Pfc. Bradley Manning was to appear on the witness stand again, the fourth day of a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade, Md.

He testified Thursday in support of a defense motion claiming his confinement for nine months at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., was so harsh that his case should be dismissed.

Manning, speaking publicly Thursday for the first time since his May 2010 arrest, said he got so used to leg irons and being locked up 23 hours a day that when he was finally transferred to medium-security confinement at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in April 2011, he felt uneasy moving freely around the cell block.

"There was the sense of, 'OK, I know they're going to put the hammer down on me soon,'" Manning said near the end of his five hours on the witness stand.

Besides being classified "maximum custody," Manning was subjected to additional restraints during his nine months at Quantico because he was either on suicide watch or considered at risk of hurting himself or others. Commanders maintained the extra restrictions despite repeated recommendations by brig psychiatrists that they be eased. They included scratchy, suicide-prevention bedding and sometimes having all his clothing, eyeglasses and reading material removed from his cell.

The military contends the treatment was proper.

Manning testified that he angered brig commander Chief Warrant Officer 2 Denise Barnes when he vented his frustration.

"There was a word, I think it was 'absurd,'" he said. "That was my opinion of how I see the restrictions at that point."

Manning said he got frustrated spending up to 23 hours a day in a windowless, 6-by-8-foot cell.

"It was pretty draining," Manning said under questioning by defense attorney David Coombs.

At one point during his testimony, Manning donned a dark-green, suicide-prevention smock resembling an oversized tank top made of stiff, thick fabric. He said it was similar to one he was issued in March 2011, several days after Quantico jailers started requiring him to surrender all his clothing and eyeglasses each night as a suicide-prevention measure. This occurred after he told them out of frustration, he said that if he really wanted to hurt himself, he could have done so with his underwear waistband or flip-flops.

Before receiving the smock, he was forced to stand naked at attention one morning for a prisoner count, he said.

"I had no socks, no underwear, I had no articles of clothing, I had no glasses," he said.

The 5-foot-3 soldier looked youthful in his dark-blue dress uniform, close-cropped hair and rimless eyeglasses. He was animated, often speaking in emphatic bursts, swiveling in the witness chair and gesturing with his hands.

Manning was polite throughout his testimony, referring to his attorney as "sir" and making frequent eye contact with Coombs and the judge. Only after watching two videos of himself speaking to his guards while wearing only his boxers the first video shows him surrendering his clothes did his voice waver.

"It brings that back, the fact that I was there," Manning said of the video.

Earlier Thursday, the military judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, accepted the terms under which Manning may plead guilty to eight of the 22 charges he faces. Coombs revealed the plea offer in early November, saying it would enable Manning to take responsibility for sending U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks.

Lind hasn't formally accepted the pleas but has indicated she will consider them at a hearing starting Dec. 10.

Under the offer, Manning would plead guilty to certain charges as violations of military regulations rather than as violations of federal espionage and computer security laws. The offenses would then carry maximum prison terms totaling 16 years rather than 72.

The pleas would include admissions that Manning sent WikiLeaks classified memos, Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, Guantanamo Bay prison records and a 2007 video clip of a U.S. helicopter crew gunning down 11 men later found to have included a Reuters news photographer and his driver. The video, titled "Collateral Murder" on WikiLeaks, garnered worldwide attention. The Pentagon concluded the troops acted appropriately during the attack, having mistaken the camera equipment for weapons.

The government could still prosecute Manning for all 22 counts he faces, including aiding the enemy. That offense carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Manning is accused of engineering the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history. Besides the video, he is charged with sending hundreds of thousands of classified Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad in 2009 and 2010.

For aFrench teacher looking for a creative approach to verb conjugation, new lesson plans are only a website away. The same is true for a biology teacher covering a unit on mammals, or a history teacher trying to spice up a lesson on the Gettysburg Address.

Educators are beginning to embrace the type of open source content championed by software programmers by sharing their expertise online: lesson plans, classroom activities, and homework assignments.

[Learn how a .]

One of the sites teachers are using is , which offers more than 256,000 classroom resources for grades K-12, ranging from in-depth lesson plans to presentations and test prep--many of them uploaded by teachers, and all of them available for free. The National Archives, Project Gutenberg, and other organizations have also contributed content. Launched in late July by the American Federation of Teachers, the site already has more than 72,000 registered users accounting for more than half a million downloads.

"I wish I had this when I was teaching," says Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, a national teachers union representing 1.5 million educators. "I used to get up at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. and think, 'I don't like what I'm teaching today,'" and then create a new lesson from scratch.

Rather than brainstorming new ideas in the early morning hours, or tweaking old lessons on the fly, teachers can search Share My Lesson for content categorized by grade, subject, and topic, Weingarten says.The site sorts lesson plans and teaching content by format, including audio, video, images, documents, and interactive content.

Giving educators a place to share content they created is important, because it shows teachers they are trusted and respected as experts, Weingarten says.

"It's not just the publishing companies who know what needs to be taught. It's the teachers who are closest to the kids," she says.

[Discover why .]

Having classroom-tested resources at their fingertips can cut down on planning time, especially for new teachers, says Kalebra Williams, a French teacher atin .

"For me, I've had 13 years to build my curriculum ... I can use Share My Lesson to supplement it," Williams says. "But I can imagine for a new teacher, when you're just starting from bare bones, what a wealth of information [this is]."

As most states move toward the , both novice and seasoned teachers will need new lessons aligned with the standards' project-based learning approach, rather than memorization drills to prepare students for standardized tests.

"It's a fundamentally different way of teaching than No Child Left Behind," the AFT's Weingarten says, adding that many of the resources on Share My Lesson are Common Core-aligned.

With the new standards just around the corner--or already in place for many districts--the shift has some educators on edge, says Williams, the high school French teacher. Teachers know they need to change their lessons, but don't know what the new plans should look like, she says, noting that now they can go to Share My Lesson and get Common Core lesson plans vetted by the AFT.

"I'm teaching five different levels of a subject, and now every lesson has to be Common Core aligned ? It does seem daunting to change everything you're doing to meet this new standard," says Williams, who is taking a leave of absence from her teaching position to help AFT train teachers on how to use Share My Lesson. "It's a sigh of relief to know there's somewhere I can go."

While some educators are sharing their lessons for free via blogs or sites like Share My Lesson, others are selling worksheets and homework assignments online to supplement their teaching salaries.

Using sites suchand , educators can make a profit from their planning by uploading self-created classroom resources. Other educators can then pay to download the content, which can range from a $3 activity worksheet to $100 for a full physics lesson.

[Read how teachers are .]

While most educators support teachers being recognized for quality work, some aren't on board with the idea of teachers charging their colleagues for content.

"Teachers swapping ideas with one another, that's a great thing," Joseph McDonald, a professor at New York University'stold thein 2009. "But somebody asking 75 cents for a word puzzle reduces the power of the learning community and is ultimately destructive to the profession."

Beyond causing potential conflicts with colleagues, charging for lesson plans could raise legal issues for teachers, warns the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union with 3 million members.

Content created by teachers for use in the classroom--including tests, quizzes, and homework problems--is considered "works for hire" under copyright laws, . This means they're property of the school unless stated otherwise in a teacher's contract--and teachers should check with administrators at their school or district before selling their lessons online.

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