I ran the Department for Education’s educational technology strategy through a word cloud generator to see if it really was about educational technology.
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Love the product, shame about the documentation
Once a school has purchased your ed tech product or service, what then? In my experience, a lot of great products are let down by terrible documentation.
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Oh No!
How to help schools avoid common mistakes with your product
Wait a second! Didn’t you read the description? Didn’t you use the ‘Look inside’ feature to get an idea of the book’s contents?
Read MorePowerPoint without tears
The slides should be a starting point for more material, or a summary of something you have said. If all you're going to do is read out the slides, why not just give them a set of notes and head for the nearest café?
Read MoreReview: Portable Excel Genius
Although the book has not been written with teachers in mind, it contains information that many teachers would find useful.
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Click the cover to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Review of The Read Aloud Cloud
What a strange book this is!
Read MoreResearch, teacher training, teachers' email addresses -- in the year 2000
“It seems to me that the folks at the Teacher Training Agency have not so much *lost* the plot as are still looking for it.” Another delve into the edtech issues of the day in the year 2000!
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Don’t frustrate your visitors! Drawing by Terry Freedman
We have contact... or do we?
The average attention span of internet users is virtually zilch. According to an article, people spend under 6 seconds looking at a website’s content. Can your contact details be found in less time than that?
Read MoreConverting an offline course to an online one: ebook
This is a fairly comprehensive account of the steps I went through to convert a course from one I taught in a physical classroom to one I could teach online.
Read MoreConverting an offline course to an online one checklist
I’ve written a long article about how I converted a course I’d taught in a classroom to one I was able to teach online.
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Computing Outdoors. Cover by William Lau.
Review: Computing Outdoors
How can you learn some Computing without being cooped up in front of a screen? William Lau has the answer.
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Me after writing the article
Completed at last: my longest blog post ever
Adult learners may have different characteristics from younger ones (at least theoretically), but decisions like matching the technology to ones pedagogy, how to assess progress, what resources to use, how to conduct discussions — all these, surely, are pretty much the same challenge in both cases?
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In the cloud, by Terry Freedman
Taking a course online
This morning I completed my magnum opus (nearly 3,500 words) on the process I went through when converting a course from one I’d taught in a physical classroom to one I could teach online.
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On this day #20: Digital literacy and "coding"
Is being digitally literate synonymous with being able to code?
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books pile, by Terry Freedman
Online education: books just in
In the last two days I’ve received two books for review. One is almost hot off the press — Online Learning for Dummies was published in December 2020 — the other one is slightly warm — published in September 2020.
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Children using laptops, by Terry Freedman
Is anyone NOT using computers in their lessons now?
Back in those heady pre-pandemic days many of us were forever trying to cajole our colleagues to use computers in their lessons. Well, I suppose the positive aspect of Covid is that the virus has done quite a large part of our job for us.
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Zoom meeting, by Terry Freedman
Remote teaching during a pandemic
Lau provides a useful article that contains much information, based on research, that not everyone will have been aware of.
Read MoreWhy are some teachers reluctant to use educational technology?
In the following archived issue of my newsletter, you might find the following articles in particular interesting:
Why do it? (This reports the results of a survey enquiring into why some teachers shy away from using technology).
Responses to a problem posed in the form of a scenario, about teachers using technology as a reward or a time-filler rather than for serious work.
How to To Be A Good Role Model When Teaching with Educational Technology
It's often said that pupils learn the most from what their teachers do, rather than what they say. Here are some good practices you need to adopt if you want your kids to lean good habits rather than bad ones.
Read MoreReview of Scratch Programming in Easy Steps
The book starts with an introduction to the Scratch 3 environment, and in next to no time the reader is creating a program.
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