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"Great teachers know that learning doesn't stop as soon as you graduate from college. Teachers learn from their experience, from their colleagues, from their students, and any number of other resources. If you are a teacher looking for ways to expand your knowledge base, here are 100 free lectures you can watch to help facilitate some of that learning." This great collection of some of the best recent lectures has been selected by Heidi Taylor. It contains sections on Creative Learning Environments, Technology, Information for New Teachers, Information for All Teachers, Teaching Specific Subjects, Special Needs, Arts, PE & Health and Lectures From Influential Professors. This is the perfect site for a rainy afternoon.

"The interest in game-based learning has accelerated considerably in recent years, driven by clear successes in military and industrial training as well as by emerging research into the cognitive benefits of game play." - 2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition Using gaming as a vehicle for learning is a very powerful idea and one that is under-utilized. This wiki is an attempt to create a comprehensive resource about gaming that we can all learn from - all contributions welcome!"

"We live in an era where the answer to almost any fact-based question is no further than a Google search away, but Scientific American highlights a study suggesting subjects forced to get something wrong before being told the answer learn it better."

This site is "concerned with using Apple's iPad for teaching and learning. Although this is based in the UK, the site's content will reflect practice from other counties and contexts in order to explore and learn from a wide field." Of particular interest is the iPad vs netbooks page.

"The Buck Institute for Education commissioned the cutting-edge advertising agency, Common Craft, to create a short animated video that explains in clear language the essential elements of Project Based Learning (PBL). This simple video makes the essential elements of PBL come alive and brings to light the 21st Century skills and competencies (collaboration, communication, critical thinking) that will enable K-12 students to be college and work-ready as well as effective members of their communities."

Janetta Garton from Willard R2 schools has provided under CC licence resources for developing Inquiry Based Learning Units. The site contains an interactive to test understandings of the concepts that make up inquiry learning as well as an excellent handout, slideshare and other resources.

This slideshare from upsidelearning.com is a really challenging introduction to the world of mobile learning. Though the focus is on higher ed and training the sentiments are applicable to all levels of education and is well worth a look.

This is a great collection of blog posts, references, reports, prognostications, (100 in total) speculating on the future of learning and education. I've read a couple but now have a real task ahead of me to take in the rest, wish me luck.

The content and technology are continually changing. This article reminds us that learners are also changing. For the past decade, faculty who won awards for teaching expressed concern that they could no longer hold the attention of their students. John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist at Xerox and director of its Palo Alto Research Center, hired 15 year olds to design future work environments and learning environments. He observed that the students did not conform to the traditional image of learners as permissive sponges. It requires us to rethink and redesign education for the Digital Age.

Since May 2005 Educause has been creating the 7 Things You Should Know About... series around the newest emerging learning and teaching technologies. Written from an educationalist's perspective each 2 page pdf follows a similar format comprising A scenario What the Technology is Who's using it How it works Why its significant What the downsides are Where its going and Implications for Teaching and Learning Check out the ever expanding collection.

This article from Doug Johnson in the ISTE Learning and Leading Journal is a great summary of why schools should be seriously considering cloud computing. The article is also downloadable.

"Bullying.org's purpose is to prevent bullying in our society through education and awareness. We provide educational programs and resources to individuals, families, educational institutions and organizations. We make available online learning and educational resources in order to help people deal effectively and positively with the act of bullying and its long lasting negative consequences."

A better download site than the ACARA site for the new Australian draft curriculum guides is the Herald-Sun. Just scroll down and you will find the links on the left hand side near the end of the story.

"This video illustrates how we are using QR Codes to enhance learning opportunities for our students at McGuffey School District in Claysville, PA."

Once you've begun working with YouTube for some time you might like to play with the movies that are available. This list from the makeuseof site is a collection of ten interesting hacks associated with YouTube movies. Here you can learn how to view and embed high quality videos, link to the video part way through the clip, hide the search box, embed only the relevant part of a movie, autoplay and loop an embedded movie, disable the related video link, Bypass regional filters and use kickyoutube to download videos.

Educause has done it again with another in their great "7 Things" pdf monograms this time turning their attention to VoiceThread. As usual they illustrate the application via a scenario before concisely looking at the upsides and drawbacks of the application as well as implications for teaching and learning. A really good read.

"The School 2.0 eToolkit is designed to help schools, districts and communities develop a common education vision for the future and to explore how that vision can be supported by technology." The site contains a range of resources including the Learning Ecosystem Map that is accessible in both an interactive form as well as a poster. The map is a work in progress that you can create an account to add to. The site also has a range of other tool and toolkits that school administrators and technology and other co-ordinators can use to develop their own understanding of School 2.0.

SCAMPER is a strategy that can be used to assist students to generate new or alternative ideas. It is a tool to support creative, divergent thinking. SCAMPER is an acronym for: substitute, combine, adapt, modify/magnify/minify, put to other uses, eliminate, reverse/rearrange. What is its purpose? SCAMPER is a thinking tool that helps students to ask questions about a concept, text, or idea that require them to think beyond the obvious. It can help develop critical thinking skills and creativity and is a useful cooperative learning tool and a great stimulus for role play. In this post from Litemind, Lucciano " ....... presents a complete SCAMPER primer, along with two free creativity-boosting resources: a downloadable reference mind map and an online tool that generates random questions to get you out of a rut whenever you need." In this very comprehensive post Luciano note only explains the terminology associated with SCAMPER but also lists suggested questions as well as "Trigger Words".

"Established in 2006, Curriculumbits.com offer free online access to a growing range of interactive multimedia elearning resources. The online resource library contains games, quizzes, animations and videos in a variety of subjects. Resources have been produced according to key stage 3 and 4 of the UK National Curriculum for students aged 11 to 16." Though the learning objects are not downloadable they are eminently suited to using on an interactive whiteboard.

Established in 2006, Curriculumbits.com offer free online access to a growing range of interactive multimedia elearning resources. The online resource library contains games, quizzes, animations and videos in a variety of subjects. Resources have been produced according to key stage 3 and 4 of the UK National Curriculum for students aged 11 to 16. All resources are produced by elearning multimedia specialists in collaboration with every day teaching staff as a direct solution to their classroom requirements.

This report from Common Sense Media "reveals that social networking is moving communication from face to face to cyberspace - and that parents have a lot to learn when it comes to their children's behaviors online." You can download a range of associated material here including the press release, executive summary and the report in total. Having checked out the report you might also like to http://www.ypulse.com/parents-clueless-about-teens-lives-same-as-it-ever-was for another take on the figures.