A book I’ve started reading is (Un)educated: My Life as a Teacher, and Why You Should Never Become One, by Francis Foster. Some of it is laugh-out loud funny, but some of it, about his reference being spiked, made me angry because I know someone who couldn’t get another job until the headteacher was ill. With him away, the deputy head wrote her an HONEST reference.

Something similar happened to me. I was head of Computing for just over a year before I saw my dream job advertised. The headteacher was annoyed that I was applying for another job so soon, but I felt the opportunity was too good to miss. I applied and got it.

During the time I was at the school, I vastly expanded the Computing department, so successfully that we had to take on extra staff. Results improved, usage amongst staff went right up, and an Ofsted inspection six weeks after I’d started concluded that I was doing a great job. I mention all this not to boast, but to place in context what transpired.

After I’d been working at my new job for a couple of weeks, my boss, G, suggested I went to the council office to look at the reference I’d been given. I said, “Why?” He said it was because we had the right to see our references, and thought that if people didn’t take advantage of that facility it would be withdrawn. Reasonable enough, I thought. So I trotted along to the council office, asked to see my reference from my previous employment, and gasped in horror and disbelief as I read it:

“Terry Freedman has worked in this school since —.”

When I returned I said to G,” How come you gave me the job, given that that reference made it sound like my biggest achievement was turning up every day?” He replied that he mused that anybody getting a reference like that must be so good that the headteacher didn’t want him to go! So, a bit of an own-goal on the part of that headteacher, and a big disappointment to me, because I liked him but now felt that my liking had been misplaced.

Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad, is published by Bloomsbury. It’s about the invention of linotype, and its consequences. Linotype changed the way newspaper articles were printed — from people arranging individual letters to creating a block — a line of type, hence the name Linotype.The invention led to thicker newspapers and more magazines.

A book I haven’t seen, merely heard about, is James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate society. It sounds very interesting. I know that there are people who think that Tik-Tok videos and other (very) short-form content is a kind of literacy that’s on a par with reading, but I have my doubts. I think of reading as a slow activity, one that lends itself to stopping and thinking about what you’ve just read. I don’t think the pause button is quite the same. But as I say, I haven’t read the book so cannot really comment on it. It is published by Bodley Head.

Cathy Brown is a strong proponent of the use of AI in education, in terms of its possibilities. Amazing Worlds is a good example. Although it is light on what we might call "narrative content", it is a very good showcase for what can be achieved from a partnership between imagination and AI.

The book is quite beautiful and delightful — all the graphics were created with Al. Scanning the barcode at the back of the book takes you to a video version on YouTube, while exploring the links on Cathy's website takes you to articles detailing what tools she used, the prompts she came up with, and a detailed lesson plan. This seems to be tied to Australian caniculum standards but thats a bonus rather than a disadvantage, by which I mean that if you're not an Australian teacher you can just ignore the links to the standards.

Cathy has produced a newsletter called the Virtual Teacher for even longer than my own newsletter, Digital Education.

This book doesn’t have any education technology, but I think the game of chess is a worthwhile activity for kids for developing strategic thinking skills. This book would make a good gift for the youngster in your life. If you run a school chess club, you will [probably find ideas in it you can borrow.

Chess is a pretty complicated game but this book manages to make learning how to play seem doable. The many aspects of chess are explained through conversations between the characters, Jamie and Jess.

There are games along the way to illustrate particular aspects of chess. For example, there is Pawn Wars, and how to checkmate with just two rooks.

Each piece is covered, as well as chess etiquette, chess tournaments, puzzles for the reader to solve (the solutions are provided!) and a sample expert game. There is even a glossary of terms and an index.

The illustrations, production quality and full colour make this a very attractive book.

All in all, this is a great book to give as a present to a child you would like to introduce to the wonderful game of chess.