the same type of students in the same type of school, but the input was beneficial. On her arrival, he toured her through the school and discovered that the teachers that he was working with have not always been teachers. He showed how seeing through other people’s eyes and perspectives were important. For example, a math teacher may have been an accountant before and an English teacher a newspaper editor. All of his insight brought forth a sense of “new” to my teaching style. One does not always have to do what they have always done.

Technology is really important to Betcher because he wants to make learning more interesting, relevant, fun and engaging to his students. He wants them to know how technology can support them without driving them crazy. So each day he blogs and thinks about how he could possible accommodate his 21st century learners. I hope to continue reading his blog and keep up to date on his new technology insight on how to make the learning experience less of a hassle. Teachers now need to have computer smarts because their students are learning at an earlier age and must keep the learning moving forward instead of completely dying out.