In TMIL, Holiday demonstrates how easy it is to manipulate the news. A must-read for teachers of media or digital literacy.
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newsguard toolbar shield, screenshot by Terry Freedman
Review of Newsguard
Newsguard is a service that rates websites for honesty, transparency and trustworthiness. It evaluates websites against several criteria, such as whether information is gathered and presented responsibly. A browser extension will enable you to see at a glance whether or a not a site they have evaluated is trustworthy.
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Click the cover to go to the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Quick look: Hello World
Hello World, by Hannah Fry, offers an interesting perspective on some of the problems besetting artificial intelligence algorithms.
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The Science of Learning: click on the cover to view the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Review of The Science of Learning
This book aims to solve the difficulties teachers face in accessing educational research through the approach of presenting each research study as a double-page spread.
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Imaginary Cityscape, photographed by Terry Freedman
Review of Imaginary Cities
The Imaginary Cities exhibition at the British Library is an interesting merger of art and programming. Here are my thoughts on it.
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Click the pic to go to the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Quick looks: Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America
This is a very interesting, thought-provoking and readable book. I’ve only read 25% so far, but it’s looking good so far.
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What I've been reading: Offline
Why do many people seem to be addicted to their smartphones? This book explains how we get drawn in to constantly checking for updates, and suggests what we might do about it.
Read More8 podcasts for primary school teachers
The headline is a bit of a misnomer: in fact, there are 7 podcasts for teachers and one for kids. But that would have made for a pretty awkward title!
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Filming in progress, by Terry Freedman
10 video channels for Computing teachers
UPDATED Here are ten video channels of potential interest to teachers of Computing.
Read More10 podcasts for Computing teachers
UPDATED Here are ten podcasts that will help you understand more about computing or give you some ideas of things you can discuss in your lessons
Read MoreBook review: Excel 2019 Bible
I recently received this massive tome, the Excel 2019 Bible. Here’s what I thought of it.
Read MoreBook review: Access 2019 Bible
I recently received this hefty volume, the Access 2019 Bible. Here’s what I thought of it.
Read MoreBook review: How to think like a coder
This book aims to teach you how to think like a coder, rather then merely learning how to code. How far does it succeed?
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Research, by Terry Freedman
Engaging with evidence: a free guide
A new guide on engaging with evidence has appeared. Here is a quick evaluation of it.
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Computing books received, by Terry Freedman
Computing books received in March 2019
These books, which I received recently, look interesting, and I’m looking forward to reading and reviewing them. All book links are Amazon affiliate links.
How to think like a coder was shortlisted for an educational writers’ award, which you can read about here: The 2018 Educational Writers Award. I didn’t receive this in March, but have only now started to look at it in depth. I’ve already penned a few notes about it here: Books in Brief: How to think like a coder.
Monitored, which I’ve just started reading, is an examination of big data and surveillance from a Marxist perspective. I haven’t looked at any Marxist literature for a very long time — not since I tried to read Das Kapital when I was 17 (I got as far as page 23, which was 8 pages further than one of my teachers!) — so it’s a completely new perspective for me, which makes this an interesting, if difficult, read.
It covers similar ground to other books on the same subject matter that I have to review — indeed it references some of them — but with a clearly different take on the whole thing. I have to say that from the little I’ve read so far I remain unconvinced, and happily so.
Mission Python has been sent to me by Teach Secondary magazine. As the title suggests, it’s a book that teaches you how to program in Python. All I can say about it so far is that it looks colourful, and that I’m looking forward to reading it.
Book review: A manifesto for excellence in schools
How do you turn a school around quickly without “gaming” the system? Rob Carpenter has done it, and shares his recipe for success.
Read MoreBook review: Understanding how we learn
This is a book that dispels a few myths about how we learn, and explains why our intuition is not always our best friend.
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Politics and education technology reviews
To what extent is bias in reviews unavoidable? And does it matter anyway?
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What I've been reading: Living in a Digital World
The review in a nutshell: well-structured, well-written and informative.
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Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash
Microsoft laptops and software evaluation
Over the summer of 2018 I evaluated and compared for laptops sold by Microsoft, and tested the software that was installed on them. Here are my findings.
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