HoD — Terry Freedman's ICT & Computing in Education blog — ICT & Computing in Education

Head of department notes: who are the key people?

March 28, 2022

Is the most important person in your school or team is the one who has the key to the stationery cupboard?

Toxic leadership

March 17, 2022

It's all very well enjoying power, but ultimately power is only useful if it gets things done without unfortunate side effects.

Preparing for a head of department post doesn’t only involve reading. Picture credit: Reading (cartoon), by Terry Freedman

The benefits of supply teaching...

March 13, 2022

I don’t think I would go so far as to recommend supply teaching as a career option, even temporarily. However…

Open sign — Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay

The benefits of an open door classrooms policy

February 7, 2022

Should classrooms be open, in the sense that anyone might see what's going on, and perhaps even take part in them?

Helping staff to develop and move on

January 28, 2022

You can’t hold on to good teachers forever. They will, at some point, wish to move on and seek positions of influence themselves.

What does a Head of Department do?

January 28, 2022

If you’re the Head of Computing or Education Technology, you may also have a responsibility for the use and possibly even the co-ordination of the use of technology across the whole school.

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?