http://www.childnet-int.org/music/
Childnet Internation have produced an updated version of their free guide for teachers and parents that explains the process of downloading music from the Internet and some of the associated legal issues.

http://www.planet-science.com/outthere/mint
Making a Mint is a botany and enterprise project for 7-14 year olds from NESTA’s Future Innovators Team and Planet Science. The competition will see entrants given a free pack of mint seeds and set the challenge of adding as much value to the grown plants as possible. Teams will then sell their minty products whilst recording its activity, including profit and loss, on specially designed balance sheets before the closing date of 6th July. Ideas could range from making and selling mint tea to producing a booklet about 101 uses of mint. With few guidelines, children are being encouraged to be as creative as possible.

At the end of the competition, NESTA will look at the top 50 entries which have made the most money and award a prize to the most creative money-making scheme. Participants will also have the chance to win £1000 for their school in either Amazon or Garden Vouchers.

With the competition designed to educate kids on the science behind growing a plant from seed, as well as teaching them valuable entrepreneurial skills. Packs can be secured by visiting the web address at the top of this post. Youth groups and individual teams can enter.

http://www.supermathsworld.com/
This is a really fun site which features a large selection of maths questions presented in a “video game” style. Many of the activities could be used with older Key Stage 2 students but teachers would have to direct them to the appropriate areas of the site (as some of the topics aren’t on the primary syllabus).

http://www.myawardmaker.com/
This free site features lots of award certificates which will be useful to any teachers looking for something quick to print out. Watch out for US educational terms & spellings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/games/questionaut/
Questionaut is a new game (on the BBC website) that helps KS2 pupils revise areas of English, Maths and Science. Click the link above for a magical journey where students need to click and explore each wonderfully illustrated level to trigger each set of questions.

(Source: BBC Schools Newsletter)

http://www.botham.co.uk/seed/first.htm
This site, from Yorkshire bakers Botham’s, is really useful for those classes that are looking at making bread in their design & technology lessons. There’s information about how bread is made commercially, a history of bread through the ages and some really simple bread recipes. It’s obviously been around on the Internet for quite some time but I think that it’s still worth taking a look at. 

http://www.visualgeography.com/
Boris Kester and Nana Bjørnlund have put together this great geography website which collects together stunning photographs, useful images and other information about countries all over the world.

Nana writes:

We have created a site with thousands of pictures from more than 85 countries in the world. The site is meant as a tool for teachers and students, and anyone else who is interested in learning about the world via our visual material and written text. Our images are made easy to use by being divided into categories such as people, houses, transportation, food, and much more. Other educational features on our site are quizzes, images of flags, maps, language samples, images of currencies and other information. We hope you will find our site useful, and if you have suggestions or picture/text contributions (e.g. as part of a school project) let us know, and we will get back to you. We will gladly receive your feedback.

http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/080229.html
I’ve mentioned the super webcomic, Sheldon, before. Today’s strip is great for lovers (and haters!) of Facebook.

http://edtechroundup.wordpress.com/
If you’re interested in using ICT to improve achievement (or even just enjoyment!) across the curriculum then it’s worth checking out the EdTechRoundup podcast. It’s a new podcast with a British take on using technology in education. It’s being produced by a group of UK teachers with the aim of spreading good practice and innovative tools in education.

At the time of writing there have been two episodes of the show so far. As with any new podcast, the team is still finding their feet. At the moment I would say that teachers with a good level of experience using ICT would get the most out of the shows. However if you’re new to podcasting, twittering or Open Source then why not email in some questions? I’m sure that they’ll include some “101″ introductory features in the future if that’s what listeners want.

Check out the podcast and get involved.

http://www.teacherled.com/
This site, by teacher Spencer Riley, contains a great collection of interactive whiteboard teaching tools. These super activities are perfect for whole class teaching. There’s currently material on symmetry, probability, graphs, fractions and several other maths topics.

Spencer hopes to regularly add to the collection of resources on the site so go and visit it now and let him know that his hard work is appreciated.