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Teachable now allows a greater range of filetypes (Flash, ActivStudio, Smart Notebook) to be uploaded, and we are hoping to capture some of the creativity these software packages allow for class resources.

We have a good range of materials for secondary science and maths, but we are particularly looking for more creative material for:

• Primary-level science
• Primary geography
• KS3 History

Good example of the possibilities of Flash used in class is from IBoard or Furbles for primary age , or this CellsAlive animation for A-level.

If you’re not sure what our members would find useful then have a look at our further guidelines, or email us with some samples.

Of course if Powerpoint and Word is what you are comfortable in, then teachers are definitely looking for that as well.

On 23rd July the one bright spot in an otherwise grey July took place at Magdalen College, Oxford, where Teachable held it’s inaugural meetup for employees, editors and top contributors. After a successful year expanding the service Teachable offers in a range of subjects, we wanted to take the opportunity to get a number of people closely involved in the site together to discuss what features we should add next

There was general agreement that we need to:

• Give the ability to preview files on-screen (and especially animations)
• Make the search more intelligent, including some user-specific preferences
• Add more detail to the reviews to make them as unbiased as possible

We also announced the winners of our ongoing competition for Slide of the Month. The winner of the Summer Term slide (and a £50 prize) went to Tandi Clausen-May, a maths contributor:

Her winning slide (from the Angles as a Turn resource) is so animated that we have actually captured it as a video:

You can view more of Tandi’s maths teaching resources.

Slide of the Spring Term went to a longstanding contributor, Toby Tufton, who produced an original and beautifully presented drag-and-drop Powerpoint worksheet on human digestion. Well done Toby!

There’s lots in the news today picking up a survey by the Local Government Association showing a shortage of state school places, supposedly because the recession is forcing privately-educated pupils into the state sector.

We don’t think that’s true.

The reality, and contrary to what we predicted last autumn, is that private schools in the UK are doing OK. An Economist report pointed out that numbers of pupils at independent schools is steady this year. Parents try hard not to change schools if they possibly can … but may think twice about starting pre-school children in a fee-paying school. So, in the 1990s, the number of independent school places didn’t drop until 3 years AFTER the recession, and then only by around 3%.

What is happening is that the demographics of the UK are changing. Only one fifth of councils in the LGA survey reported a shortage of places, and these are likely to be in central London. More immigration of young adults into London over the last 10 years had lead to a boom in pre-school children, which will rapidly increase inner-city demand for primary places. Visa versa, schools in Merseyside have up to 25% surplus places as the population ages and young families move out the area.

The upshot is that more provision needs to be made for schools to expand and grow in areas of demand (London and the South East), and merge and shrink in areas of lower demand. This may mean some disruption for teachers, but the alternative is unacceptably high class sizes in already crowded schools in the inner-cities.