Coming soon (probably tomorrow, 21st December 2021), a bumper small edition of my esteemed newsletter. It contains some interesting stuff, including advanced notice of a fantastic prize draw in which you can win a ‘credit card'-sized microprocessor that allows you to create projects and then download them to the device. It includes 25 LEDs and a sounder allowing you to create music.
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So, you’ve landed a great new job, an important one at that, as an ed tech leader or co-ordinator. But in your eagerness to make an impact, are you making some fundamental mistakes? Here’s a quick guide about what not to do.
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If you really want to make yourself unpopular, then not providing enough information is a sure-fire way of going about it. If you’re a teacher advising your Headteacher, you need to provide sufficient information – whether you’ve been asked for it or not.
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You would think that providing timely information would be just the thing to get you applauded. However, as the song from Porgy and Bess tells us, it ain’t necessarily so. It really all depends on what the information is, and to whom you’re making it available.
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Science fiction writers would have us believe that intelligent machines will either enslave us or get rid of human beings altogether. But what if they were extremely benign and protective towards us? What could possibly go wrong?
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I’m thinking that even if I gave a book I reviewed a rave write-up and five stars, it might still not make the list if a book I deemed deserving of four stars is comparatively better.
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Fortunately, such an inability to explore interesting and sensible questions would not be found in a real inspection. Would it??
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Has there ever been such a frenzy of thinking and activity over a concept which does not even exist? I am referring, of course, to the ridiculous notion of so-called '21st century skills'
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If you produce the school’s newsletter, or a departmental newsletter, or a newsletter for parents, filler text will enable you to quickly test a new template without worrying about the actual content.
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The short answer to the question that forms the title of this article is “Yes”. Even so…
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There must surely be few things more annoying than, having put a lot of work into a course, you discover that someone has ripped you off. They are using your materials in their course. They might even be selling your materials somewhere online.
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On December 7th, 2015, I wrote an article explaining how you could set up a spreadsheet in Excel to help you predict and analyse students’ grades.
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There seems to be no end of attempts to improve education by people who have either never worked in it, or not understood what they were looking at.
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I was once offered discounts on buying a suite of computers for my school if I persuaded my colleagues to take out an insurance policy!
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I like to try and give people the benefit of the doubt, but is that always the right approach? Ambrose Bierce defined a cynic as someone who sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.
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Back in the year 2001 Google was still very much the new-ish kid on the block.
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While this book is comprehensive, and gives instructions step by step, it is not what you might call an idiot’s guide.
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This article was originally published on the Bee Digital Marketing website. Although it was mainly aimed at companies, many of the principles apply to anyone wanting to implement a new application in school.
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Here is a very strange paradox. On the one hand, everyone agrees that a key ingredient for success in life is having great teachers. On the other, there’s a relentless narrative that education is somehow broken and that fixing it entails replacing teachers or transforming some or all of what they do.
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Is it really true that classrooms haven’t changed since the year 1600?
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