This pdf contains the reviews of mine that were published in Teach Secondary magazine in 2024.
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Review: Nuts and Bolts: How Tiny Inventions Make Our World Work
It's rather disconcerting when one considers that buildings like The Shard are essentially held together by nuts, bolts and washers.
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Review: Love Triangle: The Life-changing Magic of Trigonometry
Like, I suspect, many people, I have never knowingly come across an isosceles triangle in my life, and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. However...
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Review: Making Sense Of Chaos – A Better Economics for a Better World
Before you rush off on the grounds that this book has nothing to do with Computing, let me reassure you that it does.
Read MoreBjork & Bjork’s Desirable Difficulties in Action
The original work on which this volume is based has perhaps been honoured more in the breach than in the observance.
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Review: Coderspeak – The language of computer programmers
This book won’t necessarily help a student pass a computing exam, but it will almost certainly make them a more aware, and thus better, programmer.
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Review: Quiet Power, by Susan Cain
Introverts thrive by being allowed to be quiet, having time for reflection and not being required to 'perform' all the time.
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Quick look: Desirable difficulties in action
The idea of desirable difficulties has always appealed to me. In my teaching I’m partticularly in favour of applying Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development.
Read MoreReview: The Collaboration Book – 41 Ideas for Working Better
Most people would agree that collaboration is a good thing – so how can we collaborate more effectively in school settings?
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Review: Listen: On Music, Sound and Us
This book might not directly address obvious aspects of the music curriculum, but it can certainly give teachers access to a rich seam of facts and anecdotes with which to embellish their lessons.
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Review of Destination Time Travel, by Steve Nallon
A book on temporal adventures may seem like an odd inclusion here, but it can actually be used in many ways.
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Review: The Language of Deception: Weaponizing Next Generation AI, by Justin Hutchens
AI might not be ‘intelligent’ in the strictest sense – but it can certainly appear to be, which is almost as worrying.
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Review of Tips for teachers: 400+ ideas to improve your teaching
Don’t let this book’s size (nearly 600 pages) put you off. It’s comprehensive, and very well structured and laid out.
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Quick looks: The collaboration book
I’ve just sent Teach Secondary magazine my review of this book, so I can’t say much before that’s published.
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Review: The Book at war
The Book at War is a fascinating study of how books and other reading matter have variously influenced politics, propaganda and history over time.
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Review: Iterate: The secret to innovation in schools
Having endured some fairly dreadful ‘initiatives’ in my time, delivered from on high with the directive to ‘make it work’, I approached Iterate with some trepidation.
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From EdTech to PedTech (full review)
Those of us who have held responsibility for embedding digital technology across a school will all have tales of well-meaning management who, frankly, didn’t have a clue.
Read MoreReview: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
Who would have thought that a material as commonplace as paper could have such a rich history and profound effect on our lives?
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Review: Once upon a prime
As someone who had little in the way of mathematical prowess at school, I initially opened Prime with some trepidation.
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Review: First Year Teaching
This is the guide I wish I’d had when I started teaching.
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