Adobe Resources

Adobe have opened a site for sharing resources, and currently have 2,213 listed via nearly 28,000 members. They are listed across 3 regions, UK, USA & Canada, and Australia & NZ, and can be searched via grade, relevant Adobe product, resource type and subject. Registration is required to browse all resources here.

Vital resources

Vital is an professional development organisation, whose resources are delivered by the Open University and funded by DfE. They show how ICT can be used better in the classroom, and have developed resources for many secondary subjects, from Art to Science. See the details HERE via their secondary portal.

Teacher's TV closes and reopens

The Teachers TV website closed on April 29th, along with 3,500+ relevant videos for schools. But all is not lost - A group of UK teachers has succeeded in downloading all the videos and materials to share with other teachers online via Google Docs.
In addition, Teachers TV programmes will be available free for anyone to view from 11 May, when operator Ten Alps is relaunching the channel as online service SchoolsWorld.

GCSE Revision

As the new term nears, Year 11 are on the home stretch to their GCSE exams. Previously I posted revision sites HERE, and here are a few more ideas:

Quizlet is a massive flash card site, with 5 million plus sets covering many subjects, and is a good way to revise, as long as the set is relevant and detailed enough. See HERE for more details. You can build a specific set for pupils, and tweak it as it gets used.

Birmingham Grid for Learning has a good collection of revision links, from 73 online resources across all subjects, or via 11 subject choices, plus 24 revision skills links. There’s also a simple revision grid to give pupils ideas of sites to visit by subject. Look HERE for links and ideas.

O2 Learn

O₂ Learn is a new UK based site for Secondary revision videos by subject, from Art to Vocational. There are also tips to help you make your own videos, but in the meantime there are 359 videos to watch. See here for details.

Guardian Teacher Network

From 15.02.11, the Guardian newspaper gives free access to 70,000 pages of lesson plans and modern interactive teaching materials. Previously part of the paysite learn.co.uk, the resources are arraged by subject and age, and are made to download and adapt in the classroom.
33,000 individual lesson assets are supplemented by a flexible bank of more than 20,000 secondary questions that you can use to build custom tests online or on paper, plus numerous video, whiteboard and game style content. Register here for access or to upload your own resources and add to the library.

Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) resources

Promethean Planet is 'the World's Largest Interactive Whiteboard Community'. 26,464 Resources are organized into categories, and sorted by resource type, age and subject. There is also a decent search engine, some paid for resources are included, and the site is UK based.

Smart Exchange is US based, but you can select England by changing the country. 33,522 Resources are held by subject, US grade and filetype, and some paid for resources are included.

Educational Freeware

This site, based in Sweden, finds and reviews high-quality free educational software, including learning games, and websites - mostly for kids, but also for grown-ups. There are 53 free Windows educational downloads and 112 websites listed, plus 11 reference sites, and links to other similar sites. Categories include Art, K-12, Languages, Maths, Music, Science, Social Studies and Videos. See here for details.

UK Charity resources

Free Teaching Resources lists reviewed resources, lesson plans and worksheets produced by top UK charities, museums & more. From KS1-4, and all school subjects (Art & Design to Work related learning), the site links to hundreds of reviewed free lesson plans and resources such as resource packs, worksheets, assembly ideas, school visits, project ideas, videos and images. See here for details.

The Student Room

This is a massive site to support all students from KS3 to University, including a revision wiki here, and KS3 to A level help with academic work here.

Lots of practical information as well on study and student life generally, especially beyond A Level, and careers advice.

Video sites for School

There are now a huge number of videos on the Interweb that are suitable for classroom use, even assuming that your school blocks YouTube.
Here are a few I have found:
Open Video - University of North Carolina collection (4000+) - search by genre, duration or collection, and includes NASA films
5 min - Education (4312), History (1324), Languages (367), Science (2651) in Knowledge category. Arts include Dance, Design, Filmmaking, Drawing & Painting, and Software tutorials, and other general categories include Fitness, Food, Health, Spiritual, Sports and Travel. There are also many music tutorials
WatchKnow - Art (1301), Science (3712), Maths (2512), Eng Language (1931), Literature (1168), History (2449), Social Studies incl Geog (1192), Languages (851), PE & Health (415), The Arts (1302), Philosophy, Religion & Ethics (728) and others
NeoK12 - Thousands of vetted videos, games & puzzles for schools by subject, excluding languages, from many sources
My Learning Tube - Reviewed educational videos by subject (795)
TeacherTube - Videos (118,100), some indexed via Channels, plus Documents (2064), Audio (2304), Photos (3776) and Educational blogs (670)
SchoolTube - Moderated school, teacher & pupil video sharing website for pupils by subject

Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) Resources

A number of sites offer specialised Interactive Whiteboard resources, beyond normal interactive websites which can often be used with a board:
Delicious feed - lots of links (1112), regularly updated
Fife Education - Notebook files from Smart by subject
Schoolzone - Maths, English, Science and Other links
Whiteboardblog - Blog with lots of ideas and sites
Topmarks - Maths (28), Literacy (6), Biology (3), RE (3), Art (7) & Music (1) links for KS3/4 boards

Learning Resource Exchange (LRE)

The LRE, from European Schoolnet, enables schools across Europe to find free educational content from many different countries and providers, from Austria to Sweden.
You must register first, and obviously the resources are in a variety of languages, but you can search by language, subject, keyword or age range. 39,482 Resources are currently available, 11,463 solely in English.
See http://lreforschools.eun.org for full details.

Wikipedia Selection for Schools

Did you know that there is a Wikipedia for Schools? The 2008/9 Wikipedia DVD Selection is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia, targeted around the UK National Curriculum. It has about 5500 articles (as much as can be fitted on a DVD with good size images) and is about the size of a twenty volume encyclopaedia (34,000 images and 20 million words). It can also be downloaded, and was produced with the SOS Children charity. See http://schools-wikipedia.org for details. Navigation is by subject, by the first two letters of the topic word (a system which seems to work very well) or via 36 portals for major topics.

Teachers TV

Teachers TV, a UK based TV station & website founded in 2005, is a mine of information. For example, there are videos specifically designed for the classroom at www.teachers.tv/resource
(103 KS1, 191 KS2, 337 KS3 & 411 KS4), and all can be browsed by subject, topic or key stage. In addition, there are 35 groups you can join to discuss everything from Cover Supervision to Working in SEN. These groups include Learning Platforms, Personalised Learning and Web 2.0 Resources. See www.teachers.tv/groups for details.

Common Sense Media

Common Sense is a San Francisco based site that reviews
and rates websites suitable for pupils (plus books, TV, games, music and films).
770 websites are reviewed by age range, and each review rates sites by many criteria, including sex, violence, consumerism and educational content. There is an overall rating, colour coding for ages, and advice for parents. 196 sites are categorised as educational, and there are many recommended sites for each age group and type of interest.
Try www.commonsensemedia.org for details.

E L Easton

This US site started out as an English language learning site, and can be used for teaching both native speakers and those whose first language is not English. It also covers other curriculum subjects, including many Foreign Languages. Links to suitable sites, plus quizzes and audio sites, are provided. See http://eleaston.com for details.

National Digital Resource Bank

NRDB is a swapshop for teachers to exchange resources for VLEs. Launched for the new school year, it has 1100 resources so far. You can search by subject, key stage, learning time and even learner type, and use keywords. Local Authorities opt to fund it via a small change from Oct 2009, so passwords require membership first. See www.ndrb.org.uk for more details.

TES - The place to swap resources

You should already be familiar with TES if you have ever looked for a post in Education in the UK, but the site has two other reasons for a visit.
TES has a membership of 829,000+ teachers, who contribute to lively debates about their subjects, and any other educational topics, via forums. It is simply the best way to keep up to date with what matters now in your subject(s).
In addition, there is a fantastic collection of 39,000+ resources which are available to share, with comments from some who have downloaded them. Resources can be searched by keyword, subject, type and Key Stage.

Anyone who is serious about finding excellent resources, as used by real teachers in the classroom, should see www.tes.co.uk. You need to register to download, but it's a small price to pay for what you can get in return.

Learn ICT (and other subjects)

The learn ICT site is based in Swansea, and has weblink resources for many Secondary subjects, from Art to www searching, not just ICT itself.
The list of links by subject is also annotated with information about the chosen site.

See www.learn-ict.org.uk/links/curr_links.asp for details.