Data often gets something of a bad press in education. It is seen by some as a dehumanising force: reducing real, living students to faceless numbers. However, this is to miss the point of data in education. It is precisely by putting the people to one side – for a moment – that we discover […]
Read more
People are scared of data. After watching Scott Galloway’s great TED Talk on how large tech companies manipulate our emotions, my colleagues lamented how easily their personal data was forfeited. When I returned home for Christmas, my parents sagely advised me to use DuckDuckGo as my search engine, as it didn’t track your activity like Google.
Read more
Finding the best route towards school improvement has become an abstract and elusive target for educators and policymakers worldwide. No two school systems are alike—the differences in context are just too great. These differences are magnified even further when looking at each individual school with its unique group of students and teachers. Finding a one-size-fits-all […]
Read more
One of my Y13 students intends to resit Statistics 1 and Core 2 in summer this year, alongside Core 3, Core 4, and Mechanics 1. I devised a 5 week plan to cover the entire course in an hour per week. This centred on 5 one-page summary sheets for five broad areas. For some reason […]
Read more
At Christmas, I excitedly opened my presents to find a new watch. Not just an ordinary watch, but a smart watch which allows me to collect data about myself. I now know that on average I climb 20 flights of stairs a day, and that when I am teaching I easily meet my 10,000 steps […]
Read more