Good Educational Resources
There are many websites that aim to provide good educational resources for pupils and parents to use at home. The best ones follow the current National Curriculum and are accessible enough for children to use, with or without assistance.
BBC Schools and Channel 4 Learning are good examples of how learning can be fun, creative and interactive. Resources on these websites can be used independently or alongside related television programmes to support learning.
The Primary sections of these websites offer interactive games and quizzes for specific subject areas as well as printable worksheets and activities which can be done easily at home. For pupils studying at secondary level, they will also find assistance with study and revision, as well as careers advice and message boards.
SEN Teacher was designed with special needs pupils in mind, but many of the printable resources are well suited to pre-school and early primary school children. Some, such as the multiplication grids and word cards, are customisable by the user.
Other long established organisations such as NASA and National Geographic now provide microsites especially for children. National Geographic Kids has plenty to entertain and educate, with videos, games, stories and ideas for home-based activities including craft-making and simple recipes. Both NASA Kid’s Club and National Geographic Kids are good for educating children in areas that may not always be covered by classroom study, but are nevertheless important for children’s understanding of the world around them.
Poorly Designed Resources
Not all websites are as accessible and fun to use. Activity Village and Kids Stuff Online, although claiming to offer learning resources, the websites are poorly structured and are not designed for children to be able to use themselves. Category listings simply provide lists of links to other websites, and navigation around the sites themselves is unclear.