HoL Committee Room, by Terry Freedman — Sadly not my typical committee meeting room! This was taken in a House of Lords Committee Room, by Terry Freedman

The pros and cons of having an e-learning committee in a school

August 14, 2025

In my past roles as ICT Co-ordinator or e-learning co-ordinator, I have formed and chaired an ICT or e-learning committee. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having such a body?

Reasons to have a double opt-in system for newsletters

October 2, 2020

Ever since I started my newsletter — which is now in its 20th year — I have used a double opt-in system. What does that mean, and why do I do it?

Book review: 100 Top Tips - Microsoft Excel, by Sean McManus

September 3, 2020

Could this book of 100 top tips for using Excel benefit heads of department or subject leaders?

Making money for ed tech -- from manual labour

August 24, 2020

How I made money for ed tech in my school: was it worth it?

Reasons to have an e-learning committee in a school

August 13, 2020

In my past roles as ICT Co-ordinator or e-learning co-ordinator, I have formed and chaired an ICT or e-learning committee. What are the benefits of having such a body, and does Covid-19 change anything?

How to generate random text even if you don't use Word

July 9, 2020

Need to create an example document quickly? You don’t have to type it out.

Recent book reviews

Review: Power Up, by Matthew Lane

This book looks at the maths concepts — and, to some extent, the physics concepts — hidden in popular video games.

Review: The Shortest History of AI

How is it that ChatGPT, Claude and other Al models appear to perform so well at certain complex tasks that some people become convinced that they're sentient — only for them to then promptly fail at simple tasks that even a child could handle?

Review: Teacher Geek

Every so often I like to take a look, or another look, at a book published a while ago, and today I’ve been looking at Teacher Geek, by Rachel Jones.

Review: Teach Fast

The book contains some interesting ideas.

A question of leadership

I have somewhat dichotomous views of this question of whether leaders make a difference, or much of a difference. I think my views can be classified as macro and micro.