Daniel B

A link to my presentation 'A Teachers Guide to Cognitive Load Theory' in pdf format (one copy with my notes). If you would like original PowerPoint files please DM. Feel free to use. Attribution would be nice. drive.google.com/drive/folders/…

@SMcfarnell I find that the time it takes to refine the prompts is less time than a basic drawing in ppt.

@dan_braith Thanks. I think that’s the approach I’ll take. I wonder when the LLMs will be able to do this straight from a prompt. There seems to be a long way to go yet.

Has anyone tried to use ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude to produce diagrams? All really bad. Why is this? And what is the solution?

@Headteacherchat Yes. The school board, local authority or whoever the Head/Principal reports to has a duty of care to the school leadership team. I'd argue that, to some extent, the same goes for inspectorates. A part of this duty of care is sensible KPIs and manageable workloads.

A career in school leadership—whether as a headteacher or in another senior role—is a vocation, but it is also a profession. While the work is essential, it should not demand personal sacrifice at the expense of our health or well-being. We are not obligated to break ourselves for the sake of our schools. It is entirely possible to lead effectively—with impact and integrity—without compromising our own sustainability.

@tombennett71 I appreciate the "duty of care" drive of the article to both staff and students. An important and overlooked part of a school's leadership, board, local/regional education authority, responsibility that is often sacrificed on the altar of vocation and calling.

It is horrific how education leaders allow this to persist. School teachers in Scotland routinely report to me how bad behaviour is, because they have no permitted strategies to handle disruption beyond conversational, therapeutic, or restorative approaches. That’s a political and leadership failing. We know how to manage behaviour, and failing to allow teachers to do so is scandalous. There should be serious consequences for those who permit this situation to endure. But Scottish education apparently doesn’t believe in consequences at any level.

@effortfuleduktr I agree, but I'd expect something around instructional excellence to be in a principals KPIs, and they would drive this through their leadership team. Principals are something like a CEO for a school. No "doing" lots themselves but setting directions, driving agendas etc.

Should school administrators be seen as instructional leaders? I've never viewed my principals as being instructional leaders...they do a host of other important jobs that are necessary for a functioning school...but teaching isn't one of them. I know there are different expectations in different areas of the world with different types of schools. This is just my experience.

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@GordonGekko @eurofounder My 3.y.o daughter said pretty much the same thing to me yesterday, but in Latin.

@eurofounder I had a similar experience with my son (he's 4) He told the teachers he wanted to be a corporate raider. They said that capitalism is wrong and is ruining our society. He said "Feminism and other woke ideologies are ruining our society, capitalism is good, greed is good"

My son’s teacher called me in for an emergency meeting a couple months ago I assumed it was about his grades It was much worse Kids were asked to do a presentation about what they want to be when they grow up My son said “entrepreneur” The teacher looked at me like I had failed as a father “Your son talked about moving fast and breaking things, raising seed capital” I felt the blood drain from my face “He said he wants to move to San Francisco” I nearly collapsed and had to sit down That night I spoke to my son “Where did you hear this word? Entrepreneur?” “My friend’s brother started an app company, they raised money and build cool stuff, dad” Oh what a silly, naive child I explained that entrepreneurship is a myth sold by Americans to justify their lack of worker protections “Isn’t that too harsh dad?” “Harsh is living in a country with no healthcare because you wanted to be your own boss” That day I shut down his access to American internet and only allowed him to access European websites Fast forward a month, he said he wants to work for the EU government I have never been more proud With parents like myself, teaching kids real values, the future for Europe is brighter than ever

Three years after welcoming my first daughter on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day 2025 I welcomed my second daughter. #ChristmasMiracle

@adamboxer1 @whhtmaternity Congratulations

Welcome to the world baby girl Boxer ❤️❤️❤️ Mum and baby did a spectacular job, and a special thank you to all at @whhtmaternity, in particular midwives Grace and Dorothy, and neo natal nurses Andrea and Lovely 🙏🙏

@adamboxer1 As a former engineer turned teacher I learned very quickly not to openly say "teaching isn't harder than engineering" in the staff room. Yes teaching can be hard and has unique challenges, but so do other jobs. In the same way engineering isn't harder than teaching.

I imagine you could do this about any job, right? I think teaching does have its peculiarities, but I'm generally not in favour of the "teaching is a unique profession in [given] respect" discourse. I don't think we're special 😂😂

@adamboxer1 @Mr_Raichura I now provide students with content booklets with lots of questions ranging from processing and understanding the content through to applying the content.

