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Free comic book about copyright that teaches you everything you need to know. You can even remix it. There are multiple translations as well (and you can buy a hard copy.) Awesome tool to use.

This important excerpt of a larger book hits on the quality of teachers and the success of children in low-income schools. If you want a better school, spend money on staff development and helping your teachers become more proficient. This article is full of research and important topics of conversation among teachers and policy makers. via: http://www.stanford.edu/~ldh/publications/LDH-Post-Inequality.pdf

Great article outlining copyright, fair use and explaning the 5 principles of fair use in education.

A website that teaches history as kids play an interactive video game. It is designed for kids as young as 4 and up to guide them through museums, churches and historical sites of significance.

Tips on how to use the webcam for teaching online

A simple HTML/CSS editor which updates in real-time. Perfect for teaching to a class on your whiteboard or for students to experiment with.

An Apple/Android app which aims to make you worldly by teaching you facts and figures about countries around the world. Play a quiz with your new world knowledge.

This is a wonderful Video conferencing site which works across many types of devices. There is no sign up or login required. Just start a room and share the link to invite afters. You can have five video participates at once. You can watch videos together from YouTube and other sites. There is a collaborative notepad, text chat, file sharing and you can even share your screen with other 'room mates.' You can sign in for free to customise rooms and schedule sessions. A great resource for staff meetings, training and distance teaching. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

UKEd Magazine with educational articles on pedagogy and teaching ideas. This issue has a STEM theme.

I have not only been looking at how I teach new topics but also those which I feel confident in delivering. Coincidentally last week, I had the privilege of visiting another school which gave me the opportunity to observe an outstanding practitione…

"Ainsworth, Prain and Tyler  (2011) in a paper in Science argue that  drawing  can play a number of  important roles in learning:, namely: Drawing to enhance engagement - surveys have shown than when students draw to explain they are more motivated to learn compared to traditional teaching of science. Drawing to learn to represent in science - the process of producing visual representations  helps learners understand how scientific representations work. Drawing to reason in science - student learn to reason like scientists as they select specific features to focus on in their drawings, aligning it with observation, measurement and/or emerging ideas Drawing as a learning strategy - if learners read a text and then draw it, the process of making their understanding visible and explicit helps them to overcome limitations in presented material, organise and integrate their knowledge and ultimately can be transformative. Drawing to communicate - discussing their drawings with their students provides teachers with windows into students' thinking as well being a way that the peers can share knowledge, discovery and understanding."

"Steve Jobs didn't hesitate to take risks. If he wanted something, he would ask, even at a young age. When Jobs was twelve years old he called up HP co-founder Bill Hewlett and asked for spare parts. Hewlett gave Jobs the parts and a summer job. "You've got to be willing to crash and burn. If you're afraid of failing, you won't get very far," Jobs once said. "Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that's what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them." I've rarely interviewed a successful entrepreneur or CEO who hasn't risked failure. In fact most successful people don't even see 'failure;' they see a result that didn't have the intended outcome."

All schools in England are being told to filter inappropriate content and teach pupils about staying safe including online harm. Plans unveiled by the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan will require all schools to put in place strengthened measures to protect children from harm online - including cyber bullying, pornography and the risk of radicalisation.

"This is an interesting history site about explorers… except it isn't. If you look at the information it is wildly wrong and the site is designed to teach about fact checking and to show children that not all information on the Internet is trustworthy."

"A leading educational psychologist is urging schools to stop thinking of wellbeing as another subject to be taught. Instead, she is urging them to create healthier schools where students naturally develop wellbeing and a love of learning. Dr. Helen Street, an Honorary Research Fellow with The University of Western Australia's Graduate School of Education, has released a new book, Contextual Wellbeing: creating positive schools from the inside out, which offers a practical framework for building a healthy, equitable social context in schools."

"Starting in the final term before I officially started in September was tough. I wasn't  anticipating having such a full teaching timetable and my own classes were incredibly unsettled. I found it difficult to establish myself as an average science teacher let alone attempt to lead a department. I was seriously considering if I had made the right move! I remember one student in what I thought was a difficult Year 9 class saying "sir why don't you go and get the head of science" to which I replied "I am the head of Science!"."

"In his new book, Adrian Bethune explores different angles of the life of children who are of primary-school age. For example, in a fascinating first chapter, Bethune examines our tribal roots, tapping into our pupils' primitive social instincts and their powerful effects on wellbeing and ability to learn. Citing the work of Louis Cozolino (Click here to view The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom by Louis Cozolino on Amazon UK - worthy of a read itself) a tribal classroom embodies tribal qualities including a tribal leader, cooperation, teamwork, equality, fairness, trust and strong personal relationships. Such qualities enable everyone to feel valued and a feeling of a big family, helping secure positive relationships - the role of the teacher in this relationship is to help pupils feel like they belong, which is fundamental to learning. Developing this tribal theme, Bethune the proceeds to share ideas to be implemented in the primary classroom to help cultivate such positive relationships, including the design of a team flag, greetings and endings, teaching social skills, and building humour and games into the setting."

"As a technology teacher, I always keep looking for new tools to excite my students. During parent-teacher conferences, when a parent comes and asks me how's their child doing at my subject I almost always say, "Everyone is good at technology" or "All of them love ICT lessons". But when I'm alone, I reflect on these statements many times. If everyone already loves technology and is good at it, then what am I here for? What's my role? This is a generation of digital natives. You show a two-year-old how to scroll through the camera roll of your phone once and they won't ask you again. This makes me question my validity again and again."

"Superb adventure platform and puzzle game which teaches about electricity and electrical circuits, designed by the engineering department at the University of Cambridge. Play in your browser or download from Steam."