In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a tip jar is a device whereby people can contribute a donation to a website – a bit like the jars in cafes in which customers can drop a few coins by way of a tip to staff. Indeed, the websites I’ve come across that have tip jars tend to ask visitors to help them buy their next coffee in Starbucks, as well as the more general “Buy me a coffee”.

Before we can go any further, is this an educational issue? I believe it is, or could be, for the following reasons:

• If tip jars work, then why shouldn’t schools which have a lot of free content for teachers in other schools to use have a tip jar? It could help to defray the costs of running the website, if nothing else.

• Is a tip jar a form of begging? This is an issue that might be discussed with kids. I am in two minds about this. Part of me thinks it is, and that I’d rather either sell a product or service than hold my virtual hand out hoping someone will drop some money into it. On the other hand, if people feel moved to express their gratitude for the pleasure of reading my stuff, then why not provide them with the means of doing so? I have to say, I installed a Buy Me A Coffee button on my Eclecticism newsletter, but felt so “icky” about it that I took it down after a couple of weeks. Funnily enough, someone did put £5 into it because she didn’t want to commit to a subscription. But as that was the cost of a monthly subscription I gave her free access to everything on the site for a month.

• Is there a transparency issue? If you are earning a lot of money from a tip jar, and perhaps from other sources as well, should you disclose that fact? Some people seem to get very exercised by it. Personally, I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business – unless you’re doing the equivalent of sitting in the street with a hat in front of you, while your Bentley is parked around the corner. But what might youngsters feel about the ethics of making money in this way, and of the imperative (or lack of imperative) to publicly disclose your income from it?

I have considered, from time to time, installing a tip jar on the ICT in Education website, but have resisted the temptation so far for three reasons:

• Like I said, I’m not sure about the ‘begging’ issue.

• I’m not too interested in coffee. What I would really like a tip jar to achieve is the funding of a swimming pool in my garden. I think I’d need an awful lot of tips for that to happen. I'd also need a bigger garden!

• I suppose I have a deep-seated fear not that I’d make too much money, but that I’d make too little. Imagine how it would feel to have accumulated, after six months, just enough money for the fare to your nearest Starbucks, but not enough to buy anything once you arrived!

The Mathematician’s Library: The Books That Unlocked The Power Of Numbers

(Briggs, Ivy, £281)

Generations of school students have asked their maths teachers what the point of this is - where 'this' is, say, Pascal's triangle. As Briggs makes clear, however, even problems that didn't seem to have much bearing on maths at the time have since contributed to our mathematical understanding, and sometimes given rise to whole new fields of study.

This wide-ranging book takes in probability, fractals, astronomy, Babbage, Lovelace and a host of other areas and people. It's a feast of a book - beautifully produced, lavishly illustrated and surprisingly readable.

Briggs' key achievement is to make maths seem inviting, intriguing and exciting. We learn about many of the unsung heroes who have contributed to the subject over thousands of years, as well as some landmark texts, complete with thumbnail sketches of their contents.

Maths teachers seeking fresh inspiration for their students will almost certainly find it here.

This review was first published in Teach Secondary magazine. To comment on it, and to read an alternative version, please read this: Compare and Contrast #9

Two books on the Nazi era.

Hotel Exile: Paris in the shadow of war

(Rogoyska, Allen Lane, £25)

You settle down to read, and the subject of this particular vignette could be you: a teacher, a student, a mother, a brother. So you are drawn in, almost against your will, into a situation you hope you will never experience, but which you now start to understand on a visceral level. This is, perhaps, Rogoyska’s greatest achievement here: to make you forget you are reading about something that happened before you were born to people you didn’t know.

In describing the rise and aftermath of Nazism she has chosen as her vantage point the Hotel Lutetia, where James Joyce lived and where Picasso was a regular guest. We learn about the stateless people who arrived between 1933 and 1939, how it became a home for the German intelligence service during the war, and then a hospital of sorts for those returning from concentration camps. This book brings history alive.

Reviewed by Terry Freedman

Weimar: Life on the edge of catastrophe

(Hoyer, Allen Lane, £30)

Weimar was the birthplace of the optimistic, yet short-lived republic of the same name, and the place that Goethe, Liszt and Nietzsche called 'home', situated a mere 8km from Buchenwald. Weimar starts at the end, with an American soldier forcing the local populace to witness the acts that were being perpetrated in their name.

