Three communities that ICT and Computing teachers should join.
Read MoreCommunities are important!
An important note from Terry
A short while ago I published a blog post about the forthcoming ResearchEd Tech conference. What I hadn't realised is that, without human intervention, this new platform automatically generates a url.
Read MoreResearchEd Tech conference
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 MoreWe’re moving to a mobile-friendly template
I’m in the process of changing this website to a mobile-friendly version. With any luck, this website won’t disappear in the meantime. If you do happen to get one of those horrible “Page not found” messages, please keep trying. Apparently it can take up to 72 hours for it all to come to life again.Ada Lovelace Day Competition
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 More5 reasons to join Computing communities
Teaching can be a lonely profession, especially if, as is often the case, you are the sole teacher of ICT or Computing in your school. Whether you’re on your own or part of a team, I’d thoroughly recommend joining a community or several. Why?Pupils don't always benefit from doing it themselves
We all know and love the concept of learning by doing. Because of that, many teachers get pupils to type out a program, create a Scratch program or populate a spreadsheet or database themselves. However, there are a number of problems that can arise from this approach.
Read More7 Things to consider when considering adopting another school’s “big idea”
So, you’ve visited a school, and seen its new “big idea” in action. The reception area of the school proclaims, “We are an X school!”, where “X” is the big idea: Flipped Learning, Bring Your Own Device, One-to-One, or anything else. It looks great – wonderful, in fact – but will it work in your school? Here are seven things you need to consider.ICT and Computing Reading catch-up
Greetings! I hope you have had a nice summer break. I’ve taken some time off, in the sense of not trying to update this website as frequently as I usually do. But I was doing some reading and writing, so I thought you may find these links interesting as you start a new school year.
Believe it or not, I started this post a week ago. It’s not that I’m a slow writer (I’m not), but I kept thinking “Ooh, that would be interesting to include” and “Ooh, that looks good too”. well, after a lot of “ooh-ing” I thought “Ooh, I’d better stop and hit the Publish button”. Just as well, because one of the conferences I mention is tomorrow – eeek! Anyway, now even this intro has started to take on a life of its own, so I’m going to stop right now. There. See? It’s just a question of self-discipline.
Making the flipped classroom work
The principle of the flipped classroom — that kids learn the content at home and discuss and work with it in school — is something that many teachers would probably agree with. But there are problems with the “pure” model of flipping the classroom, and so we need to be able to compromise.7 Ways to make IT real
I've always been a great advocate of what I call "authentic" learning, ie giving pupils a reason to actually do something. (I think that stems from my time at school, when I was forced to do mathematical exercises ad nauseum with no perceptible point to them!)
A couple of years ago I wrote a short series of articles called "7 ways to make IT real". As it happens, there were 8 articles in that series, thereby proving that all those years of my being made to do maths exercises were a complete waste of time....
4 reasons not to have an e-learning committee in a school
In my last post I suggested 6 reasons to have an e-learning committee in a school. But not everything in the garden is rosy. Based on my experience as ICT co-ordinator in several secondary (high) schools, here are what I see as the downsides.6 reasons to have an e-learning committee in a school
In my past roles as ICT Co-ordinator or e-learning co-ordinator, I have formed and chaired an ICT or e-learning committee. What are the pros and cons of having such a body?Professional judgement in assessing Computing
“OK, then. What do you think about this?”
I was talking to the delegates on a course I was running entitled Assessing Computing. We were discussing sources of evidence of pupils having learnt stuff.
“What if you took the view: I’m a professional, and I’ll know it when I see it?”
The reactions of the class were very interesting.
Book review: Don’t Change the Lightbulbs
This book collects together the thoughts and observations of over 71 people in education. These are each a little longer than the bite-sized comments typical of Twitter – I understand that they were curated from Google+ discussions. Being longer than 140 characters makes them "meaty" without being too long.
Read MoreIn total around 70 topics are covered, not all of them curricular.
A message for posterity
I have decided to take up the #Blimage Challenge. See the end of this post for more information about it, but basically it’s to write a blog post based on or stimulated by an image someone sends you. Steve Wheeler has made the picture below available. The wiki train timetable
Imagine a train timetable catalogue created along the same lines as Wikipedia. This is how it might work.7 questions to ask regarding whether education technology improves learning
Does education technology improve learning? The intuitive answer to those of us involved in education technology is “of course it does”. However, the evidence from research is not conclusive. I think the reason is that it’s actually very difficult to carry out robust research in this area. As the impact of education technology has often been a topic for discussion in the Naace and Mirandanet mailing lists, I thought it might be useful to try and clarify the issues as I see them.7 reasons not to swear in blogs
It seems to be depressingly more and more likely to find that a blog article which looks promising is peppered with swear words – or one particular swear word that is repeated ad nauseum. I think that writers of such blog posts are making a grave error. Here are my reasons.A too-robust approach to spam
I was reading recently that something like 47% of emails are spam. I can believe it. I get the whole range: offers of Russian brides, Viagra, genie bras, news that a previously unknown relative has left me tons of money and messages exhorting me to open the attached document or confirm my security details. All this would be quite funny on one level, but it makes downloading and then sifting through email that much more difficult.
So I decided to do something about it.