While narrowing down the list to ten titles is somewhat artificial, a device, I also wanted to be pretty strict about what I included. I didn’t want this to be just a collation of the beginnings of all the reviews I wrote over the course of the year.
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See the book on Amazon by clicking the pic (affiliate link)
Tiny Noticeable Things: The Secret Weapon to Making a Difference in Business
When my room was flooded at three in the morning while staying in a Marriott hotel in Los Angeles, an assistant helped me to relocate to a different – and drier! – room. As compensation for the inconvenience, she gave me a voucher for a free breakfast in the morning. Bleary-eyed, I accepted it. On waking…
Read MoreWhat does the future hold for the book?
Perhaps before we can see any major and widespread developments in books (beyond the innovation of audiobooks) we need to rethink what exactly we mean by “literature” and “book”.
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books pile, by Terry Freedman
Online education: books just in
In the last two days I’ve received two books for review. One is almost hot off the press — Online Learning for Dummies was published in December 2020 — the other one is slightly warm — published in September 2020.
Read MoreBooks of 2020 -- now with audio
Yesterday I published a blog post entitled Books of 2020, a list of the books I’ve (mostly) read in 2020. Well, it’s a bit of a long read at around 4,000 words, so I’ve created an audio version of it as well.
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Computing books received, by Terry Freedman
Computing books received in March 2019
These books, which I received recently, look interesting, and I’m looking forward to reading and reviewing them. All book links are Amazon affiliate links.
How to think like a coder was shortlisted for an educational writers’ award, which you can read about here: The 2018 Educational Writers Award. I didn’t receive this in March, but have only now started to look at it in depth. I’ve already penned a few notes about it here: Books in Brief: How to think like a coder.
Monitored, which I’ve just started reading, is an examination of big data and surveillance from a Marxist perspective. I haven’t looked at any Marxist literature for a very long time — not since I tried to read Das Kapital when I was 17 (I got as far as page 23, which was 8 pages further than one of my teachers!) — so it’s a completely new perspective for me, which makes this an interesting, if difficult, read.
It covers similar ground to other books on the same subject matter that I have to review — indeed it references some of them — but with a clearly different take on the whole thing. I have to say that from the little I’ve read so far I remain unconvinced, and happily so.
Mission Python has been sent to me by Teach Secondary magazine. As the title suggests, it’s a book that teaches you how to program in Python. All I can say about it so far is that it looks colourful, and that I’m looking forward to reading it.
Photo from pixabay.com CC0
Prize draw: win an ed tech book
Details of a chance to win a great book. Two copies of each of Living in a Digital World and Teacher’s Guide to Tech are up for grabs! Read on for details — competition closes tonight (2nd December 2018) at midnight London, UK, time.
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Covers of my forthcoming books
Books in progress
A progress report on the three books I’m currently working on — and information about a freebie!
Read MoreNot too late to enter a prize draw for one of three Computing in education books
To be in with a chance of winning one of three really good books, just follow the instructions in this article.
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Learn something new, and have a good laugh, with Digital Education! Photo from Stencil. Licence: CC0
What's in the next issue of Digital Education?
The forthcoming issue of the Digital Education ezine features 9 interesting articles. This article gives you the lowdown on three of the topics covered, and how to sign up to it.
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Books erratum
In a recent article I said that a particular book was my first 'proper' book -- and then I remembered the previous half dozen or so! This article sets the record straight.
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5 types of review for computing and ICT books
When it comes to writing reviews of computing and ICT books for education, I've found that a one-size fits all approach not to be very useful. Here are the 5 types of review I write, ranging from the full length, everything but the kitchen sink version, to zero words except to say "This book exists"!
Read MoreReview of Building Parental Engagement in Schools
Are parents a necessary evil from a school's point of view,or can they be an essential part of the work of the school? And if so, how? This book provides some (though not all) of the answers.
Read MoreFutureLab Publications Available
Futurelab, the forward-looking and innovative think tank, is moving from Bristol to London, and one of the consequences of this is that it will have less space.
Read More8 Reasons to Look at the Books Page
Some time ago I set up a book page on this website, because I thought it would be handy to have all the books I've reviewed in the same place. It would also make it easy for readers to purchase books too.
What I have now done, to give the page additional value, is put a brief extract from each review alongside each book. If you like what you read, you can click on a link to be taken to the complete review; otherwise, you can just skip it and go on to the next one.
I think in due course I will probably have to create more such pages because that page is already starting to look rather long -- the number of books has been set to 25, but I may start a new page before then. I suppose I'll also have to figure out how to put them into alphabetical order, although it may be easier to create an index, or even just to leave it altogether: I have tested the website's search engine for finding books, and it works very efficiently.
I'd be interested in your views on such matters. I've devised a survey that will take about 2 minutes to complete and is anonymous. I hope you will be kind enough to use it to have your say.
Oh, and the 8 reasons referred to in the title of this post? Eight of the books have been reviewed and published on the page so far; there are several more to come.