Kay Sawbridge, Faculty Leader of Computing and ICT in a secondary school, has been very active in campaigning against the Government's decision to scrap ICT qualifications. It's a bad decision that could leave thousands of students "disenfranchised" in terms of what they choose to study, and will almost certainly adversely affect a disproportionate number of girls.
In this article, taken from the next issue of the Digital Education newsletter, I interview Kay.
Read More
Make use of what you already have.
What you have, in fact, is your pupils and other members of staff. Even if you are in a small school, or a large school but with no team, you may still be able to give your pupils the experience of addressing real problems through computing and ICT.
Read More
When it comes to ed tech systems, nothing beats a good conversation.
Read More
What challenges have you faced in implementing the Computing Programme of Study? What alternatives to ICT at GCSE and A Level have you considered? Please take a moment or two to fill out this survey. Results are open for all to see.
Read More
UPDATED yet again! The decision to "scrap" the GCSE and 'A' level qualifications in Information and Communication Technology have dismayed a lot of people. In a spirit of pragmatism rather than defeatism, I've compiled a list of eligible alternative qualifications, which you can download from here.
Read More
The attractive thing about badges is that a school can invent their own categories and achievement levels.
Read More
Discussion lists, blog posts, teachers' guides and competitions are all featured in today's article.
Read More
People really do judge by appearances. (If you don’t believe me, try turning up to your next job interview wearing wellingtons and a pair of shorts.)
Read More
Journalists often seem to get it wrong when it comes to reporting educational research, and they seem to love it when they can go with a headline like “Schools wasting money on useless technology”. I made that up, but the reporting of the recent OECD research, the Decoding Learning research from Nesta in 2012 and other work is quite often presented in those sort of terms.
Everything is not all that it seems but, importantly, what can we do about it?
Read More
Three communities that ICT and Computing teachers should join.
Read More
Saturday 17th October sees the first (and hopefully not the last) ResearchEd Tech conference. This is ResearchEd with a technology focus. At the time of writing there appear to be just 5 tickets remaining. However, the intention is to live stream as many sessions as possible.
Read More
As you may be aware, next Tuesday (13th October) is Ada Lovelace Day. In my next newsletter I’ll be announcing details of a competition whereby three lucky readers can win a copy of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua.
Read More