Blogging taster course

June 12, 2020

A forthcoming course should help you decide whether or not blogging is for you.

Online preparation checklist for teachers

June 11, 2020

In case you’ve recently been asked to run a course online, here’s a quick 10-point checklist to help you prepare for your first online teaching session.

Online preparation checklist for students

June 11, 2020

If you haven’t taught a particular group online before now, you may find it useful to send out this guide to the students. It’s not a detailed guide to any particular software, just some good practice tips.

How teachers can use the tick box in Google Sheets

June 10, 2020

Google sheets has a tick box feature. Here are some ways you can make use of it.

Is it possible to boast without appearing to boast, in a blog post?

June 9, 2020

How to boast without boasting?

Something ain't right, by Terry Freedman

(Bad) management

June 5, 2020

If you head up a department in a school, or hold a similar post, here are some examples of how not to manage people.

Book review: Talk Triggers

June 2, 2020

Talk Triggers is a word-of-mouth marketing guide with a difference: lots of examples of success stories, but also a logical analysis of why they worked.

Micromanagement? No thanks!

May 29, 2020

If you’re tempted to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ during this pandemic, my suggestion is: don’t!

Set trivial assignments for students of Computing stuck at home

May 28, 2020

Why set students real-world, life-changing, humanity-saving problems when trivial challenges are likely to prove equally, if not more, useful?

Problems in the edtech classroom #5: Where's my website?!

May 27, 2020

In 2006 my website went down right in the middle of a lesson. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time.

Reflections from a teacher training course 2

May 27, 2020

I believe in simple instructions. Here are the instructions I gave to a new cohort of teacher trainees, plus a short commentary on what went right — and what didn’t.

How to make use of your Kindle pdf annotations

May 23, 2020

If you’ve annotated a pdf document on your Kindle, how do you then get those notes into a word processor? This article describes a way of doing so.

Do teachers have the right to not make decisions about the curriculum?

May 22, 2020

Why should students be expected to help the teacher decide what goes into the syllabus?

Think outside the box, by Terry Freedman

How to enhance your free offer to schools

May 22, 2020

Lots of edtech companies are offering free stuff to schools. How can yours stand out from the crowd?

Reflections from a teacher training course 1

May 18, 2020

My reflections on a first session I taught on a teacher training course are still apposite today.

Articles you can listen to

May 17, 2020

Here’s a list of the articles you can listen to on the ICT & Computing in Education website.

Should teaching be a Masters profession?

May 15, 2020

I for one am heartily sick of people thinking that anyone can teach just because it involves, as they see it, standing in front of a class of kids and spouting forth.

Getting new blog posts to come to YOU

May 14, 2020

You don’t have to visit lots of different blogs to discover the latest articles on them.

Book review bulletin 1

May 13, 2020

I’ve recently reviewed four ed tech-related books. Here are links to them. They are: Teachers vs Tech? * How charts lie * Little quick fix: finding the theme in your data * Hello world: how to be human in the age of the machine

A Minor Harp, by Terry Freedman — *A Minor Harp*, by Terry Freedman

Covid-19: No escape from the blues

May 13, 2020

An unfortunate consequence (for me) of the current lockdown.

Recent book reviews

When AI can write as well as this, I'll worry! Plus a prize competition.

To paraphrase what Arthur C Clarke said about teachers, any writer that can be replaced by a computer probably should be.

Review: The Shortest History of Music -- two reviews in one!

The music programme of study requires students to possess an understanding of the music they perform and that which they listen to, as well as a grasp of music history, and an appreciation of different musical styles.

Review: The Art of Uncertainty (two reviews in one)

The Computing department would find the section on facial recognition interesting, because apart from possible ethical concerns, the fact is that even if the system has high accuracy, most of its identifications will be wrong.

Review: The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism (two reviews in one!)

I was intrigued to discover that a popular news magazine of the sixties had been anticipated by Defoe.

Quick look: AI For Educators

There are some good ideas here, especially for prompts.

Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich -- Extended review

Nearly a hundred years after the Nazi phenomenon people are still asking the question: how could apparently ordinary or, in some cases, highly cultured, people commit such terrible crimes.

Education book reviews of 2024

This pdf contains the reviews of mine that were published in Teach Secondary magazine in 2024.

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...

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