My best IT training days -- index

September 26, 2020

Technology goes wrong from time to time, but isn’t it wonderful when the technology and the training go well?

My Best IT Training Days #6: It's like dating for the first time!

August 19, 2019

An interesting piece of feedback related to training in using education technology in lessons!

My Best IT Training Days #5: The girl with the website

August 12, 2019

Why knowing what the pupils in a class do digitally in their spare time can be a good idea.

My best IT Training Days #4: Using Year 7 kids

August 5, 2019

What were the benefits of using children to take a staff IT training session?

The Press Association, by Terry Freedman

My Best IT Training Days #3: A visit to the Press Association

July 29, 2019

In this article I itemise the things which made a teacher visit to the Press Association in London so valuable. Perhaps it can serve as a checklist of “like-to-haves” for any teacher visit that you are organising.

My Best IT Training Days #2: Website development

July 25, 2019

How can you ensure that teachers who have signed up for your training day get the most out of it? The answer may prove unintuitive.

My best IT training days #1: The Science Department

September 13, 2018

As a complement to my series of articles about my worst training days, I’ve started a series about my best ones. I believe we can learn from both sorts. In this article, I relate an experience of running a twilight training session for a secondary school science department.

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.