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This is a fabulous video site where students from MIT teach science for Primary and Secondary children. View videos on a range of topics including engineering, biology, physics, astronomy and more. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science

Health teachers will love this site for kids. If you have a rainy day and have access to some computers, this would be a great place for activities. As we emphasize health, we should seek out engaging content in this area. This site is free. Love it. "The multi-award winning program is focused on teaching the basics of cardiovascular health, including anatomy, nutrition, and exercise, by offering comprehensive curriculum materials to teachers and a site just for elementary school children to explore. The curriculum was developed as part of our mission to educate the public in a collaborative effort with medical professionals and certified teachers.  Project Heart is completely free to use and free of advertisements. It is also fully translated into Spanish. 

I've been turning tweets that have had the most shares and favorites into photos for two reasons: 1) to test photo makers and 2) to satisfy my own curiosity if it is true that pictures travel further than text these days. Here's one that reached almost 100,000 people on Twitter. The exact tweet was "My wish for children is 1 to 1. Every 1 to have 1 person who loves them. Be the one, teacher. Be the one." Hope this encourages you as you share.

I love this project created by one of my students to help children be unafraid to go to the doctor. She has a youtube channel called Pediatric Videos with one video having more than 50,000 views (the one on CT scanning.) Her dad is a pediatrician and filmed everything while supervising her and helping her write the script. Her little brother was the patient. This is a fantastic example of a passion based project.

"Join the maker movement! There's a technological and creative revolution underway. Amazing new tools, materials and skills turn us all into makers. Using technology to make, repair or customize the things we need brings engineering, design and computer science to the masses. Fortunately for educators, this maker movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. The active learner is at the center of the learning process, amplifying the best traditions of progressive education. This book helps educators bring the exciting opportunities of the maker movement to every classroom."

VocabularySpellingCity has a new summer word study program that allows children to sharpen academic skills as they play. These simple assignments are a daily workout for the brain, building literacy skills such as vocabulary, spelling, and writing.

With 7.5 million kids under 13 on Facebook, the idea that they are testing allowing strangers to message you for $1 is a problem. The whole COPPA/ Lie about your age to get on Facebook coupled with location based services on smartphones that don't require disclosure to parents is going to come to a head and if companies continue to pretend that lying on a checkbox absolves them of the responsbility to protect children, they are wrong.

This is a must try site which provides an amazing 3D world which teaches English and maths core skills. Players race against two other randomly chosen online players of a similar level. The questions start out very easy and adapt to the performance of the player. The questions are read out and some are displayed on the screen. The player just clicks on the correct multiple choice answer to increase their speed. There is a download for PCs and Macs as well as apps for iPad and Android. There are teacher accounts which allow you to make logins for lots of children quickly. When there log in students will be asked to design an avatar. Because the resource requires a sizeable download it takes a little time to set up, but because it runs on your local device game play is very smooth and quick. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

We've been doing an incredible professional development with Angela Maiers. You start with what you want to "be" before you talk about what you want to "do." This model is powerful and transformative, but honestly it took me the first 3-4 hours of the 10 hour training before the light bulb went on and I went 'oh" - Oh, my goodness, I"ve been doing some of this, but we need a common language. We start with what we want to be "scientists" "a learer" "risk takers" "bold" "Models and mentors" - -she challenged us to "be the learner, leader, citizen you wish your children to be."

One of my students is the daughter of a local pediatrician and wants to go into the field herself. She created her channel last year and is continuing to add videos this year. She has a video What is the CAT/CT Scan machine that has over 53,000 views! She scans her little brother while her Dad (a pediatrician) runs the video camera. Her desire was to create videos that will help children be less afraid of the doctor and the equipment used. I think it is kind of funny the expressions her little brother has. ;-)

Awesome ways to use QR codes to help children learn to read.

This might be a neat approach to have children do with their familiy as they tell "our story." There are public and private ways to build stories. What a great way to document vacation or have students share about their summers.

KNowmania is a very cool website which now has an app. You'll want to look at the online site, but if you're looking at flipping and have detailed screencasts, etc, this is a nice site. It is also an interesting app to have children use to create their own screencasts. "Knowmia Teach is a new free lesson planning and recording tool for teachers. It helps you create short video lessons on any subject and publish them on Knowmia.com so your students and the public can find them. Knowmia Teach makes it easy to bring in visual aids from multiple sources, organize them in steps (like slides in a presentation) an"

I'm not partisan. There are some things that Aaron Maurer says in this post that make a lot of sense. "What bothers me is this "punish the whole system method" employed in the education world. I agree that teachers need to be held accountable. However, I know that state test scores do not show what I teach. What happens in schools is that we never address the specific issues at hand. If a teacher is not doing their job, then call them out. Tell them, show them how they are messing up, and then give them a plan to improve. Help them with necessary skills. If they choose not to improve or they simply don't improve, then you let them go. No more of this keeping teachers for 30 years and for 30 years they have been bad. That affects too many children that need good quality teachers. Hold us accountable like we should be holding our students accountable."

Funny... when you treat children with dignity and create beauty around them, they tend NOT to act like criminals. Create a school environment that's like a prison, and...

This is a superb classroom management tool where you can track the behaviour of your class and keep them motivated. Simply click on the child and assign them a positive or negative behaviour point. You can also track their reading and spelling ages and make your own customised data set. Use this information to help you arrange the children within your class. You can have multiple classes on your teacher's account and you can share data with colleagues using different accounts. The data is encrypted to ensure data security. The system works on the majority of web enabled devices. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Classroom+Management+%26+Rewards

This is an Australian website with current affairs news articles written for children. There is a good archive of past editions to browse through. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/PSHE%2C+RE%2C+Citizenship%2C+Geography+%26+Environmental

I"ve been hearing a lot of great things from teachers about Book creator as a new way they have students create reports. Called, Book Creator, children can create pages, send them to their teachers and then the teacher can put them together further. 

This is an amazing, beautifully made and entertaining site for young children to learn phonic sounds. Design a monster and take it on an adventure around a magic area to find the letter sounds and fix a spaceship. The storyline is good and the activities are educational and motivational. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

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