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A nice science resource where you can build your own bug and learn about minibeasts. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science

Doug Johnson is a great read for his blunt, in your face honesty and his point about how technology companies are trying to differentiate is a great one. I think, however, we should extend this to schools as well. If your school is great, say why, but dissing the competition is no way to compete. If you think your school has no competition, think again. So, read this in light of the arriving and coming competition on the edulandscape and have an honest take on how you should "sell" the virtues of your school. If you can't talk about how great your school is and have to resort to how bad the other one is, prepare for a day when you'll shutter the windows and wonder how they're going to keep the bugs out of your empty building. Wake up and smell the wires burning their way into your student's computers and tablets, great teachers are just a click away and we've all got to learn how to blend and trend our courses, teaching, and to bridge our classrooms to add real value as teachers. It isn't hard as you think but if you just sit and teach like you've always taught, you're setting yourself up for some unpleasant days. You can't do everything but you can do something to improve yourself. Next practices are an important part of your best practice. Always innovate and never settle. Standards are only the beginning, you must have purpose if you're going to be a great teacher. Doug says: "But what I do know that when competitors trash each other, I tend to tune out. And I flat out hate it when I know they are lying - and I will NOT buy from a liar. A salesman recently promoted his video storage service by stating "unlike YouTube, we don't own your movies." That's just not true. (YouTube doesn't own your movies, GoogleApps doesn't own your Docs, CIPA, FERPA, etc. do not ban social media.)"

The Washington Post has a quite distressing bug common remarks about Common Core exemplars. Is going too much by the common core doing to take us down to a lower common denominator than we are at already? I'm not sure but this type of article is very concerning. "Each teacher read individually through the exemplar lesson on Lincoln's speech. When we began discussing it, we all expressed the same conclusion: Most of it was too scripted. It spelled out what types of questions to ask, what types of questions not to ask, and essentially narrowed any discussion to obvious facts and ideas from the speech.

A competitive 2-player adding game. The game can be customised by choosing the size of the numbers to add. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

This is very true. Online tutorials can only get us so far. This is why I'm learning Scratch and brushing up on Java. I may even have to learn Python before I'm done. We need Computer Science but who will teach it? If we only rely on videos, it would be like asking kids to teach themselves math using Khan Academy without a teacher who knew how to work the problems. "The vast majority of my students do very well on their first hour or two of coding using structured lessons, but when they start to write code for a new problem, or hit the first set of bugs, they get frustrated and need help. Sometimes, all they need is a hint, a pointer to a similar problem, or my assurance that they can solve it. In some cases, they need someone to just re-explain it a little differently."

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Create a 'number bonds to...' worksheet. The sheets can be customised by choosing which number to total to. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

Create a 'doubles' worksheet. The sheets can be customised by choosing the size of the numbers to double. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

This site provides writing stimulus and advice for young writers. It explores a range of methods and thinking activities to help develop writing ideas. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

This is a useful maths site for teaching place value to young children with virtual hundreds, tens and ones blocks. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

This is a wonderful site, like http://www.learningbox.com/Base10/CatchTen.html which we've used for a while in my lab. The problem we've encountered is that sometimes the counting goes off, especially with http://www.learningbox.com/Base10/BaseTen.html. Not sure if it's a Flash bug or what but you really get quizzical looks from the students at times. When it's working, it's fabulous!

Some nice teacher resources in here, too.

Interesting site to help kids learn to write, or break writer's block, ar find ideas, etc.

Some cool projects here - Source of free science projects and experiments for parents, teachers, and children of all ages.