News of 4 forthcoming events, including one that takes place tomorrow.
Read More
What I've been reading: Teacher Proof, by Tom Bennett
Tom Bennett's book Teacher Proof is, like the curate's egg, excellent in parts. Many of the practices that teachers are encouraged to do have no basis in research (or even common sense, if you ask me). In this book, the founder of ResearchEd takes issue with such matters.
Read More
SOLE destroying: an advantage of analogue over digital
I was going to ask "What do African school children -- you know, the ones who walk for miles and miles to get to school -- know that Sugata Mitra doesn't?
Read MoreEveryone’s an educational expert, but it was ever thus
Have you noticed how everybody seems to be an expert on education these days? In fact, you only have to pick up a newspaper more or less any day of the week to find some minor celebrity saying something asinine like “Schools should teach kids how to stay safe online” (Really? What a great idea. How come we didn’t think of that?!). I don’t take much notice of these people, but it does annoy me when they somehow get on to conference programmes.Magic, Monsters and Music
The forthcoming edition of Digital Education contains articles about magic, monsters and music. See? Computing is not all about coding!Don’t blame the technology
Technology can help a good teacher do wondrous and wonderful things – but bad use of technology is worse than no use of technology, in my opinion. There is, possibly, one exception to this general rule, which I will get to in a moment. What has brought on this sudden dazzling insight (well, it isn’t really instant, and it probably isn’t dazzling, but this is my blog so I can say what I like). An anti-ICT dogma diatribe by the behaviour guru, aka Tom Bennett.
Read More