A book on temporal adventures may seem like an odd inclusion here, but it can actually be used in many ways.
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Review: The Language of Deception: Weaponizing Next Generation AI, by Justin Hutchens
AI might not be ‘intelligent’ in the strictest sense – but it can certainly appear to be, which is almost as worrying.
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Review of Tips for teachers: 400+ ideas to improve your teaching
Don’t let this book’s size (nearly 600 pages) put you off. It’s comprehensive, and very well structured and laid out.
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It’s a start! Photo by Terry Freedman
Money, money, money -- again
This is an updated version of an article I published on my writing website in 2015. In my experience, it absolutely applies to artists, teachers and other creatives as well as writersor consultants.
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Snowball, by Terry Freedman
I don't like ice-breakers
One of the more unfortunate effects of lockdown and its concomitant requirement of online learning is the application of different kinds of ice-breaker. To be fair, most ice-breaker activities leave me cold…
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This is what Ideogrm.ai came up with in response to the prompt “Person using AI”.
Do kids still need to learn how to code?
A week or so ago we were chatting to a neighbour. She said she thinks her daughter, who looked about six years old, should learn how to code, as that’s the future. Didn’t I agree? I’m afraid I said that didn’t.
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Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
The Joint Consultative Committee
Every so often I read about a headteacher caving in to students ‘demanding’ their rights, or demanding something or other. The usual technique is to go from zero degrees to boiling in no seconds flat, bunking off lessons to ‘protest’. My response would be to (a) suspend the lot of them
Read MoreI was a teenage geek (Updated)
One day when I was 15, I was milling around in this youth club trying to look cool, when someone came up to me and asked me if I’d be interested in joining a cinematography club. I’d never touched a cine camera in my life.
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Get off of my lawn
One of the few good things about the emphasis on ‘coding’ now is that as most people acknowledge that they know nothing about it, they leave the people teaching it in peace.
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Picture generated by Ideogram
7 reasons that the FAIL acronym fails (Updated)
Failing is empowering.
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Why you should collaborate on a Computing scheme of work (Updated)
In the article 12 Characteristics of a good Computing Scheme of Work I said that people should work with other people on their Computing scheme of work. Why?
Read More12 Characteristics of a good Computing Scheme of Work
*UPDATED* What are the attributes of a good ICT and Computing scheme of work? Here's the list of characteristics I've always looked for.
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Something ain’t right, by Terry Freedman
Bad pitches
Examples of how not to try and sell a product or an idea.
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How useful is AI for generating words?
As it happens, I first addressed this question in 2012, and the first part of this essay, down to the part about robots, is taken from the notes I made then. My opinion hasn’t changed, in spite of the enormous strides in AI in the last twelve years.
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Quick looks: The collaboration book
I’ve just sent Teach Secondary magazine my review of this book, so I can’t say much before that’s published.
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Mobile phones: Another ritual
Every so often an Education Secretary announces a ban on mobile phones in school (which always turns out to be guidance, not mandatory). It's a sort of non-policy, a statement for the purpose, in my opinion, of wanting to say something, anything.
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Photo by Terry Freedman
Teacher admin tasks: the ritual is alive and well
In January 2024 the English Department for Education published its initial thoughts on teacher admin tasks, as in what teachers should not be expected to have to do.
This is one of those rituals that the DfE goes through every so often in one form or another.
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Quick look: The Language of Deception
I’m not convinced to any extent at all that not being able to tell the difference between a computer and a person means that the computer is intelligent. However, the original formulation of Turing’s ‘imitation game’ was whether a machine could be perceived as being intelligent.
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The 3,000 Part Computing Lesson Revisited
I daresay there are schools in which teachers are expected to divide all their lessons into manageable chunks in accordance with Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). The fact that CLT is light on the specifics and is a load of rubbish is seemingly no deterrent.
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Review: The Book at war
The Book at War is a fascinating study of how books and other reading matter have variously influenced politics, propaganda and history over time.
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