It all started with Brexit. At least, that’s when I first became aware of the preponderance of people who are more than happy to pontificate about, and lecture the rest of us on, a subject of which they have no expertise.
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In 1994 I set out with my wife to discover the best place to buy a computer system -- and discovered a lot of sexism along the way.
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The following events may be of interest to teachers.
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Starting a new job as head of the Information Technology and Business Studies department in a school, I was filled with excitement, and a certain amount of anxiety — but not entirely for the usual reasons…
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Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education) has published its first report in ages into Computing as a subject. I've summarised the findings, and added some links and comments on my own in italics.
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After a year of weighing up the pros and cons I decided to start a couple of publications on Substack. One is about literature and life in general, and the other one is focused on education more generally
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Why I’m unfollowing people more and more.
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If AI generates an essay, and another AI grades it, has anything useful actually happened?
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The Department for Education’s newly beefed-up National Tutoring Scheme enables schools to arrange tutoring for their students at discounted rate is purely voluntary, but…
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Every time I attend an educational ICT conference, at least one of the speakers talks about how little we know about the future. But their argument doesn’t make sense.
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Has there ever been such a frenzy of thinking and activity over a concept which does not even exist? I am referring, of course, to the ridiculous notion of so-called '21st century skills'.
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You want the review to be fair, but you also want it to be honest. Maybe being honest is neither objective nor neutral.
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Is 'making' really an effective -- or cost-effective -- way of learning programming?
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My public writing tends to be mostly about education technology, and the craft of nonfiction writing. My interests are more varied than that brief description would suggest, but to avoid muddying the waters I either attempt to skew an article so that it fits into one of those categories, or not publish it at all. But now that has changed…
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Mark Bentley shares his views on the Government’s Online Safety Bill.
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Here is some news about an update to a program that enables children to write something and illustrate it. It was demonstrated at Bett.
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The British government wants to make technology companies more responsible for policing online harms. It's one of those ideas that sounds great in theory but is fraught with difficulties.
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You may not know this, but I really really try to greet pronouncements from the Department for Education in a positive manner. But, quite frankly, they make that impossible.
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Just in case you weren't aware, the previous Education Secretary in England, Gavin Williamson, is going to be given a knighthood. Admittedly he had a rotten task, having to deal with education during a pandemic and lockdowns. Even so….
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Unfortunately, I am unable to attend Bett this year. However, as I received a few kind invitations from companies to meet look at products, I thought I could at least pass the information on to you.
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