7 Ways to make IT real: 6 Use what you have

Make use of what you already have.

What you have, in fact, is your pupils and other members of staff. Even if you are in a small school, or a large school but with no team, you may still be able to give your pupils the experience of addressing real problems through computing and ICT.

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7 questions to ask regarding whether education technology improves learning

computer classDoes education technology improve learning? The intuitive answer to those of us involved in education technology is “of course it does”. However, the evidence from research is not conclusive. I think the reason is that it’s actually very difficult to carry out robust research in this area. As the impact of education technology has often been a topic for discussion in the Naace and Mirandanet mailing lists, I thought it might be useful to try and clarify the issues as I see them.
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Flash fiction and computing

Flash!I’ve been trawling through the archives, and came across the following article. If you missed it the first time around, here’s a chance to read it. If you read it when it was first published, well here’s your chance to enjoy it again!

It’s about flash fiction, and how it can help teach ICT – don’t be put off by the old-fashioned terminology: it all still applies to the new computing curriculum.

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Everyone’s an educational expert, but it was ever thus

How to be an expertHave you noticed how everybody seems to be an expert on education these days? In fact, you only have to pick up a newspaper more or less any day of the week to find some minor celebrity saying something asinine like “Schools should teach kids how to stay safe online” (Really? What a great idea. How come we  didn’t think of that?!). I don’t take much notice of these people, but it does annoy me when they somehow get on to conference programmes.
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Blasts from our ICT Past

CSUDH ArchiveI’ve been trawling through the archives again (I don’t get out much). The following appeared in the very first edition of my newsletter, which was originally called Computers in Classrooms (but is now called Digital Education), on 3rd April 2000:

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Digital Education Ezine April 2015

Bett 2015 Board 3At last! Or, to use the vernacular, woo hoo! The latest edition of the Digital Education ezine is now out. It contains a round-up of products seen at Bett, articles on girls and women in technology, loads of links and book reviews. Here’s a detailed list of the contents:
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Articles you may have missed

Although I slowed down over the Easter break – at least in terms of writing blog posts – I did write a few articles. Here is a selection that you may find interesting and useful. While you’re reading those, I shall be working on the next edition of the newsletter Digital Education.
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6 Ideas for teaching the Computing curriculum

Aspirations in Computing StudentsI thought these posts from the archives might be interesting: 6 ideas for teaching the Computing curriculum. Unfortunately, being mathematically challenged, I originally inadvertently designated two of them as “#2”. That’s why I never became a maths teacher. However, I have since renumbered them, so they start at zero, which is, computationally speaking, a pretty good thing to do. Anyway, although the series refers to the “forthcoming Computing curriculum”, the ideas themselves are still useful I believe. I hope you agree.
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