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We want to introduce you to Eric. He’s the newest member of the Teachable.net team. We realise there is no such thing as a typical teacher … but then Eric is imaginary. He epitomises the struggle teachers often have trying to keep teaching materials fresh and engaging.

Eric faces the same dilemma over and over again. He is sitting in front of his computer late on another Sunday evening. He is no stranger to the internet and often finds himself spending hours searching endless pages looking for ideas and fresh interactive resources to help with his lesson preparation for the coming week. His latest class are proving a nightmare. Nothing seems to get them engaged.

As the hours tick by Eric looks through resource site after resource site and tries to filter out the dross. The solution was just one click away. It is the only resource site that has the quality and range of resources that is needed to get his class back on track: Teachable.net.

Eric can rest assured that the resources that he downloaded were quality-checked, teacher-developed and can be easily adapted. What he can offer his students is a creative set of materials that other teachers have used successfully in their own schools. Perfect.

Teachable.net has had a bit if a re-vamp to ensure that our teacher Eric is at the centre of everything we do. His presence symbolises that we put our members first and give you what you want. Eric loves to hear Teachable.net members comments and suggestions. Feel free to drop him a line, eric @ teachable.net.

We promise to keep you informed about what Teachable members are searching for. This month have selected the most common queries for resources that we do not have. Please go ahead and submit any files you have in these topic areas – we can guarantee they will be well received. You can contribute by uploading online or emailing contribute (at) teachable.net.

Generally, the most queried term was ‘Easter‘. We have a couple of Easter-themed quizzes, but it would be great to see more RS material on the festival of Easter itself, and also Easter-themed material for other subjects for the end of term.

In History the top most wanted are:
ww1
evacuees
explorers
imperialism
mammoths
napoleon
pirates

In Geography the most wanted are:
china
ozone
pesticides (and pests)
limestone

In MFL, the most wanted are:
songs
environement (environment)
imparfait
passe compose

In Science the top most wanted are:
chromatography
antibiotics
cancer
diabetes
extinction
immunisation
redox
woodlice
alkane
contraception
fermenter
forensics
microbiology
relativity
skin
alloys
ammeter
antigens
biofuels
bunsen burner
chemistry
elasticity
gravtational potental
menstruation

In other subjects there were requests for scattergraphs and symmetry in Math, Buddhism and the New Testament parables in R.E., and Frankenstein, paragraphs and conclusions in English (not necessarily in that order!)

I’m finding this story about the insurance giant AIG and its bonus payments hard to believe. It’s similar to the Sir Fred Goodwin pay scandal only bigger and more puzzling. For most of us it is astounding how such bonus payments can be ‘guaranteed’, but i’m especially concerned about the lack of care shown by government investors.

The facts of the matter are:
1. AIG makes some stupendously stupid better on the credit markets, using its once great credit rating to take on huge risks.

2. Falling markets and huge derivative losses make AIG totally bust. Bankrupt, not just slightly into the red.

3. US government agrees to bail out AIG, because the alternative seemed to be global financial meltdown.

4. Even though every man, woman and child in America is in effect investing $600 into AIG, no-one bothers to check the employment contracts…

My question is, if it was your $600 (let alone $170bn) going to save the world wouldn’t you want to make sure that no-one was profiting from this kind of failure? For professional investors this is just the most obvious thing to check – that the management team isn’t taking all the cream.

And it looks like the UK government repeated the mistake with RBS. Just what is so tricky about inserting a clause saying that due to ‘change of ownership’ the bonuses will all be cut?? It’s not as if they’re all going to leave to become teachers…

While we’re on the subject, I can assure you that there are no rewards for failure at Teachable. As Managing Director I won’t be taking a salary (let alone bonus) until we are established as the most useful download site for teachers. If we get it right, and everyone benefits, then I will certainly get paid… but then there is no way I can mess up like those boys from AIG.

Can you really do a Teaching Certificate in 6 months and come out as a decent teacher?

