Review: Breaking the News Exhibition

June 19, 2022

As the British Library’s event, ‘Breaking the News’ exhibition demonstrates, fake news has been a feature of news reporting for at least 500 years.

Words are important because they have connotations

June 25, 2020

You could imbibe the entire day’s news just by reading the first paragraph of each article in the newspaper. But what you would miss out on is any nuance or deep explanation. Unfortunately, when research in ed tech is reported in news outlets, the nuances and caveats, and useful information like sample size, are lost as well.

Click the cover to see the book on Amazon (Amazon Associate link)

Book Review: Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America

March 23, 2020

Don’t let the country-specific title put you off. This is a very useful (and readable) book.

Digital Education Newsletter: Fake News Special

September 26, 2019

How can you tell if a video on a website is faked? How can you tell if a news outlet is being economical with the truth via misleading headlines? With around 20 links to useful resources, the next issue of the Digital Education newsletter has the answers.

Coming soon in the Digital Education newsletter

September 6, 2019

The next edition of this esteemed newsletter has a cornucopia of links that will be of interest to teachers of computing and media literacy especially, and very little commentary! Read on to find out more.

Fake news, the great training robbery and a bunch of other stuff

July 20, 2017

The next issue of the Digital Education will soon be out. Here's a brief guide to what's in it.

Recent book reviews

Review: How I review books on edtech

My views on what constitutes a book on edtech are fairly catholic. Indeed, it would me more accurate to denote the books I review as books for teachers of ICT, Computing, digital literacy etc etc,, rather than books on edtech. The latter tend to have titles like “How to teach Computing”, or “How to use Excel in the classroom”.

Review: Nuts and Bolts: How Tiny Inventions Make Our World Work

It's rather disconcerting when one considers that buildings like The Shard are essentially held together by nuts, bolts and washers.

Review: Love Triangle: The Life-changing Magic of Trigonometry

Like, I suspect, many people, I have never knowingly come across an isosceles triangle in my life, and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. However...

Review: Making Sense Of Chaos – A Better Economics for a Better World

Before you rush off on the grounds that this book has nothing to do with Computing, let me reassure you that it does.

Bjork & Bjork’s Desirable Difficulties in Action

The original work on which this volume is based has perhaps been honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

Review: Coderspeak – The language of computer programmers

This book won’t necessarily help a student pass a computing exam, but it will almost certainly make them a more aware, and thus better, programmer.

Review: Quiet Power, by Susan Cain

Introverts thrive by being allowed to be quiet, having time for reflection and not being required to 'perform' all the time.

Quick look: Desirable difficulties in action

The idea of desirable difficulties has always appealed to me. In my teaching I’m partticularly in favour of applying Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development.

Review: The Collaboration Book – 41 Ideas for Working Better

Most people would agree that collaboration is a good thing – so how can we collaborate more effectively in school settings?

Review: Listen: On Music, Sound and Us

This book might not directly address obvious aspects of the music curriculum, but it can certainly give teachers access to a rich seam of facts and anecdotes with which to embellish their lessons.