Bob Harrison writes: “We have a computing curriculum and suite of qualifications which neither meet the needs of all pupils nor the needs of a rapidly evolving digital workplace and world.”
Read MoreClick the cover to see the book on Payhip.
Not So Fast (Updated)
I once worked out, around 10 years ago, that there was a new education initiative on average every two weeks.
Read More4 Reasons that doing IT on the cheap is an error of judgement UPDATED
I’ve read about schools beating the budget blues by building their own visualisers, interactive whiteboards and computers. In my opinion these measures are a mistake. When it comes to education technology, the focus should be on value for money and cost-effectiveness rather than simply saving money.
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Click the cover to see the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Review of Dear Data
This book covers an immense range of the kinds of data that we ‘store’. The authors spent a year sending each other weekly, themed postcards. These contained not words, but pictorial representations of the data they had collected.
Read MoreThe value of email in a recession UPDATED
Here’s a cartoon you may find amusing in these rather austere times!
Read MorePictures as stimulii UPDATED
You should encourage your students to always carry a camera of some description with them at all times. And if you are a Head of Department, encourage your staff to do the same.
Read MoreQualitative data is important too UPDATED
I'm a great believer in using different kinds of data to measure how well pupils are doing, not all of which are quantifiable in the usual sense.
Read MoreWhat’s the story? UPDATED
How I hate the word “narrative”! At least, I detest the way it has been usurped by smart-suited political advisers who say things like “We need a new narrative”.
But sometimes, like now, I get what they are talking about, though I prefer to use the word “story”. And my question is: what is the story, what is the whole experience, of Computing in your school?
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Pardon? By Terry Freedman
The usefulness of data
A technical support reporting system is only as good as the information you can extract from it.
Read More5 Must-have conference apps UPDATED
If you go to at least one conference a year, you should consider using one or more of these apps.
Read More11 criteria for evaluating a school’s education technology UPDATED
Whether you are moving to a new school, or staying where you are, it’s good to stand back and try to gauge what the school’s education technology is like. Why you would want to do that if taking up a new post is obvious: you want to see how the land lies so that you can start to identify any improvements that could be made.
Think outside the box, photo by Terry Freedman
Tony Parkin's "Non-review" of the Bee Digital Marketing to Schools Summit 2019
“Disruptive technologist” Tony Parkin has performed a valuable service by collating the tweets relating to the recent Marketing to Schools Summit. Here is a link to his round-up.
Read MoreA self-marking spreadsheet UPDATED
I like a challenge so I thought I’d try to create a self-marking spreadsheet in Excel. I was inspired to have a go at this by someone called Lee Rymill, who uploaded a self-marking spreadsheet to the CAS resources area. However, I wanted to take it a few steps further, using the Visual Basic for Applications programming language.
Read MoreThe trouble with rubrics UPDATED
Rubrics look like an easy way to tackle assessment. But they can be deceptive in that respect, and can cause the unwary to slip up. This article was published on this day 3 years ago. I’ve had to clean up a few links and delete some out-of-date references, but otherwise the article still makes some useful points about assessing Computing and related subjects using rubrics.
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Print Friendly. Screenshot by Terry Freedman
Review of Print Friendly
The layout of articles on some websites may be beautiful on screen, but make it a nightmarish experience to print the articles out. Print Friendly is a good solution to this problem.
Read MoreReview of Bee Digital's Marketing to Schools Summit
What is the Marketing to Schools Summit, and what was good, and not so good, about it?
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Exclamation mark, by Terry Freedman
A Self-referential blog post
An apparently pointless article but one that has a point if you think about it.
Read MoreTwitter infestation
Ultracrepidarians, disrespectful people —- why bother with Twitter?
Read MoreReview: Trust me, I'm lying
In TMIL, Holiday demonstrates how easy it is to manipulate the news. A must-read for teachers of media or digital literacy.
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The UserID interface, by Terry Freedman
Useless utilities, pointless programs -- and why we should encourage kids to create them
We should encourage pupils to write useless bits of code. Here’s why.
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