On this day: Manual labour: what's your documentation like?

July 27, 2025

Is your documentation well-written but useless?

The hazards of writing software manuals

December 29, 2021

Writing software manuals or books, or even mini tutorials on how to do something in a particular program comes with a huge occupational hazard.

Manual labour: what's your documentation like?

July 29, 2020

Is your documentation well-written but useless?

Writing technology manuals for school: why, what and how

June 4, 2019

Do you really need software and hardware manuals in school? (Spoiler alert: yes.)

Books erratum

March 16, 2017

In a recent article I said that a particular book was my first 'proper' book -- and then I remembered the previous half dozen or so! This article sets the record straight.

In The Picture: Help!

August 23, 2010

I’m a firm believer in helping youngsters (and colleagues) to become as self-sufficient as possible. As well as being healthy, in my opinion, it is also a requirement of some examination courses.

Recent book reviews

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Quick look: The Teachers' Standards in Primary Schools

This is very well set out. It takes each standard, and gives you ideas on how to achieve it, and what success in this context looks like.

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Quick look: How Computer Games Help Children learn

When I was teaching Econnures I realised that I could have taught quite a chunk of the synabus if I'd been able to run Sim City on the school network.

Quick look: Reinventing Project-Based Learning

I can verify from first hand experience that PBL kept students highly engaged, and helped them to develop skills such as working with others and independent research.

Quick look: The Human Touch

Although this book is published by the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, the focus is not on IT at all.

Quick look: Better Living through science

I have often thought that I would have been much more interested in science at school, and been much more successful at it, had the teachers taught us anything of practical value.

Quick look: Tubes: Behind the scenes at the internet

We are all so accustomed to using the internet, searching the world wide web — "going online" — that most of us most of the time probably do not stop to consider the question: yes, but where exactly is it?

Quick look: Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) do leaders make a difference?

I have somewhat dichotomous views of this question of whether leaders make a difference, or much of a difference.

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.