Terry Freedman's ICT & Computing in Education blog — ICT & Computing in Education

The challenges of implementing the Computing curriculum in England

November 26, 2015

What challenges have you faced in implementing the Computing Programme of Study? What alternatives to ICT at GCSE and A Level have you considered? Please take a moment or two to fill out this survey. Results are open for all to see.

About this website, and about me

November 25, 2015

I've updated my "About" page. I'd love to know what you think.

Fiction and computational thinking

November 23, 2015

Fiction and computational thinking go together in my opinion. Fiction presents exciting possibilities for teachers and students of computing.

SOLE destroying: an advantage of analogue over digital

November 23, 2015

I was going to ask "What do African school children -- you know, the ones who walk for miles and miles to get to school -- know that Sugata Mitra doesn't?

Teens, technology and friendships

November 22, 2015

A new report from Pew Internet.

If the decision to scrap ICT qualifications has left you feeling frazzled, read on.

Approved ICT and Computing qualifications

November 19, 2015

UPDATED yet again! The decision to "scrap" the GCSE and 'A' level qualifications in Information and Communication Technology have dismayed a lot of people. In a spirit of pragmatism rather than defeatism, I've compiled a list of eligible alternative qualifications, which you can download from here.

Open badges in a nutshell. (c) @bryanMMathers. Used with permission through a CC-BY-ND licence. — Open badges in a nutshell. (c) @bryanMMathers. Used with permission through a CC-BY-ND licence.

Personalising Computing assessment with badges

November 17, 2015

The attractive thing about badges is that a school can invent their own categories and achievement levels.

The Digital Education newsletter sign-up buttons: a salutary story

November 11, 2015

The sign-up buttons for the Digital Education newsletter have been in place for ages. So why was there a sudden drop in subscriptions?

10 good resources and 2 competitions for ICT and Computing teachers

November 6, 2015

Discussion lists, blog posts, teachers' guides and competitions are all featured in today's article.

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?