Hoyer then proceeds to tell the story of Weimar through the lives of individuals like Carl Weirich, who kept a diary spanning decades. By focusing on the quotidian concerns of ordinary people, Hoyer helps us appreciate that while individuals might lack the power to affect the sweeping societal changes happening around them, they're not entirely free of responsibility for them. Thus, we learn that Weimar was already inclined towards antisemitism and far-right 'solutions' before Hitler was even born - and that efforts at making accommodations with extremists are always ultimately doomed to failure.

Reviewed by Terry Freedman

These reviews were first published in Teach Secondary magazine. To comment on it, and to read an alternative version, please read this: Compare and Contrast #9

See also: Mini-essay: Two books reviewed -- Weimar, Hotel Exile

Verb Your Enthusiasm: How to Master the Art of the Verb and Transform Your Writing

(Kaufman, Particular, £20)

No book about the craft of writing seems complete without a stern chapter on the importance of eschewing adverbs and adjectives - but what to put in their place?

Kaufman has put together an eye-opening guide to the degree of heavy lifting the humble verb can do, and it’s certainly refreshing to be told to use them over certain other types of words. Kaufman even encourages us to invent some new verbs of our own, so long as the meanings are clear. After all, if it was good enough for Shakespeare...

There’s also a fascinating chapter on what cognitive science has revealed about how the brain responds to different verbs, as well as ‘Good Habits’ sections that round off each chapter and provide readers with homework, such as responding to a prompt.

A book that’s as enjoyable as it is informative.

This review was first published in Teach Secondary magazine. To comment on it, and to read an alternative version, please read this: Compare and Contrast #9

It’s amazing what you can achieve with a paintbrush and a fork. Yesterday morning I watched in helpless horror as the lid of something fell down the plug hole in the bathroom sink. I could see it, just about, using the flashlight app on my phone (I knew there was more to phones than just being connected), but couldn’t reach it.

Elaine went and brought up this device she bought in an emporium which specialises in products of the stuff-that-looks-pretty-useless-but-which-might-come-in-handy-one-day variety. When you press the end of it these prongs come out, so in theory you can use it to pick things up. It’s a bit like the gizmo that park attendants and street cleaners use. Unfortunately, it didn’t have grip.

However, after trying a variety of screwdrivers, pliers, even scissors, we finally managed to retrieve the offending item by using an artists’ paintbrush to lever it into a certain position and then a fork to twist it round so that we could actually grab hold of it.

All in all it was a good bit of problem-solving with which to start the day. I’d highly recommend it.

But the main point of all this persiflage is really to say that our preconceived ideas of what would work proved to be completely misguided. In the end, it was a couple of ‘wrong’ tools that did the trick. Well, that and some pretty good lateral and logical thinking on our part.

Moving deftly into the field of teaching ICT or Computing, we are in a pretty good position in England really -- actually, I’d say the whole of the UK, albeit for different reasons. The Computer Programme of Study in its present form is minimalist, which allows for adding content you think is fit. There is no government-sponsored agency telling us what an ideal lesson should look like, or how many minutes each part of the lessons should take. Even Ofsted doesn’t really mind what you do as long as the kids have learnt something by the end of the lesson. (OK, there is a bit more to it then that, but we are certainly in a much more laissez-faire position than we were, say, twenty years ago, in my opinion.)

So why not experiment? There is rarely, if ever, a single best way of teaching something, or even a single best order of teaching a set of topics.

You may have a preferred meethod of teaching something. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that:

• you experiment with different approaches to keep the subject fresh, and yourself and your pupils refreshed

• you try different things with different classes…

• … and/or encourage your colleagues, if you work in a team, to try out different things

• you elicit feedback from the pupils about what went well in their opinion

• you evaluate the different approaches by the time-honoured method of testing the pupils on the topic

• you keep notes on your experimentations

Is it morally OK to experiment like this? I mean, what if the kids learn nothing from a particular approach?

My view is as follows:

• Unless someone can point to an objectively-verified best way of teaching a particular topic, which works in all situations and with all pupils, I think it’s incumbent on teachers to try out different methods.

• If it becomes clear that the experiment resulted in no learning (a highly unlikely scenario, but possible I suppose), then recognise it and then make up for lost time. You’d know within a lesson or two whether or not it seemed to be working, so it’s not like you’d waste a half-term on it or something.

• When I was teaching, and in the fortunate position of being Head of ICT & Computing, one of my aims was to try and make my bit of the school a learning community. It’s a good thing to aim for, and made much easier if the vision of the Headteacher is that the school itself be a learning community.

The corollary is that without experimenting you could find yourself in the unfortunate position of teaching the same thing in the same way using the same resources in ten years’ time as you are now. I can’t imagine, especially with a subject like ours, that that would be very useful.