Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Teaching News

Teaching News

Big changes to our teaching resource sites…

Posted: 13 Oct 2015 07:50 AM PDT

Hi everyone,

As you may have noticed, Teaching News hasn’t been updated in a while… in fact, the latest post here was about 18 months ago! If you’re not aware, this site is one of a number of teaching resource sites that we run, including Teaching Ideas, Teaching Packs, Teaching Photos, Teaching Appz, Ideas to Inspire, Welcome to the Web and a few others!

We will be making some changes to our sites over the next few months, so we wanted to give you an outline of what is happening…

Teaching Ideas – Millions of teachers visit this site each year, exploring our free activity ideas and classroom resources and using these with their children in classrooms around the world. We have been working really hard on a BIG redesign for our Teaching Ideas site and we’re almost ready to share it with you!

Here’s a quick preview:

The current homepage looks like this…

Teaching Ideas - Current Site

… and the new homepage will look like this:

Teaching Ideas - New Site

The new version of the site will include:

  • Resource Previews – The long lists of text links on our current site will be replaced with large Pinterest-style image previews, so that you can see what the resources look like before you download them.
  • Ratings – You will able to add your comments and ratings to all of the activity ideas and resources. Have you used them in your class? What worked well? What could be improved? We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.
  • Filtering and Sorting – You will be able to sort and filter the ideas and resources (by age, activity type, subject, theme, rating and popularity) to help you find useful content for your class quickly.
  • Mobile and tablet-friendly – The site will work better on mobile devices, so that you can browse Teaching Ideas easily, wherever you are.
  • Classroom display photos – Hundreds of images of classroom display boards have been added to the site, to inspire you when you are making your own!
  • Regular News Updates – Explore our new ‘News’ pages to discover the latest ideas, activities and educational websites.
  • New Resources – All of the existing ideas and resources have now been transferred from the current site and we have been busy making plenty of new resources too, so visit us when the site is live to see what’s new!

Remember, everything on Teaching Ideas is free for teachers to use in their classrooms… with no need to register, sign in or subscribe.

Teaching News, Photos and Appz – These sites will all go offline in November. All images from Teaching Photos have been transferred to the new Teaching Ideas site and the most useful content from Teaching News / Appz will be moved across later. Our Ideas to Inspire site will also go offline.

Teaching Packs

Teaching Packs – We will continue to work hard on our Teaching Packs site… we love making new resource packs for our members! We’re currently working on the Report Writing Pack and the Space Pack… with many more packs to follow!

Welcome to the Web – Our popular Internet tutorial for children will also stay online. The site recently moved to a new URL, so please use that in future – www.w2tw.uk

Can you help?

Teaching Ideas has thousands of ideas and resources, many of which have been contributed by teachers around the world. Can you share any of the following?

  • Teaching Ideas – Activities that have worked well in your classroom, in any subject area.
  • Resources – Activity sheets and display materials that you have created and used with your students.
  • Classroom Display Photos – Photographs of your own display boards that can inspire other teachers around the world.

If you can share any of these, please get in touch. We would love to be able to post them on Teaching Ideas, so that other teachers can learn from your experiences and expertise. Thank you!

Thanks to everyone involved in the redesign of Teaching Ideas. It has been a huge project and we can’t wait to share the finished site with you in a few weeks time.

Mark and Helen Warner

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