(I'm not the best teacher in the world, by the way [that's @Mr_Raichura]. But I am good, probably better than average thanks to the feedback and support I've received. A bunch of my colleagues are substantially more effective than I am. But one thing I'm proud of is that I am good at my job, and my students like my lessons, and are really positive about my teaching, and almost always happy when they find out they will be in my class [the exceptions to these are the proper rascals who know they will have to work hard])

It's quite something that this has been BY FAR my most engaged-with tweet for months. Most of the engagement has been entirely negative from people saying they would have hated my lessons. My general reply: You definitely wouldn't. You'd probably love them. Because you'd learn loads, and have a teacher who was willing to put in the hours to make sure you were incredibly well supported in your studies, and never left with uncertainty about how to make good learning decisions. Learning is fun, and knowing things is better than not knowing things. Anyone is more than welcome to come visit and see me (or my substantially more effective colleagues) teach and judge for yourselves. Alternatively, you can grab yourself a Carousel Teaching account for a pittance and watch videos of it too.

@adamboxer1 Yes! When I started working at my school the standard model of teaching was PowerPoint with ~half of the lesson students copying down the content. PowerPoint is terrible for delivering content, it artificially breaks connected ideas apart by what can be by fit onto one slide.

@billybinion I recently visited the USA, and I came to the conclusion that tipping at high rates like 20 or 30% transfers the risk of low customers from the business owners to the service staff. IMHO, pay staff a living wage and make tipping rare, low %, and for exceptional service.

A rant: Tipping culture is out of control. I'm a generous tipper. But 20% for someone to make eye contact & hand me a muffin is crazy. Restaurants widely suggesting people tip 30% now is kookoo bananas. At this rate we'll soon be tipping the price of the meal. Make it stop.

@tstarkey1212 I have a group of students who compete in a robotics comp and wrote a 200+ page engineering notebook. They groan at the idea of writing a fictional story or analysing literature. Do they love literature? No. Can they communicate ideas effectively in writing? Absolutely.

Was I the only English teacher who didn't really care if kids loved reading as long as they could, y'know, read?

@MrARobbins @adamboxer1 "Content less clearly defined" is a good description of the Australian Science Curriculum. This is a screenshot of the Year 7 "Science Understanding" component. It leads to huge variability between schools.

@adamboxer1 I worry what they will interpret as reduction of the curriculum will just in fact be the same content just less clearly defined

When it comes to reducing the content in the science specification, an important point is that: Every item currently in the spec can be justified in terms of its inclusion. What we need is a coherent set of principles that explains what items should be prioritised over others. What characteristics dictate the items that stay, and the items that go? How do we rank and balance those characteristics? How do we "score" individual items to establish what's included? Given that everything is important and worthy to someone, how do we make sure we only include that which is important and worthy to the greatest number? We don't have good, shared, or coherent answers to these questions, and because of that any science curriculum reform is doomed to repeat the same mistakes as we have made in the past. @UKLabour

@paulwalkercore @OneNoteEDU @adamboxer1 @XPPEN @WRBdB I use OneNote, which works very well

@dan_braith @OneNoteEDU @adamboxer1 @XPPEN @WRBdB do you recommend one note, what about goodnotes, or no opinion

Engaging positively with #Edutwitter is some of the best PD a teacher can do. Physics lesson from today with booklets on @OneNoteEDU (inspired by @adamboxer1), annotated with an @XPPEN graphics tabled (inspired by @WRBdB), with lots of explicit examples and models.

@paulwalkercore @OneNoteEDU @adamboxer1 @XPPEN @WRBdB I haven't used goodnotes, so I don't know.

@Im_RobM Or the scotland equivalent, where the last replies "eye it's a doughnut and ya nay rang"

I was just in a bakery in Ashington and a local lad walked in and said to the lass behind the counter "is that a doughnut or a meringue?" The lass replied "no you're right."

@adamboxer1 My top hack: Spending a few minutes setting up numbering levels and then using "paste format" saves hours of time when writing/formatting exams or booklets.

Just *blew a trainee's mind* by showing them how to Use "win + v" to access your clipboard and copy and paste multiple items Use "win + ." to access mathematical and scientific symbols Use word's "print pages: 1,1" to print the same page twice on a sheet 🤯🥳🤣

Earlier this year I took a group of students to the @VEXRobotics world championships. Here's a short video of our experience. youtube.com/watch?v=5N6--O…