Review: Organise Ideas: Thinking by hand, Extending the mind

January 7, 2022

This book is by no means an easy read, but it’s worth persevering with. It explains why graphic organisers or, more accurately, word diagrams work, drawing on various cognitive-related theories to do so.

Quick look: Organise Ideas (follow-up)

November 12, 2021

[When I was a teacher,] as with many of my blog posts these days, my own handouts and lesson summaries were festooned with drawings, diagrams and arrows.

Quick look: Organise Ideas

September 27, 2021

My first impression is that this is a handy toolkit which, once mastered, can be applied in lots of different contexts in any subject.

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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