The London Book Fair 2017 Photo by Terry Freedman

Interim report on the What Works Conference

March 15, 2017

I attended the What Works conference at the London Book Fair yesterday, for the first time. For a half day conference, a lot was packed in.

The two sessions I found most useful was one on copyright issues, and one on global trends and how they might impact on education and potentially, therefore, on educational publishing.

The conference was chaired by Lis Tribe, from Hodder Education. (Lis was the person who commissioned me to write Managing ICT twenty or so years ago. That was my first 'proper' published book -- I'd written one for a company, and self-published a few books. Even today I get people coming up to me and telling me that they loved that book, which is always nice to hear!)

I'll be reporting on the conference in due course. In the meantime, you may wish to check out my London Book Fair Bulletins on my Write! website. The first one is here:

London Book Fair 2017 Bulletin #1

Recent book reviews

Two reviews in one: Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals -- art and history

One for your colleagues, perhaps: art, art history, ploitics with a small ‘p’.

Two reviews in one: State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature -- politics, history, English

One for your colleagues, perhaps. Sperrin has provided a wealth of information that can be used to provide a rich experience for students of politics, history and English literature.

Two reviews in one: A Little History of Mathematics

I submitted my review of this book to Teach Secondary magazine, an educational magazine in the UK. The first review below is what the magazine published. The second one is what I actually wrote! In substantive terms there is little difference between the two, but you may find it interesting to see what the editor altered.

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Review: The Learning Rainforest: Great Teaching in Real Classrooms

This is a great book for dipping into in order to read about different teaching and assessment strategies, backed up by research.

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Review: Outstanding Formative Assessment: Culture and Practice

This book contains numerous assessment for learning techniques.

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Review: New Media in the Classroom: Rethinking Primary Literacy

This provides a great deal of information about the different aspects of "literacy” and how digital tools can be brought into the service of literacy in the primary school.

Review: Designing the internet of things

This book takes you through the process of designing connected devices from prototyping to launching.

Quick look: (Un)educated: My Life as a Teacher, and Why You Should Never Become One

“Some of it is laugh-out loud funny, but some of it, about his reference being spiked, made me angry …”

A Heads-up: Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad

This is about the invention of linotype, and its consequences.

Are we in, or entering, a post-literate society?

I know that there are people who think that Tik-Tok videos and other (very) short-form content is a kind of literacy that’s on a par with reading, but I have my doubts.