Blog
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…
Book review: How Learning Happens by Paul Kirschner & Carl Hendrick
Posted on March 15, 2020
It’s clear that education needs to become more research-based. Too many fads and myths hold sway, and too little is known about large bodies of solid research evidence that have powerful practical imp…
Remote learning: why hasn’t it worked before and what can we do to change that?
Posted on March 14, 2020
Back in 2008, the business professor Clayton Christensen made a prediction that by 2019, half of all US high school classes would be taken online. It’s now 2020 and this prediction is not even close t…
What skills will be needed in the economy of the future?
Posted on March 10, 2020
Suppose a friend came to you and told you they wanted to visit Siberia for the whole of next February. They want to prepare for their visit, and to do so they need a precise weather forecast. They wan…
How to remember anything, forever
Posted on March 1, 2020
Recently, I started flicking through a book I’d read about ten years ago, Juliet Gardiner’s The Thirties: An Intimate History. I stumbled across the section on education, and was quickly engrossed. Bu…
Teachers vs Tech: pre-order now and get free stuff!
Posted on February 26, 2020
My new book, Teachers vs Tech, will be published on March 5th by Oxford University Press. Technology has been promising to transform education for over a century – but it’s never quite succeeded. In T…
My new book: Teachers vs Tech
Posted on February 26, 2020
As long ago as 1913, people were predicting that technology was going to transform education. “Books will soon be obsolete in the public schools. Scholars will be instructed through the eye. It is pos…
When is student choice a good idea?
Posted on February 16, 2020
When is student choice a good idea? Here’s an extract from a document from the Scottish Curriculum, on best practice in maths teaching. Children were asked about ways the school could improve learning…
Scott Young’s Ultralearning: Projects or Drill?
Posted on January 19, 2020
In 2011, Scott Young set himself the challenge of learning MIT’s entire 4-year computer science degree, despite not being a student at the university. He succeeded. His new book Ultralearning is all a…