Why you should review your education technology purchasing plans

May 30, 2025

Having taken a decision, you can’t just leave it. You have to review it at some point.

Review: Extraordinary Learning For All

May 28, 2025

As a source of potential ideas and inspiration, the book could be very useful indeed.

cartoon to illustrate a failed edtech project, generated in ImageFX

22 reasons that education technology projects fail

May 21, 2025

Why do some school and local authority initiatives, not to mention government initiatives, fail, especially when they concern education technology?

On this day: City Learning Centres: The end?

May 19, 2025

A failure to ask the question, when encouraged to adopt a new thing, “So what?”. I'm by no means a Luddite, but I think critical judgment is rather important.

Review: Next Practices - An Executive Guide for Education Decision Makers

May 12, 2025

Is a 2014 book on managing the computing provision in a school still worth buying?

Archival

May 4, 2025

I’ve created a special area of the Digital Educatioon Supplement, which is an online supplement to my newsletter, Digital Education.

Keeping your media safe

April 28, 2025

Cloud services have their place, but schools should still think carefully about how they can keep the media they produce safe, secure and on-site.

Author reading to a school assembly. Image generated in Ideogram.ai

Get the most from visiting authors

April 25, 2025

You might think an author visit wouldn’t be of much use in a subject like Computing, but you’d be mistaken.

Sometimes (often), 'good enough' is better than 'ideal'

April 24, 2025

Sometimes (often), 'good enough' is better than 'ideal'. Yes, it sounds paradoxical, and counterintuitive, but sometimes even the presumed ‘ideal’ is not, erm, ideal.

History lesson, by Terry Freedman.jpg — History lesson, by Terry Freedman

Two more for the archive

April 22, 2025

I’ve just published a couple of documents in the Digital Education Supplement. This is a collection of free resources for subscribers to my newsletter, Digital Education, which is also free.

Should the Computing curriculum be ditched?

March 28, 2025

This is a serious question. What is the point of teaching kids computer programming, when AI can do all the hard work?

The DfE's foray into AI for education: the good news and the (potentilly) bad news

March 20, 2025

We don’t have very long to wait before the educational AI projects funded by the Department for Education are unveiled, if all goes to plan. But I have some concerns.

The KCL Report on the future of Computing Education

October 1, 2024

The Computing curriculum report from Kings College makes some great recommendations for fixing the failures of the current curriculum.

The future of AI in Education: notes on a Westminster Education Forum Conference

September 30, 2024

A few months ago I attended a Westminster Education Forum about the use of AI in Education. I spent quite some time going through the transcript and making notes, but then I thought: why not use AI to do the work?

EdTech Guide 1: 55 things to do at the start of the school year

September 10, 2024

This guide was first made available to subscribers to Digital Education, my free newsletter.

EdTech Diary: Expectations

September 5, 2024

I want to be able to have as much access to technology when I'm in a school as what I enjoy in my own home. I don't think that is too much to ask, but maybe that's me.

Edtech Diary: Wake up and smell the coffee

August 28, 2024

When I worked as a Technology Coordinator, a large part of my job was to encourage teachers in all subjects to make use of educational technology in their lessons and, even better, to build it into their schemes of work. It was something of an uphill struggle sometimes...

How to make your classroom a stimulating environment

August 16, 2024

FREEBIE! Having been going through my files and digitising them, I came across this little booklet I created back in 2005.

10 ways to make an impact

August 11, 2024

The way some people describe Computing makes it sound (let's be honest here) dead boring. The subject gets reduced, in effect, to 'coding'.

Review: The Collaboration Book – 41 Ideas for Working Better

June 27, 2024

Most people would agree that collaboration is a good thing – so how can we collaborate more effectively in school settings?

Recent book reviews

The Teachers' Standards in Primary Schools.jpg

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.

How Computer Games Help Children learn.jpg

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.