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Perfect for Guy Fawkes Night, download these ready-to-go lessons now! Get the free resources on how fireworks work, what different types there are, the chemistry of colour, and the history of fireworks. See how to create a green flame effect inside a pumpkin using Boric Acid, or use the simpler activity on coloured fire using copper chloride and lycopodium powder. Not subscribed? Buy for just £1.95 today. Contributed by Jessica McAulay

Get your evolution or extinction lesson going with this fun starter. The class is asked to guess if the creature on the slide is extinct or not, using photos and interesting facts and even some trick questions in there. Suitable for your Key Stage 3 or Key Stage 4 classes, you can download this 13-slide presentation today. Not subscribed? Buy it for £1.95. Contributed by Stephanie Jones.

What’s new? Don’t forget to have a look at the latest new Science teaching resources on Teachable.

Age 16-18 (A-level)

This lesson covers the variation of resistance with length and area. Heaps of well drawn circuits and animations to enliven a dull topic.

By Simon Perkin

I finally got round to reading my August / Sepetember copy of the GTCS Teaching Scotland Magazine today. I was deligted to see a piture of my good friend Mandeep Atwel on the Microsoft feature on page 23 talking about TakingITGlobal (who she now works full time for).

TakingITGlobal.org is a social network that connects people (aged 13 - 30 and their teachers) to the global issues that affect us all. It enables a collaborative learning community which provides young people with access to global opportunities, cross-cultural connections and meaningful participation in decision-making.

If you have not heard of TakingITGlobal.org there website is worth checking out as it offers awide range of opertunities to support Global Citizenship Education.

You can read an online version of the GTCS article here on the Teaching Scotland website.

We are organising an event for supply teachers in London this week – especially for those starting out in this career this term.

Tuesday, 24th August. 6.30- 8.30pm. Borough Bar, London Bridge.

There will be free drinks, kindly sponsored by Protocol, and talks from a couple of experienced supply teachers about how they found work and impressed the schools.

If you’d like to come, RSVP to our Facebook Group

We realise a number of our members want professional sound effects to put into their presentations to add a bit of spice and colour. The sound library we used to recommend has changed it’s business model, so we are pleased to recommend SoundScalpel for educational audio clips.

From jungle noises to mechanical clicks, there are thousands of studio quality sounds to choose from. As with Teachable, the clips are available to download from around £1 per file.

Please use the discount code ‘teachable’ when you get to the checkout page to claim a special 10% discount.

Thank you to all members who completed our survey over the last couple of weeks. We have got some really interesting information out of it – especially the features you would like us to add soon.

We are pleased to announce that the prize winner is Laura Breton, a primary teacher from Leeds, UK. Well done Laura, and the iPod Touch is on it’s way to you!

When I first started to write up my presentation from the  2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events it was going to be one long post. In the end I split it into eight shorter ones because I seemed to have a lot to say.

I promised delegates at the event that I would post my slides and notes on-line.

The slides that I used are embedded below:

The notes from the presentation are in eight parts:

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning: Introduction

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning - 1 of 8: Geocaching

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (2 of 8): Educaching

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (3 of 8): Using Mobile Phones

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (4 of 8): 4 of 8: Bing Maps and Google Earth

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (5 of 8): Activities with purpose - Open Street Map and Microsoft Photosynth

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (6 of 8): Using Blogs

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (7 of 8): Inspiring Stories

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (8 of 8): The Curriculum

I guess with this summary post that makes ten in total!

We heard earlier this week that the Qualification and Curriculum Development Authority is the latest Arms Length body to be culled (an £8m saving this year and over £100 the next), and the General Teaching Council will also go. Now, in a letter the Education Minister wrote to Ed Balls, more detail is revealed about other cuts.

The TDA, National College of School Leadership and Children’s Workforce Development Council will all receive a 10% cut to their budgets this year (saving £60m in total). Could these be wound down further next year? The 10% in-year cut is in line with my previous prediction, but to realise the 40% of savings next year, one or two more £150m/year quangos may have to go.

Elsewhere in the letter, there are indications that some of the pet schemes of the Labour executive will be wound down:

• £21m saved from stopping Diploma development, support and communication
• £7m saved from unallocated budget for Enterprise education
• £15m from cutting grants for Specialist Schools changing designation or for High Performance specialist schools
• £7m for not proceeding with Rose review and less on PHSE and Citizenship
• £1m less from Gifted and Talented

At Teachable, we feel the combined effect of all of these may leave the education sector reeling for a while, but in time the restructuring will probably lead to more schools seeking advice and support from non-governmental organisations. There is no reason why curriculum development, support and workforce training needs to be funded and delivered centrally.

Common sense has prevailed as England, along with the rest of the world, can now call its education ministry the Department for Education, rather than the previous DCSF.

So far the website is looking very clean, and it may sign the way to a slimming down of the plethora of websites and portals that the DCSF ran.

In an e-mail to civil servants today Michael Gove said: “In the weeks ahead, I want us to offer all schools the chance to enjoy academy-style freedoms so that heads and teachers across the country can be liberated. This will be the focus of the legislation we hope to bring forward later this month.”

So it seems we were right that Gove’s liberalism hasn’t been watered down in the new coalition education policy.