How to introduce primary school pupils to the basics of programming -- using spreadsheets

April 14, 2019

Spreadsheets have been dismissed by some people as boring, old hat, and about “only” office skills. Those people are wrong! In this article I look at how you can use spreadsheets to start teaching children about some programming concepts.

ed tech problems: no paper, by Terry Freedman

Problems in the ed tech classroom #3: printer paper

April 4, 2019

Something as simple as the printer’s paper tray being empty can cause mayhem. Here are a few suggestions for dealing with it.

Problems in the ed tech classroom #2

March 31, 2019

What kind of problems might you experience with an ordinary flipchart? And are flipcharts preferable to interactive whiteboards? Plus details of how to get hold of a free guide to getting the most out of your interactive whiteboard.

Creating multiple signatures in Gmail

March 26, 2019

If you wear several different hats, but don’t want several different email addresses, you can use different email signatures instead. But how do you do that in Gmail?

Problems in the ed tech classroom #1

March 19, 2019

In this the first article in this series, I look at the problem of permanent markers being used on the whiteboard. Believe it or not, there is a more useful response than “Aaaaaargh!”

Have Ada Lovelace in your Computing or education technology classroom

February 13, 2019

Help to bring education technology alive by introducing a letter from Ada Lovelace to Charles Babbage into your Computing or education technology classroom.

Mitch Resnick at #Bett2019 — ink drawing effect. Photo by Terry Freedman

Interview with Mitch Resnick

February 8, 2019

What is a kindergarten approach to learning, and what are its characteristics? What are its advantages? Could adopting such an approach work in our education system? Here’s what Mitch Resnick said when I interviewed him at the January 2019 Bett show in London.

Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash — Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash

What do kids get up to online?

February 4, 2019

Here are several research reports on kids’ behaviour online.

What kind of ed tech house is your school?

January 31, 2019

If the ed tech in your school is horrible, and mistreated, then perhaps this article, inspired by a talk by A J Crabill, Deputy Commissioner for the Texas Education Agency, will help.

4 websites to stimulate ideas for Computing projects

January 29, 2019

Four interesting and stimulating websites with which you may not be familiar. Use them to spark discussion about and ideas for Computing projects.

Bett 2019: EdTech Checklist

January 10, 2019

The Bett website has a useful checklist for people looking at purchasing edtech stuff. Read on for the details.

Education Technology 2018: A Personal Retrospective

January 4, 2019

The 25 articles listed in this post represent the main issues that were exercising my mind in each month of 2018. I was, of course, thinking about more than only 25 topics, but these are my personal favourites. A couple of themes seem to crop up more than others, these being automation (for example in marking), and better teaching or use of computing and technology. I hope you find them interesting, useful or both.

Educational research reading, by Terry Freedman

Evidence-based teaching: what's striking or new about it?

December 13, 2018

In the latest Ofsted annual report, teachers using an evidence-based approach is something that “strikes” the Chief Inspector. But what is remarkable about it?

What I've been reading: Living in a Digital World

December 6, 2018

The review in a nutshell: well-structured, well-written and informative.

Random Name Picker, from Classroom Tools.

A random name picker

December 3, 2018

I’ve just run another prize draw for my newsletter, Digital Education. If you’re interested in the tool I used to select the winners, read on.

It’s all go! Illustration by Terry Freedman

What's in the November 2018 issue of Digital Education?

November 25, 2018

Here at Freedman Works we’ve been throwing in ideas, reports, books, magazines, blog articles and pictures into the writing machine I invented some time in 2017, and out has popped the latest issue of Digital Education. Read on for a taster of what’s in it.

Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash — Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash

Microsoft laptops and software evaluation

November 24, 2018

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.

How I became more efficient at marking and got my life back

November 22, 2018

Here is a short exposition of the changes I made in order to reduce the amount of marking I had to take home with me.

Coming soon in the Digital Education ezine

November 20, 2018

There are four books to be won in the next issue of Digital Education. There are also a few pretty useful articles and bits of information. Read on to find out more.

E-safety update

November 9, 2018

This article contains details of 8 reports and 4 sets of resources concerning e-safety.

Recent book reviews

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.

Review: Teach Fast

The book contains some interesting ideas.

A question of leadership

I have somewhat dichotomous views of this question of whether leaders make a difference, or much of a difference. I think my views can be classified as macro and micro.