teaching ideas — Terry Freedman's ICT & Computing in Education blog — ICT & Computing in Education

Review of Tips for teachers: 400+ ideas to improve your teaching

May 16, 2024

Don’t let this book’s size (nearly 600 pages) put you off. It’s comprehensive, and very well structured and laid out.

What if "she" decided whether or not you got the job?

8 ideas for story-writing in Computing

September 23, 2022

Here are 8 ideas for encouraging pupils to write stories on Computing and related topics.

Holo app, by Terry Freedman. This was drawn using Comic Strip Creator.

Articles from the ed tech archives

August 23, 2019

Here are three articles from the ICT & Computing website which you may find useful, inspiring or both.

7 ideas for story-writing in Computing

August 2, 2016

Here are 7 ideas for encouraging pupils to write stories on Computing and related topics -- and the announcement of a brilliant new and free resource: 70 Kinds of Blog Posts.

Out of this world

August 24, 2011

It’s August in Britain, and it’s raining. In fact, I was reading today that the Meteorological Office has issued a severe weather warning for the South-East of England! So, a typical British summer in other words. What better time, if you’re still enjoying the school holidays, to visit an exhibition or two?

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?