This year is the International Year of Astronomy. To celebrate, Chris Starr and Richard Harwood suggest some useful websites and other resources to inspire your astronomy teaching.

It can be difficult and time consuming to develop materials for really good science lessons. Many scientific research organisations, however, provide teaching resources, often designed together with teachers. Researchers provide scientific expertise and the teachers bring years of experience in the classroom.

These materials include pictures and videos as well as ideas for scientific experiments in the classroom. Some institutes even develop computer games for an interactive learning process. Sabrina Graß from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory reviews some online materials to help you to enliven your lessons and excite students about science.

Halina Stanley from the American School in Grenoble, France, reviews some of her favourite ‘ask a scientist’ websites in English and French.

Thanks to the help of many readers throughout Europe, we can also draw your attention to sites in Croat, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian and Serbian.

Internet es una estupenda fuente de información, pero a veces esa cantidad increíble de contenidos puede resultar abrumadora ¿Por dónde empezamos, entonces, una búsqueda de noticias sobre temas científicos? En cada número de Science in School, vamos a sugerir diversas páginas web que pueden serte útiles.

Whether you are looking for a quick snippet about stem cells or dark matter to use in a lesson, or want to inform yourself regularly about developments in science, podcasts could be the answer. You can subscribe (free) to these radio programmes on the web, automatically download new episodes, and listen to them when and where you like: on the train, in the gym, in the garden….

Are you looking for a good picture to use in a worksheet, an overhead or a poster? You need it to be good quality, but you don’t want to pay to use it. Here is a selection of our favourite free image databases (you may even recognise some of the pictures).

Are you looking for a good article to use in a lesson? Or do you just want to browse a science journal or two for inspiration? Here is a selection of free online science journals and some useful tools for tracking down the books, articles and journals you need.