Friday, May 6, 2011

Helpful Online Resources to Stay Informed in Education

I value opportunities to stay "in the know" about educational issues and policies, as well as current events in the news relating to my field. But if you're like me, the challenge of staying on top of such things amid a demanding schedule is ever-present. A great solution I've found to remove this impediment is using free online resources. Some of the resources I use include twitter where I can read tweets that introduce me to links to online articles and headline news in education. An additional online resource I use is listserves where colleagues within similar fields share thoughts, experiences, expertise, and resources. Finally, I have benefited from subscribing to online newsletters, including SmartBriefs via email, where the top relevant stories of the day are sent to my email inbox. These online newsletters include top stories that have been sought out and summarized with links to the full online articles provided. Someone else does all the work for me! A few of the online resources mentioned above, including newsletters and listserves I've subscribed to, are included below:

ASCD SmartBrief (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) provides a daily briefing on the top stories in K-12 education. Subscribe here.


CEC SmartBrief (Council for Exceptional Children) provides a daily briefing on top stories in special education. Subscribe here.  



TESOL Connections (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) is a semi-monthly newsletter for TESOL members. It is posted on the first and third Friday of each month. It features articles, interviews, job postings, and other resources for teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.

I am also part of a listserve moderated by LINCS (Literacy Information and Communication System), specifically, the Adult English Language Acquisition Discussion List. Subscribe here.

Twitter, of course, is another way to stay on top of current events. In case you didn't know, @ESLtrail is on twitter. If you tweet, be sure to follow @ESLtrail!

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