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Misleading Images
This lesson aims to introduce students to the concept of misleading images, and to try and engender in students a certain skepticism when interacting with media. This lesson could potentially be used...
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Representation
This lesson used to be part of a unit which was dropped from the Year 7-9 ICT Course due to time constraints. However, the content is so powerful that I decided to include it, not as a unit, but as a...
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ICT In Schools
Over the last few years I have noticed a dispiriting trend in schools: less and less discreet ICT being taught in fewer and fewer schools. This seems odd in the face of the massive increase in and...
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iGCSE ICT Resource List
In order to encourage my new iGCSE ICT students to delve deeper into the subject, I am recommending the following list of optional reading and viewing materials. The content and concepts contained in...
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Communication Comparison
As ICT and media tools have become more and more integrated into our lives, certain limitations have become extremely apparent. This is especially true in terms of the ability of ICT tools to...
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Anatomy Of A Blog
This visual, which I created a few years ago, is useful for helping students learn some of the technical vocabulary that goes along with building websites, blogs and portfolios. Full Size Version (PNG)...
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Canned Response: Impolite Student
In my dual role as ICT Coordinator and Teacher of ICT, I receive a lot of emails from students, invariably asking for help with some aspect of their computing environment. Whilst the majority of these...
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Software Philosophy
I love open source software, not just for technological reasons, but also for philosophical reasons. Isn't it lovely to be able to share things freely and build a better world together? Over the past...
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Bossy Girl
About a year ago I started to become much more aware of the gender gap in my ICT classroom, and it is something I have written about since. At the moment I am working on a research task to look into...
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Friends Without Benefits
What Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, Instagram, and Internet Porn Are Doing to America’s Teenage Girls This is an abridged version of the full article from Vanity Fair. It has been prepared for educational...
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Gadget Shop
Fed up of students wanting only the latest, trendiest gadget (usually from Apple at our school), I created this lesson to get students to more rationally and thoroughly assess a range of gadgets. One...
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Blindfolded Team Drawing
I have recently been mixing things up in my classroom, offering games at the end of a lesson when students have really engaged. To keep them on their toes I have had classes play computer games where...
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Should We Stop Teaching Handwriting?
Whilst I am no fanboy, there is one thing that I think Apple does well: phasing out obsolete technology. Whether it was floppy drives in the 90s or DVD drives and Ethernet ports in the 10s, there is no...
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Heartbleed: What You Need To Do
This week, tech news websites have been raising the alarm about Heartbleed (a massive Internet security scare), and the mainstream media are slowly catching up. With this media exposure, a lot of...
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The Importance Of Design
Often I feel that I teach students all sorts of tricks and techniques to make their work look better, but that they fail to apply them to their work. Some of this is inexperience, but sometimes I think...
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Wiring A Plug
Looking back on my own time in secondary school I remember, in terms of useful practical outcomes, precisely one lesson. Of course there are many more which influenced and shaped me, but only one that...
View ArticleEpic Wallpers
In Year 7, my students undertake a short unit of work called Epic Wallpaper, in which they attempt to make a glossy wallpaper using Acorn and some graphic design techniques. This is the first year I...
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It’s Complicated
danah boyd‘s It’s Complicated (full PDF) is a book which seeks to change the way we view teenagers and their use of digital technology. Viewed as a vulnerable demographic, teens, it is commonly...
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Visual Assessment Guide
What started last year as a Self Assessment Guide, has been reworked into a more general tool for assessment. This new guide is suitable for teacher, peer or self assessment and also offers a visual...
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Anatomy Of A Phishing Scam
Phishing scams are easy to fall for, and hackers know they only need to catch a small proportion of potential victims to make it worth their while. Use the guide below to teach students and staff how...
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Hands On Stuff
At the end of last school year I asked my students for some feedback. One of the things that came through loudly was a desire for more hands on time. This was most acute in Year 8, where I had simply...
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Digital Scavenger Hunt PD
Over the summer holidays I spent quite some time thinking about how best to use 3 upcoming whole-staff professional development sessions planned for my school. In the past I have found that no matter...
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Free Learning
Free running* invites participants to use creativity, skill and strength to find new ways to navigate a landscape. It is fun, engaging and highly motivating for those who participate. It takes a space...
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Automator: A Quick Mac Tip
Mac OS X comes with an app called Automator, that lets you string actions together to make simple programmes. It allows, for example, resizing 100 photos in one go. Or, as in the example below, taking...
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Relative vs Absolute
In ICT we see the concepts of absolute and relative in a range of situations, including URLs, spreadsheets and programming. Although hard for students to grasp, the distinction is important. With...
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Emoji Story
I am starting to wonder how emoji (expressive characters) might affect the way students learn to communicate. As an experiment, I am going to ask my Year 7 students to produce an "Emoji Story", using...
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Dropbox Security Breach
In the language of black hat hackers (bad hackers), being pwned means having your defenses breached or your data taken. The excellent online service haveibeenpwned.com tracks major security breaches...
View ArticleExemplar Me vs Me
In consider the topic of digital citizenship, and refecting on their own identity and participation in online platforms, I ask my students to create a piece of design work called Me vs. Me. Most...
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