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

Teacher admin tasks: the ritual is alive and well

March 6, 2024

In January 2024 the English Department for Education published its initial thoughts on teacher admin tasks, as in what teachers should not be expected to have to do.

This is one of those rituals that the DfE goes through every so often in one form or another.

My worst IT training days #4: Too much admin on a course (Updated)

September 4, 2021

How the admin involved in a course led to its being abandoned by one group of trainers.

How teachers can use the tick box in Google Sheets

June 10, 2020

Google sheets has a tick box feature. Here are some ways you can make use of it.

My worst IT training days #4: Too much admin on a course

August 2, 2019

How the admin involved in a course led to its being abandoned by one group of trainers.

Teachers of the future? I don't think so. Picture from pixabay.com Licence: CCO

From AM to AI -- or why teachers should embrace the robot revolution

February 13, 2018

AI should be embraced, not avoided, because it has the potential to enable teachers to do their job withoiut much of the associated drudgery.

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?