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This musical site gives you a virtual synthesiser to create wonderful tunes and sound effects on. It's easy to use and versatile. You can play the middle octave with your computer keyboard or plot the music along a timeline for greater accuracy. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

This is a wonderful site from the University of Salford in the UK. Listen to soundscapes which have been recorded all over the world. Navigate on the map to find a place of interest, listen to the recording and read the information about the location. Upload your own soundscapes using the site or download the iPhone and iPad app at https://itunes.apple.com/app/i-say/id516927213. It's a useful geography resource and should get your students thinking about the sounds around them. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

This is a wonderful site for designing lesson plans and collating resources to push out to an iPad app for students to access and interact with. You can put together websites, videos, audio, documents, images and instructions. You can make quizzes for your students to answer to provide you with instant feedback about how they are doing. Your students can make their own notes about the lesson from within the app. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Planning+%26+Assessment

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.)"

COPPA is a reason that many schools shy away from having any children under 13 participate in online sites, however, NeoPets is a website that has done this. This is a copy of their COPPA consent form. In here, you can see how they've tracked and worked with this permission. It does require the parents to fill out and fax or mail the form in to NeoPets to allow children to use the communications portion of the website. This would be a website to review if you're looking at creating a portal or service that allows kids under 13 to post and communicate in ways that tracks their data. I am wondering if Facebook would eventually do something like this or if they will continue to create an environment that encourages children to lie to get on their platform. (i.e. under 13 not allowed)

I don't often talk about it, but I own a little house in Sydney bay. It's not much, but I'm proud of it. The problem is that it is only virtual and made out of Lego. This wonderful site allows you to design houses, or anything else, with virtual Lego on a virtual plot in Australia or New Zealand. It's like a simplified version of SketchUp, great for younger children. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Now that I am venturing into my second year as a trainee teacher (yay me!), I've learnt a lot, I've made a lot of mistakes, made friends, made enemies, delivered some brilliant lessons and some so bad, I've wondered if maybe, just maybe I'd be better off sitting in the class, rather than teaching it.

"A wonderful little tool for creating custom badges to download and use in your classroom. Change the icon, border, shape and colours."

A wonderful site for teaching about money. Users go on adventures and earn coins. Travel back in time, play games and have fun... but only if you have the cash! http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

A wonderful English resource with great lesson plans and ideas to get your students reading. The site is categorised by age and topic. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

As I'm reading on inquiry based learning, I came across another article, I'd like to share. In this article, it discusses how inquiry-based learning projects are driven by students. This very much aligns with the questions we ask on the Flat Classroom and other projects. The one point of meaning that I'm working to understand (and finding different answers depending upon the site) is that some differentiate that students should develop the questions rather than teachers "handing them" the questions. I have a lesson plan I sent through Diigo where the instructor designed a lesson around the question "Can there be giants?" and called in inquiry based. Under this article, it may not be called true inquiry based, and yet, I'm wondering if the question is intriguing and of interest and can be used in a way to teach if it really matters where the question originates.  My class is a mix of student-created inquiries (Freshman project) and project-generated inquiries (Digiteen, Flat Classroom). Interesting. Look forward to reading and understanding more (and sharing with you.) This is another nice article on the topic. Feel free to share yours. "Inquiry-based learning" is one of many terms used to describe educational approaches that are driven more by a learner's questions than by a teacher's lessons. It is inspired by what is sometimes called a constructivist approach to education, which posits that there are many ways of constructing meaning from the building blocks of knowledge and that imparting the skills of "how to learn" is more important than any particular information being presented. Not all inquiry-based learning is constructivist, nor are all constructivist approaches inquiry-based, but the two have similarities and grow from similar philosophies.

New video website creation website from Richard Byrne 's website. I wonder how many schools will create video repositories using this site. It could also be a good way to have video portfolios made from a YouTube channel for a student.

This site has been a wonderful source of discussion ideas in my class, especially in philosophy sessions. This site has an archive going back to 2007 of over 1,000 fabulous question that will get your class (and you) thinking and discussing. You can even submit your own brain bouncing questions to the site. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/PSHE%2C+RE%2C+Citizenship%2C+Geography+%26+Environmental

A wonderful YouTube channel featuring over 400 science experiments and activities to try in your class. Each video is succinct and easy to follow. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science

Turtle Diary is a wonderful, must try site packed with a huge collection of online interactive games and activities for young children, including maths and literacy resources. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Early+Years

Ever wondered what the internet looks like? Well, not like this site, but it does provide a stunning visual representation of thousands of the biggest websites and how they are connected geographically on the network. This is a great way to start student thinking about web and how we are all connected. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

A wonderful primary history site from the BBC about the Romans. See how they lived and how they fought to protect their empire. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/History

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

Ever wondered why Christmas Reindeer have red noses? You are about to find out with this musical Reindeer Orchestra. Make sure your volume is up. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Winter+%26+Christmas

This simple addition and subtraction game is wonderful for whiteboards. The pen tool allows students to show their workings before choosing an answer from the four given. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths