So far this year, I’ve published 175 posts here on Teaching News. As the end of 2011 is approaching, I’ve added links to the most popular posts of the year. Did you miss any of them?

1) Royal Wedding Ideas and Resources
2) 10 Inspiring Youtube videos for Teachers
3) 10 Evernote Uses for Teachers
4) New iPod, iPhone and iPad Apps for Schools
5) Topmarks Education
6) Top Five Discoveries (17/6/11)
7) New Christmas Resources and Inspiration Posters
8 ) 11 Resource Sites for your Christmas Activities
9) 15 Remembrance Resources for Teachers
10) Favourite Resource Sites for the New School Year

This will probably be the last post of 2011, but I’m looking forward to sharing new ideas and resources with you in 2012!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Mark

The new academic year has started for many schools here in the UK, with lots of other schools opening again next week. For those who are new to the teaching profession (as well as other more experienced members), I thought that it might be useful to make a list of some of my favourite resource sites. All of these offer free ideas and resources which you can use in your classrooms…

Teaching Ideas

I have to start by mentioning my Teaching Ideas site. It’s been online since 1998 and offers free lesson ideas, activities and resources. Lots of these have been contributed by teachers around the world and the site is organised by subject / topic to help you find things easily. Don’t forget to look at my other Teaching Websites too.

Primary Resources

Primary Resources is another popular resource site which was set up at the same time as Teaching Ideas, by Gareth Pitchford. The site is enormous and is one of the best places to look for content to use in your classrooms.

Communication4All

Bev Evans makes this wonderful site which is full of fantastic resources. You will find lots of great material to print and laminate here!

TES

The TES has a wide variety of resources, all contributed by teachers and other education professionals. They also host videos from the Teachers TV archive, which are a great source of advice and information.

TPet

TPet make resources of the highest quality. They have a wonderful selection of display resources and activities as well as a blog which is a great source of inspiration too!

Twinkl

The Twinkl site is growing at an amazing rate and they have a wide variety of resources. Take a look!

Teaching Search

As there are so many great resource sites, it sometimes takes a while to search through all of them. So, I created a search engine which searches a number of the most popular ones. It’s free to use and gives results from a special selection of top quality sites.

Primary Teacher Resource Centre Forum

There are a number of educational forums online, but my favourite is the PTRC forum. It’s full of lovely people who are always willing to offer advice and share their resources.

Twitter / Facebook

Don’t forget that there are also lots of great teachers using social networking sites to share ideas. Take a look at Teaching Ideas on Twitter and Facebook to get some ideas about who else to follow.

Are there any other great resource sites that I have missed? What are your favourites?

A few weeks ago, I redesigned ‘Ideas to Inspire‘. If you are not aware of it already, the site is a collection of collaborative presentations which shares ideas for using different types of technology (and other tools) in the classroom. The presentations were initially inspired by Tom Barrett’s ‘Interesting Ways’ presentations, but there are many others on the site too.

The original version of the site has always been extremely popular. However, the design of the site restricted the number of presentations that I could add. The new site (v2.0!) lists all of the presentations on a single page and there is a handy filter which shows and hides presentations based on your choice. So, you could look through the presentations which share ideas for particular curriculum areas or you could view the ideas for using different online tools in the classroom.

Take a look – I hope that you like it!

www.ideastoinspire.co.uk

I’ve come across lots of fantastic new resources over the past few weeks, so here are some of my favourites:

1) QR Code Treasure Hunt Generator (shared by Christine Cox) – This wonderful tool lets you make your own treasure hunts… children have to answer questions (which you provide) but the questions are in the form of QR codes which they have to scan with handheld devices (e.g. an iPod Touch). You can hide the QR codes around school and get them to find the answers as they search around school. A great use of mobile technology.

2) Report Comment Bank (shared by Kristian Still) – Although many schools have now finished writing reports for a while, here’s is a site which can be saved for future use. It is a bank of report comments which cover a huge range of subject and topic areas. Registration is required but the site is free to use.

3) Duck Duck Go (shared by Darcy Moore) – Duck Duck Go is a clear and simple search engine which is less cluttered than many other popular search tools. The site gives dictionary definitions as well as search results and there are ‘Safe Search’ options too. Has anyone used this in the classroom yet?

4) If It Were My Home (shared by Lucy Gray) – If you were not born in the country you were, what would your life be like? Would you be the same person? This site lets you compare living conditions for people in countries around the world. It’s a fascinating way to find out about life in other places.

5) Wild Earth (shared by Lucy Gray) - This site has lots of live webcams showing animals in their natural habitats around the world. You can even watch a live safari from the Sabi Sands Game Reserve. There are also profile pages for many of the animals that you might see on the cameras to help you to learn more about them.

What is your favourite recent discovery?

Here are five great new resources that I have discovered online this week:

1) 100 Most Beautiful Words (shared by @LibWithAttitude) – This list of 100 beautiful words was chosen by Robert Beard, who has been making dictionaries, creating word lists, and writing poetry for 40 years. It’s a great selection of vocabulary which can be used in a number of ways. You could ask children to try and guess the meaning… or work out how to spell each word… or make flashcards which will help people to remember the definition / spelling… or use it as a starting point for discussing the children’s own favourite words.

2) Red Riding Mood – There are lots of great Internet Safety videos and resources online and I’ve recently discovered a series of three new videos from Facemoods. They highlight key safety messages for people to remember when using Facebook so they are probably more relevant for older pupils (although lots of younger children also seem to have Facebook accounts, despite their Terms of Service stating that under 13s should not join).

