Fake news? — ICT & Computing in Education

Terry Freedman and bookcase, by Terry Freedman

Fake news?

November 24, 2022

I’ve compiled a number of reviews of non-fiction books that either deal with helping people detect untruths (such as in so-called scientific research) or presenting something as true when, in fact, it isn’t.

The books covered are these:

That post is available to subscribers of my newsletter Digital Education, or you can read it right now in my Eclecticism newsletter:

One of the things that has concerned me over the years is the extent to which the things we read about that are presented as being true are actually true. I don’t just mean fake news, but scientific reports or what my doctor tells me.
For example, if I read a report which says that researchers found that people who jog five miles a day live longer, on the basis that all the octogenarians they studied jog five miles every day, what is the real story here? It could be one (or more) of the following:

Continue reading:

Fiction masquerading as non-fiction?

Recent book reviews

Review: Social Media for Academics

This book is very readable, and if I sound surprised that is because it’s not always true of academics!

Quick looks: VIBE Coding by Example

For the time being, this book is free in Kindle format.

Review: The Game Changers: How Playing Games Changed the World and Can Change You Too

Despite the relative paucity of immediately obvious National Curriculum links, teachers will find several of sections of this book to be highly engaging.

Review: The Dictators: 64 Dictators, 64 Authors, 64 Warnings from History

In some respects one could view this book as a single warning repeated 64 times.

Review: The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A History of the High Street

Taking readers from the Middle Ages to (more or less) the present day, Gray charts how the places where we do our shopping and what we buy have changed over the centuries.

Review: Extraordinary Learning For All

As a source of potential ideas and inspiration, the book could be very useful indeed.

Review: Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them

One has the impression that the main role of the university these days is to maximise profit, while that of the majority of teaching staff is to ensure the ‘correct’ views are passed on to students. All the while, students’ main concern seems to be to seek protection from anything that might make them feel unsafe.

Review: Next Practices - An Executive Guide for Education Decision Makers

Is a 2014 book on managing the computing provision in a school still worth buying?

Still relevant (sadly): How to lie with statistics, by Darrell Huff

Although this book is over 60 years old, it is remarkably apposite for our times -- and especially in the fields of educational research and assessing pupils' understanding and progress.

Quick looks: Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them

It was a great source of pride to me, getting hundreds of students through their A levels and encouraging them to go to university. But for some time I have asked myself a question: would I recommend this route now?