“Chalkface”
Funny expression, that: back to the chalkface. The main things I remember about chalkboards are:
(a) I had a teacher in secondary school who was unerringly accurate in throwing a board rubber at anyone who was talking. That would have been impressive in itself, but he did it while facing the board. I always wondered if he had a tiny mirror there. These days, of course, he’d be done for assault. Nevertheless, he was a good teacher. I wrote about him in an article for Teach Secondary.
(b) As a teacher, by the time I came home I was covered in chalk dust. Clothes, fingers, hair. Heaven knows what it did to my lungs.
Anyway, happy new year. And if you’re back at school tomorrow, with a dreaded training day on the agenda, perhaps this radio comedy sketch will help you see the lighter side:
Looking back
I had a trawl through the articles I published on the ICT and Computing in Education website in 2018, and selected 25 of my favourites. The list includes suggestions for running a training day, thoughts about the new Education Secretary, automated marking and artificial intelligence, the characteristics of excellent Computing teachers and much more. If you’re interested, check out this article, which has all the links you need:
Education Technology 2018: A Personal Retrospective
Looking forward
I invited people to suggest what ed tech we might see in 2019, and what the challenges might be. You can read the results here:
Digital Education
Finally, the latest issue of my newsletter, Digital Education, will be sent out at 18:30 today, Western Europe time. It contains articles about CCTV before CCTV was invented, information about the subscriber-only pages and downloads, a book discount and a prize draw for a book, plus reviews.
If any of that sounds interesting, you’ll find more information and a sign-up form here:
That’s it for now!