Micromanagement? No thanks!

May 29, 2020

If you’re tempted to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ during this pandemic, my suggestion is: don’t!

Set trivial assignments for students of Computing stuck at home

May 28, 2020

Why set students real-world, life-changing, humanity-saving problems when trivial challenges are likely to prove equally, if not more, useful?

Problems in the edtech classroom #5: Where's my website?!

May 27, 2020

In 2006 my website went down right in the middle of a lesson. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time.

Reflections from a teacher training course 2

May 27, 2020

I believe in simple instructions. Here are the instructions I gave to a new cohort of teacher trainees, plus a short commentary on what went right — and what didn’t.

How to make use of your Kindle pdf annotations

May 23, 2020

If you’ve annotated a pdf document on your Kindle, how do you then get those notes into a word processor? This article describes a way of doing so.

Do teachers have the right to not make decisions about the curriculum?

May 22, 2020

Why should students be expected to help the teacher decide what goes into the syllabus?

Think outside the box, by Terry Freedman

How to enhance your free offer to schools

May 22, 2020

Lots of edtech companies are offering free stuff to schools. How can yours stand out from the crowd?

Reflections from a teacher training course 1

May 18, 2020

My reflections on a first session I taught on a teacher training course are still apposite today.

Articles you can listen to

May 17, 2020

Here’s a list of the articles you can listen to on the ICT & Computing in Education website.

Should teaching be a Masters profession?

May 15, 2020

I for one am heartily sick of people thinking that anyone can teach just because it involves, as they see it, standing in front of a class of kids and spouting forth.

Getting new blog posts to come to YOU

May 14, 2020

You don’t have to visit lots of different blogs to discover the latest articles on them.

Book review bulletin 1

May 13, 2020

I’ve recently reviewed four ed tech-related books. Here are links to them. They are: Teachers vs Tech? * How charts lie * Little quick fix: finding the theme in your data * Hello world: how to be human in the age of the machine

A Minor Harp, by Terry Freedman — *A Minor Harp*, by Terry Freedman

Covid-19: No escape from the blues

May 13, 2020

An unfortunate consequence (for me) of the current lockdown.

Should all learning take place in the cloud? — Should **all** learning take place in the cloud?

Covid-19: Is an online school the answer?

May 11, 2020

Would an online-only school be a feasible proposition for all pupils?

Leaders are like harp players

May 10, 2020

The best leaders I’ve come across do not constantly interfere. They are not there “playing notes”, trying to show you how brilliant they are.

Click the cover to see the book on Amazon (affiliate link)

Book review: Teachers vs Tech?

May 7, 2020

Two cheers for this well-researched book. If I were still a head of department in a school I would buy a copy or two to lend to interested colleagues, especially NQTs, despite my criticisms.

Fiction and computational thinking (Updated)

May 5, 2020

How might you use fiction as a vehicle for teaching computational thinking? Here are some ideas.

Digital Opportunities for Educational Publishing

May 4, 2020

If you aspire to write educational material and have it published digitally, there’s a great seminar coming up on 6th May 2020.

Book review: How Charts Lie

May 3, 2020

This is a good book to read, and definitely one you’ll want in your armoury of resources.

Recent book reviews

Review: Social Media for Academics

This book is very readable, and if I sound surprised that is because it’s not always true of academics!

Quick looks: VIBE Coding by Example

For the time being, this book is free in Kindle format.

Review: The Game Changers: How Playing Games Changed the World and Can Change You Too

Despite the relative paucity of immediately obvious National Curriculum links, teachers will find several of sections of this book to be highly engaging.

Review: The Dictators: 64 Dictators, 64 Authors, 64 Warnings from History

In some respects one could view this book as a single warning repeated 64 times.

Review: The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A History of the High Street

Taking readers from the Middle Ages to (more or less) the present day, Gray charts how the places where we do our shopping and what we buy have changed over the centuries.

Review: Extraordinary Learning For All

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

Review: Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them

One has the impression that the main role of the university these days is to maximise profit, while that of the majority of teaching staff is to ensure the ‘correct’ views are passed on to students. All the while, students’ main concern seems to be to seek protection from anything that might make them feel unsafe.

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

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

Still relevant (sadly): How to lie with statistics, by Darrell Huff

Although this book is over 60 years old, it is remarkably apposite for our times -- and especially in the fields of educational research and assessing pupils' understanding and progress.

Quick looks: Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them

It was a great source of pride to me, getting hundreds of students through their A levels and encouraging them to go to university. But for some time I have asked myself a question: would I recommend this route now?