Click here to view the embedded video.

3) 25 Superb Optical Illusions (shared by Larry Ferlazzo) – These fantastic optical illusions are perfect for use in the classroom. Can your children see all of the illusions straight away? Can they explain how they work?

4) Online Storytime (recommended by 2sparkley) – This wonderful site has videos of famous stories being read aloud. The stories are all popular books and the videos show the original illustrations. You can also embed the videos, so they could be posted on a school website to share with your pupils and their parents.

5) Polyphonic Kids (created by Chris Leach) – Chris has created this blog to introduce children to a wide range of music… from different styles and artists. It’s a great place to share a variety of music with your pupils. They can also add comments to share their opinions or vote in the poll on each day’s post.

What have you discovered recently?

Technology Bits, Bytes and Nibbles is a wonderful blog from Cyndi Danner-Kuhn. Cyndi works at Kansas State University and does lots of technology professional development in K-12 schools. Her blog started as a way of sharing resources for her colleagues but it is also extremely popular with other educators around the world.

Cyndi posts regularly and she shares some wonderful technology resources that teachers can use. You can follow her blog via RSS or by email too, so it’s easy to keep updated. Take a look!

My latest copy of the BBC Schools newsletter was emailed to me a few days ago and it reminded me of all of the fantastic resources that they have created for teachers. Here are some of the things that are available on their site:

• Class Clips – More than 8000 video clips from BBC programmes that you can play in your classroom. These are all clearly organised and easy to search for.
• News for Schools – News reports to support your lessons, along with lesson plans which give ideas for using them.
• CBBC Newsreader – An accessible newsreader which is suitable for primary children. It shares some of the latest news headlines, organised by topic, and the site reads the articles too!
• Teachers’ Packs – Whole sets of lesson plans and printable resources for all ages… I’m sure that the Doctor Who pack will be very popular!
• BBC Bitesize – Revision lessons and activities for all ages and curriculum areas.
• School Radio – Podcasts, downloads, audio and video clips covering Music, Dance, History, Literacy, PSHE, Maths and Collective Worship!
• Primary History – One of my favourite History resources… this site has lots of wonderful resources for children and teachers. The timeline is especially useful.
• Primary Languages – Lots of useful resources for teaching French, Spanish and Mandarin to primary pupils.

Teachfind is a new site which aims to help you find ‘all your essential teaching resources’ in one place. The site has a search facility which searches lots of resource sites, including The National Strategies site, Ofsted and the videos from Teachers.TV.

This looks like another useful tool for teachers who are searching for resources to use in their classroom. Don’t forget to try my Teaching Search site too which searches other popular resource sites like Teaching Ideas, Primary Resources, Communication4All, Twinkl and many more.

Here are five fantastic new resources that I’ve discovered this week:

1) Schoolswaps - Are you a teacher? Do want to receive some postcards from somewhere exciting for your class? If so, sign up to the first ever Great Big School swap! Thanks to @andytgeezer for sharing this on Twitter.

2) Life. Live it – The Red Cross have a fantastic child-friendly site which gives information and advice about first aid for 5 to 11 year olds. The site includes films, activities, quizzes and ‘how to’ videos. Thanks to Simon Haughton for recommending this.

3) 7 offline ideas in 7 minutes – Here’s an interesting video from Dave Stacey which gives seven ideas for activities that don’t involve the Internet. Watch the video embedded below and read more about this on Dave’s blog.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4) The World’s Biggest Treehouse – Crooked Brains is one of my favourite blogs as it shares lots of weird and wonderful photos. Here is a recent post on the site which shares images of an amazing treehouse. Could you use these pictures in the classroom… to develop descriptive writing… as a starting point for a spooky adventure… to encourage the children to build their own model treehouses… to look at structures and materials?

5) Ten Twitter Tips for Teachers – Do you use Twitter? The whiteboard blog has a fantastic post about how teachers can make the most of this amazing tool. Don’t forget to follow Danny Nicholson (the creator of the Whiteboard blog) and Teaching Ideas (our Twitter Account) on Twitter!

What new resources have you found this week? Leave a comment to share them with others…

I’m now on my half term break, so there won’t be any more Teaching News posts for a few days. In the meantime, please complete my survey!

Twitter, Facebook and RSS are great ways to discover new educational resources. Here are five new things that I’ve discovered using them this week:

1) Aurasma – This app works with smart phone and tablets to, in real time, turn static images or even objects into videos, games and interactive experiences. You just point your phone at something and you can then see additional content about it. David Mitchell, Dughall McCormick and Simon Widdowson have been exploring ideas for using this in the classroom this week. Watch the Youtube video below to see it in action:

Click here to view the embedded video.

2) Nasa Images – Bill Gibbon tweeted this link to the ‘Astronomy Picture of the Day‘, which has some amazing images that you could use in your classrooms.

3) Wiki Races – Kristian Still mentioned this game which involves racing from one Wikipedia page to another unrelated one by clicking on links throughout the site. It could be played by groups of pupils at their own computers or as a whole class game with the students suggesting which links would be best to click on. Of course, the idea could also be played without a computer at all… can your pupils explain how to get from ‘Dinosaurs’ to ‘Cardboard’ by listing other related topics?

4) Great Plant Hunt – Simon Cobb mentioned a great new site which claims to be ‘the UK’s biggest school science project’. The site develops children’s understanding of the natural world and has a huge collection of linked resources for teachers.

5) Sites4Primary – This relatively new blog has a huge list of great (free) resources for primary teachers already. Visit it at www.sites4primary.com.

Have you discovered anything exciting this week?