Several rebootings of everything, much swearing and 17 cups of tea later, it suddenly occurred to me…
Read MorePrinter error, by Terry
email deluge, by Terry Freedman
Three-tier email system
Three ways I’ve been dealing with a surfeit of email.
Read MoreIf you stop fiddling, will Rome stop burning?
This is an article I published around the start of Covid.
Read MoreNeed a break? This book of short stories could be just the ticket!
The 39 stories in this collection span a hundred years, during which Polish society underwent seismic political change several times over.
Read MoreOn this day: Ode to Code
"I wonder if it's possible to write a poem about coding", I thought to myself. Well, it is, and here it is. First Chaucer, then Shakespeare, and now me. No doubt schoolchildren of the future will be studying this for their Eng Lit exams, but in the meantime you can read it here first! Enjoy.
Read MoreHow I reduced my marking time from 4 hours a week to 15 minutes
Reading each student’s work each week, at a rate of ten minutes each, took nearly two and a half hours. Thinking of suitable comments, adding them in to the appropriate place in Google Classroom, and updating my spreadsheet markbook took another hour and a half.
Something had to be done.
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The 3,000 Part Computing Lesson Revisited
I daresay there are schools in which teachers are expected to divide all their lessons into manageable chunks in accordance with Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). The fact that CLT is light on the specifics and is a load of rubbish is seemingly no deterrent.
Read MoreBlast from the past: the homework excuse management system revisited -- now with comments!
I have republished this post, or a version of it, on my Substack newsletter. The comments are interesting!You can use a spreadsheet to solve even relatively trivial problems — but why should you do so?
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From Tom Gauld’s Revenge of the Librarians
Is this the future of ChatGPT for authors?
A depressing future for writers?
Read MoreAn advertisement for my newsletter -- courtesy of ChatGPT
I asked ChatGPT to write some dialogue advertising my newsletter in the style of a 1930s wise guy gangster.
Here’s what it came up with….
Read MoreSeason's greetings!
Season’s greetings from Freedman Towers.
Read MoreFirewall Foibles, And How I Survived Them Revisited
It was when my wireless router told me that there was no printer on the network that I finally flipped.
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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
What? You mean...
This is a blast from the past. But kids are kids.
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Snow on tracks by Terry Freedman
A brief interlude
Here in England it’s cold, though not quite as cold as it has been, and walking and cycling are treacherous.
Read MoreThe Oldest Blogger? (revisited)
So you thought that blogging started circa 2002, did you? I have incontrovertible proof that it has been going a lot longer than that.
Read MoreThe Society of Breakers
Too many brilliantly-working things are screwed up for it to be just accidental.
Read MoreUse a spreadsheet for literary criticism: it's more accurate (Updated)
It seems to me that if you’re going to encourage students to use computer programming in literature studies, one very worthwhile project would be to get them to create a random book review or literary essay generator.
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A zombie, by Terry Freedman
Beware the zombies
“It never occurred to me at the time that we have zombies amongst us in the form of ex-Secretaries of State — not just in education, but in other areas too.”
Read MoreWhen technology goes wrong (Updated)
Just a couple of cogitations – hopefully worthy -- about technology and our relationship with it.
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I should have booked in person. Liverpool Street Station, by Terry Freedman
A web-based labyrinth that would have made Borges or Kafka delighted
Can using a computer be injurious to one's health? If you're trying to book a particular rail journey via a particular website in the UK, the answer is a resounding "Yes".
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