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Not that long ago I was a writer of interesting and engaging educational programmes. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. The programmes that I wrote and shared with a team of teachers were generally well accepted and the feedback offered was always politely positive. I enjoyed writing these programmes but in recent times I have enjoyed even more stepping away from this process and in doing so empowering the team of teachers that I learn with. The programmes that this team produces far exceed the quality I could ever have hoped to produce but more importantly the students are benefiting from their experience of highly engaged and thus engaging teachers.

A lengthy but worthy read for all non-programmers on code.

Explains code

Closed down April 2011. Watch here for availability of video: The Department is making all 3,500 15min Teachers TV programmes and related content freely available on a non-exclusive basis. In return for undertaking to stream the programmes free at the point of use, you would be allowed to use the Teachers TV content commercially in the UK and in other countries. A full copy of the distribution agreement will be available to download. Details of where you can access digital versions of the programmes will be published here shortly.

The Football Association's Official Home Page. Many examples of good web page but also some bad design practice.

Identifying what our children need to learn is one of the most important processes within education. For the teacher this is the question they engage with as they design their teaching and learning units. By no means is this an easy task and the teacher must balance multiple factors to ensure that the programmes they design provide their students with the learning they require. Even the most effective sequence of lessons is of little value if what it sets out to teach has little importance in the lives our learners are likely to lead. 

"A multi-national European study, looking at over 5,500 students, has found that a novel school intervention programme can not only improve the mathematics scores of primary school children from disadvantaged areas, but can also lessen the achievement gap caused by socioeconomic status. Known as the Dynamic Approach to School Improvement (DASI), the programme is based on the latest findings in educational research. Rather than a one-size-fits-all, top-down approach, DASI works by first assessing a school to identify the specific teaching areas that could be improved and then implementing targeted measures to improve them. This process involves all members of the school community, including teachers, pupils and parents, with support from a specialized Advisory and Research Team."

"Training teachers to focus their attention on positive conduct and to avoid jumping to correct minor disruption improves child behaviour, concentration and mental health. A study led by the University of Exeter Medical School, published in Psychological Medicine, analysed the success of a training programme called the Incredible Years® Teacher Classroom Management Programme. Its core principles include building strong social relationship between teachers and children and ignoring low-level bad behaviour that often disrupts classrooms."

"Crickets are small programmable devices that can make things spin, light up, and play music. You can plug lights, motors, and sensors into a Cricket, then write computer programs to tell them how to react and behave. With Crickets, you can create musical sculptures, interactive jewelry, dancing creatures, and other artistic inventions -- and learn important math, science, and engineering ideas in the process. Crickets are based on more than a decade of NSF-funded educational research. Lifelong Kindergarten researchers collaborated with the LEGO company to create the first "programmable bricks," squeezing computational power into LEGO bricks. This research led to the LEGO MindStorms robotics kits, now used by millions of people around the world. While LEGO MindStorms is designed especially for making robots, Crickets are designed especially for making artistic creations. Crickets were refined in collaboration with the Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) museum network, and are now sold as a product through the Playful Invention Company (PICO)."

Are software makers writing themselves out of a good living? Recent trends in the computer business indicate we are about to see a phenomenal growth in computing power and the relative ease with which software can be created to utilize it.

Stargazing Live is a wonderful BBC programme on air in January. The site has lots of great resources to help you understand the night's sky. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science

The current programme of information and communications technology (ICT) study in England's schools will be scrapped from September, the education secretary has announced. It will be replaced by an "open source" curriculum in computer science and programming designed with the help of universities and industry.

Superbe lieu de programmation Ajax et javascript. Best playground for learning programming

A free design course to encourage programmers/hackers into developing solid design skills, but most of the content is relevant to anyone wanting to improve their design skills (covers design in general including industrial design, web design, UX, etc). Some excellent resources are already available.

"An easy to follow design course for hackers who do amazing things. Receive a design lesson in your inbox each week, hand crafted by a design pro. Learn at your own pace, and apply it to your real life work - no fake projects here."

This is a lovely downloadable programme to compose pieces of music on a digital stave which will play you creations back to you. Just drag the note and rests into the positions you want. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

This is a wonderfully designed site to learn Mandarin Chinese. It uses a huge collection of Chinese TV programmes and movie clips with interactive and dual-language subtitles. Click on a Chinese character is see the translation and hear the pronunciation. You can set your ability level and also what sort of media you are interested in. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Mandarin+%26+Chinese+culture

This is a fun programme and control iPad app where players must programme the crane to move the boxes into the correct configuration. It's a great way to introduce the basics of programming to your class. Go to https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cargo-bot/id519690804 to download the app. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

A great downloadable programme for making computer games for a variety of platforms and devices. Drag and drop items to make your creations. It's provides a more mature environment than tools like Scratch and there are many more options and advance settings for talented students. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

"A programme that brings live fish into classrooms to teach the fundamentals of biology not only helps students learn, but improves their attitudes about science, a new study finds. The study of nearly 20,000 K-12 students, who raised zebrafish from embryos over the course of a week, found that kids at all grade levels showed significant learning gains. They also responded more positively to statements such as "I know what it's like to be a scientist." The results, to be published by the journal PLOS Biology, suggest that an immersive experience with a living creature can be a particularly successful strategy to engage young people in science, technology, engineering and maths."

In 2011 footballer Xabi Alonso gave an interview to the Guardian on his experiences as a young player moving from Spain to Liverpool.  He describes the most significant difference here. I don't think tackling is a quality," he says. "It is a recurso, something you have to resort to, not a characteristic of your game. At Liverpool I used to read the matchday programme and you'd read an interview with a lad from the youth team. They'd ask: age, heroes, strong points, etc. He'd reply: 'Shooting and tackling'. I can't get into my head that football development would educate tackling as a quality, something to learn, to teach, a characteristic of your play...