free resources — Terry Freedman's ICT & Computing in Education blog — ICT & Computing in Education

Think outside the box, by Terry Freedman

How to enhance your free offer to schools

May 22, 2020

Lots of edtech companies are offering free stuff to schools. How can yours stand out from the crowd?

10 good resources and 2 competitions for ICT and Computing teachers

November 6, 2015

Discussion lists, blog posts, teachers' guides and competitions are all featured in today's article.

Review of Teacher’s Pet

June 20, 2014

Go on, admit it: you still create worksheets, right? If you do, and you use Microsoft Word or OpenOffice to do so, you’ll find Teacher’s Pet very handy. It’s basically a set of macros that can transform lists of words into several different types of puzzle or test item.

Where can you get advice that is both free and good?

June 27, 2011

I don’t think it’s necessarily true that you get what you pay for. Some of the best advice available has been free. But where can you go now for good advice which is also free? I’ve started a new discussion on this topic in one of the Vital forums:

3 “Top 10” educational technology resources for teachers and students

February 8, 2011

David Andrade has been putting together some “top ten” resources lists over at his blog, Educational Technology Guy. These are well worth reading.

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?