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.

Why school is still relevant in the age of technology and Covid-19

April 30, 2020

Now is the perfect opportunity to test the proposition that schools are unnecessary. Are kids able to self-motivate, do relevant work at the appropriate level and maintain a good and healthy social life?

What I've learnt from online classes: mute that mic

April 27, 2020

Here are the incredibly annoying things that I’ve heard because people have kept their microphones on during online discussions.

My audio files experiment

April 24, 2020

Around 2007 I had a widget embedded in my blog that enabled me to convert the text to an audio file. That stopped working. I’m trying out another one now, and here are my initial results.

You’re going on a journey now, so document it. Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Covid19: Document it!

April 23, 2020

Looking on the bright side, if you have started teaching your classes online, or setting work for your pupils online, this forced closure of many schools is a great opportunity to carry out some research.

Book review: Little Quick Fix: Find the theme in your data

April 22, 2020

How do you find out what main themes are coming through your qualitative research data? In short, how can you see the wood for the trees? This is the issue which this book addresses

Recent book reviews

Review: The Shortest History of AI

How is it that ChatGPT, Claude and other Al models appear to perform so well at certain complex tasks that some people become convinced that they're sentient — only for them to then promptly fail at simple tasks that even a child could handle?

Review: Teacher Geek

Every so often I like to take a look, or another look, at a book published a while ago, and today I’ve been looking at Teacher Geek, by Rachel Jones.

Review: Teach Fast

The book contains some interesting ideas.

A question of leadership

I have somewhat dichotomous views of this question of whether leaders make a difference, or much of a difference. I think my views can be classified as macro and micro.

Review: Making Good Progress?

Daisy Christodoulou carefully picks apart the pitfalls of various kinds of assessment, drawing on different subject areas to do so.

principles and practice of assessment.jpg

Review: Principles and Practices of Assessment

There is plenty in this book to like.

Review: Effective Teaching: Evidence and Practice

Although this is a few years old now (2018), it has stood the test of time.

Review: One for maths teachers

This wide-ranging book takes in probability, fractals, astronomy, Babbage, Lovelace and a host of other areas and people.

Reviews: Two for History teachers

Two books on the Nazi era.

Review: One for English teachers

No book about the craft of writing seems complete without a stern chapter on the importance of eschewing adverbs and adjectives - but what to put in their place?