Discussion lists, blog posts, teachers' guides and competitions are all featured in today's article.
Read MoreFinishing touches →
People really do judge by appearances. (If you don’t believe me, try turning up to your next job interview wearing wellingtons and a pair of shorts.)
Read MoreHow I got into coding and why I think everyone should do it!
"As soon as I found out about how to write code, I was hooked. I realised that this was what I should have been doing all along." Anna Shipman, who works for the Government Digital Service, talks about her love of coding.
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The usual headlines...
Education technology research, and how it's reported
Journalists often seem to get it wrong when it comes to reporting educational research, and they seem to love it when they can go with a headline like “Schools wasting money on useless technology”. I made that up, but the reporting of the recent OECD research, the Decoding Learning research from Nesta in 2012 and other work is quite often presented in those sort of terms.
Everything is not all that it seems but, importantly, what can we do about it?
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Communities are important!
3 ICT and Computing communities you should join
Three communities that ICT and Computing teachers should join.
Read MoreAn important note from Terry
A short while ago I published a blog post about the forthcoming ResearchEd Tech conference. What I hadn't realised is that, without human intervention, this new platform automatically generates a url.
Read MoreResearchEd Tech conference
Saturday 17th October sees the first (and hopefully not the last) ResearchEd Tech conference. This is ResearchEd with a technology focus. At the time of writing there appear to be just 5 tickets remaining. However, the intention is to live stream as many sessions as possible.
Read MoreWe’re moving to a mobile-friendly template
I’m in the process of changing this website to a mobile-friendly version. With any luck, this website won’t disappear in the meantime. If you do happen to get one of those horrible “Page not found” messages, please keep trying. Apparently it can take up to 72 hours for it all to come to life again.Ada Lovelace Day Competition
As you may be aware, next Tuesday (13th October) is Ada Lovelace Day. In my next newsletter I’ll be announcing details of a competition whereby three lucky readers can win a copy of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua.
Read More5 reasons to join Computing communities
Teaching can be a lonely profession, especially if, as is often the case, you are the sole teacher of ICT or Computing in your school. Whether you’re on your own or part of a team, I’d thoroughly recommend joining a community or several. Why?Pupils don't always benefit from doing it themselves
We all know and love the concept of learning by doing. Because of that, many teachers get pupils to type out a program, create a Scratch program or populate a spreadsheet or database themselves. However, there are a number of problems that can arise from this approach.
Read More7 Things to consider when considering adopting another school’s “big idea”
So, you’ve visited a school, and seen its new “big idea” in action. The reception area of the school proclaims, “We are an X school!”, where “X” is the big idea: Flipped Learning, Bring Your Own Device, One-to-One, or anything else. It looks great – wonderful, in fact – but will it work in your school? Here are seven things you need to consider.ICT and Computing Reading catch-up
Greetings! I hope you have had a nice summer break. I’ve taken some time off, in the sense of not trying to update this website as frequently as I usually do. But I was doing some reading and writing, so I thought you may find these links interesting as you start a new school year.
Believe it or not, I started this post a week ago. It’s not that I’m a slow writer (I’m not), but I kept thinking “Ooh, that would be interesting to include” and “Ooh, that looks good too”. well, after a lot of “ooh-ing” I thought “Ooh, I’d better stop and hit the Publish button”. Just as well, because one of the conferences I mention is tomorrow – eeek! Anyway, now even this intro has started to take on a life of its own, so I’m going to stop right now. There. See? It’s just a question of self-discipline.
Making the flipped classroom work
The principle of the flipped classroom — that kids learn the content at home and discuss and work with it in school — is something that many teachers would probably agree with. But there are problems with the “pure” model of flipping the classroom, and so we need to be able to compromise.7 Ways to make IT real
I've always been a great advocate of what I call "authentic" learning, ie giving pupils a reason to actually do something. (I think that stems from my time at school, when I was forced to do mathematical exercises ad nauseum with no perceptible point to them!)
A couple of years ago I wrote a short series of articles called "7 ways to make IT real". As it happens, there were 8 articles in that series, thereby proving that all those years of my being made to do maths exercises were a complete waste of time....
4 reasons not to have an e-learning committee in a school
In my last post I suggested 6 reasons to have an e-learning committee in a school. But not everything in the garden is rosy. Based on my experience as ICT co-ordinator in several secondary (high) schools, here are what I see as the downsides.6 reasons to have an e-learning committee in a school
In my past roles as ICT Co-ordinator or e-learning co-ordinator, I have formed and chaired an ICT or e-learning committee. What are the pros and cons of having such a body?Professional judgement in assessing Computing
“OK, then. What do you think about this?”
I was talking to the delegates on a course I was running entitled Assessing Computing. We were discussing sources of evidence of pupils having learnt stuff.
“What if you took the view: I’m a professional, and I’ll know it when I see it?”
The reactions of the class were very interesting.
Book review: Don’t Change the Lightbulbs
This book collects together the thoughts and observations of over 71 people in education. These are each a little longer than the bite-sized comments typical of Twitter – I understand that they were curated from Google+ discussions. Being longer than 140 characters makes them "meaty" without being too long.
Read MoreIn total around 70 topics are covered, not all of them curricular.
A message for posterity
I have decided to take up the #Blimage Challenge. See the end of this post for more information about it, but basically it’s to write a blog post based on or stimulated by an image someone sends you. Steve Wheeler has made the picture below available.