Many feel that teaching is not a profession that can be learned easily, in some cases it doesn’t come naturally, so the argument we are hearing is that nurturing your class to get the best from them may not be a natural skill for the City ‘victims of the credit crunch’ for which the fast track scheme is being created to help.

These people are highly intelligent and commercially astute, but does this mean that their experience will transfer easily to teaching topics in a more rigid national curriculum, and engaging classes. Will this role really suit them?

The other obvious question is ‘are they being given extra privileges’? According to some reports some of these very people will be given bonus payments ‘ golden halos’ for taking headteacher positions in deprived areas. Sure, there are many headteachers who have worked incredibly hard to turn their schools around and some of these new ‘supercharged’ teachers’ may well bring some new skills to the table. But will any of these skills be a substitute for years of toil getting to grips with how to engage and motivate difficult pupils, who need more than a lesson in ‘playing the game’.

Update 16/3/09: it seems that we aren’t the only skeptics on this bit of spin. This columnist has strong views on just how the finance types will fit in:

Ah, do come in, Mr Blue-Chips, come in and serve us all your days. Let me take your BlackBerry and your cocaine spoon. You won’t be needing those. You’ll find a mortarboard and gown hanging up on the door and a sense of dignity and self-esteem waiting on your desk, along with a copy of The Guardian. Buttered crumpet? Crème de la crème? One stereotype or two?

By Tayyiba Bruce, a Teachable MFL editor

Quatre-vingt-dix-neuf … literally Four-twenty-ten-nine! And that’s why your students need plenty of practice of French numbers. Motivating self-marking worksheets take away the need for dull repetition drills and have the added benefit of boosting your students confidence through their auto-correct function. I have developed worksheet on counting in French – this is a guide to how to fit this resource into one of your lessons:

1. Begin the lesson with a short game like word tennis to warm up. Split the class into four teams. Each team starts with a score of 3. See if the pupils can count up to twenty, in twos as high as they can go, in tens etc until a wrong answer is given, in which case they lose a point. When a team has zero points they are out!

2. Use the whiteboard to show use of numbers in different contexts – elicit from pupils French currency, weights, how to write the date.

3. Consolidate with excel sheet on numbers. Pair them up on a computer and see who can finish first with all answers correct. Look out for answers that change to bold blue font as they are correct, if the answer stays red/brown it is wrong.

There is a wider selection of French worksheets on the main Teachable site.

Yesterday I was hearing at the annual Naace conference (an organisation responsible for promoting educational technology) about how many teachers actually get involved in creating different types of material for their class.

Our experience at Teachable is similar to the show of hands in the conference – although it was a very tech-savvy audience.  At one end is Word and Powerpoint, which almost everyone has created themselves, and at the other end is Flash and online video, which most people just watch without getting involved in creating.  In my experience it is all about time: producing our new 1 minute Flash animation for Teachable took over 2 days, whereas a good worksheet can be pulled together in a few hours.

If you have got involved in creating material on the left hand end of this spectrum then give yourself a pat on the back … and read more about contributing to Teachable.  The reality is that your material is likely to be very useful to the majority of teacher ‘consumers’ who really don’t have the time to produce this themselves.  We’ve seen some great Flash and video material, especially stuff that can be used on a mobile phone or handheld device.  But we’d love to see some more.

One of the headaches of running an interactive file sharing site is that there are two major file types for whiteboards.

You may well have had the frustrating experience of developing material for Promethean ActivBoard and then finding your new school has Smart, or visa versa.  That’s exactly why we encourage Powerpoint – because almost everyone can read and edit the same files.

However, it looks like a solution might finally be in sight in the form of a common whiteboard file standard.  Becta in the UK is trying to push all the main whiteboard manufacturers into allowing import and export of a standard type of file (a bit like the interactive version of Rich Text Format).  If you are responsible for buying equipment for a school, then you can do your bit by asking the supplier if they will support a common file format.

If this gets off the ground we’ll be able to offer convertors to take your existing Smart / Promethean / other files and convert that to something everyone can use.

In the meantime, do email us any whiteboard files you think you could contribute.  We are seriously considering supporting Flipchart and Smart files in the near future.