Blog
How to teach with John Stuart Mill
Posted on May 15, 2022
This was originally posted on the Lib Dem Teacher blog in 2015. Let’s imagine you want to teach pupils what a verb is. You give them a brief definition, and a few examples of verbs being used in sent…
Is “learning loss” the right phrase?
Posted on September 8, 2020
This post can also be found on the No More Marking blog here. Over the last few months we have heard a lot of worries about the potential ‘learning loss’ being incurred by students who have missed sev…
What will COVID-19 change in education? And what will stay the same?
Posted on May 28, 2020
A couple of weeks ago, I ran a webinar for the Teacher Development Trust where I asked everyone which statement they agreed with most. One: The educational responses to COVID-19 have been emergency in…
Laptops vs phones: the learning difference
Posted on May 7, 2020
Suppose you have a couple of hundred words of text that you would like your students to read. Does it make a difference if they read it on paper or on a screen? Yes. In this post here, from last Decem…
What does the research say about designing video lessons?
Posted on April 30, 2020
Education technology is really powerful. The problem is that it is just as easy to use that power badly as to use it well. You can see this with video lessons – clearly video allows you to do all kind…
What makes a good flashcard?
Posted on April 23, 2020
What makes a good flashcard? Keep it really simple. Here’s what not to do. The problem with this flashcard is that it is not clear exactly what you are supposed to remember or how you can be sure if y…
How can we make learning with laptops & tablets work?
Posted on April 18, 2020
When I was studying for GCSE history, there was a sudden class panic about revision guides. I think a job lot of guides had arrived at the library and were available to buy for about £2, but a rumour…
How to remember anything, forever: the secret history
Posted on April 13, 2020
The best part of researching my new book, Teachers vs Tech, was getting to read a lot more about memory. Not just the academic research on memory – although this was fascinating – but the practical at…
The challenge of remote teaching is the challenge of all teaching
Posted on April 6, 2020
The challenge of remote teaching is the challenge of all teaching: learning is invisible. How do you get students to understand complex material, and how do you know when they have understood it? You…