New prize draw, and updated information on our competitions — ICT & Computing in Education

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New prize draw, and updated information on our competitions

June 19, 2019

Good news: the prize draw for How to Think Like a Coder will be run very soon, for subscribers to the Digital Education newsletter. Here’s what you need to know:

A review of the book may be found in this article: Review of How to Think Like a Coder.
I’ll be sending out the newsletter containing the entering instructions on 20 June 2019 at 7.15pm BST.
To be eligible you have to have subscribed, and confirmed your subscription, by 20 June 2019 7.10pm BST.
To subscribe, read the information and complete the form here: Digital Education.

How I run competitions

The rules for entering competitions are on the newsletter page. They conform to UK regulations. I’m also very fussy about how I process your data. If you’d like to find out more, go to that page and download a pdf on the subject.

That’s all for now!

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?