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?

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.

Tom Barrett has started a new collaborative project called ‘Shared Search‘… the aim is create a set of search engines related to specific topics, where the results have been contributed by educators. Tom has started the first one, which is linked to the topic of sealife.

You can find out how to add sites to the search engine, and use the tool itself on Tom’s blog post. Don’t forget to follow his RSS feed to hear about future Shared Search facilities as they are created.

Searching online is a valuable skill for children to develop. However, there are potential dangers associated with allowing children to search the Internet freely. Here are details of three search tools which might be useful for the classroom:

1) Gemsta Homework is a multi-search tool which allows you to search a selection of sites in one step. Just tick the names of the sites that you want to search and enter your search term. The chosen sites will then open up in multiple tabs allowing you to browse and compare the results.

http://search.gemsta.com/homework

2) Safe Search is a custom search engine which only searches a selection of pre-chosen sites. This reduces the number of inappropriate results that might be returned, also limiting the amount of information that younger children have to deal with.

www.primaryschoolict.com

3) KidRex is similar to Safe Search, in that it only searches a selection of carefully chosen sites. Inappropriate sites are blocked from the results, making it much safer for children to use.

www.kidrex.org

What are your favourite search tools to use in the classroom?

Do you know a teacher who’s gone the extra mile and really changed lives?

The BBC is looking for an inspirational teacher, an unsung hero who has somehow made a real difference, someone whose story deserves to be told.

Perhaps they have brought new and innovative methods to the classroom, with outstanding results. Maybe they have thrown away the rule book, only to prove their way does actually work. They may have transformed a school, a class, or perhaps simply touched individual lives.

It might not be a teacher – we’re interested in hearing stories of outstanding classroom assistants, school supervisors and other education professionals as well.

For an informal chat please contact Gemma Collins on 02920 322572 or email gemma.collins2@bbc.co.uk

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