Add these blogs to your RSS feeds. Scan them frequently. I have included a mix of education technology together with more mainstream education blogs. Lots of great ideas contained herein.
In his own words: "Jim presents at several technology conferences a year, on issues concerning program development, home to school connections, laptop programs, and other educational technology issues. He also consults with other independent schools and provides targeted research and recommendations."
"Every Thursday morning we send out our free newsletter, New This Week, which features dozens of high-quality websites carefully selected, described, and organized by our team of librarians. Topics include current events and issues, holidays and seasons, helpful tools for information users, human interest, and more." What I like about LII is that it is organized and maintained by librarians. These professionals know how to research. As a result it is an excellent site.
Why would a private school advocate subscribe to Board Buzz, the blog of the National School Boards Association? Because I need to know what current thinking is on the 'other side', that's all! After all, with 19,000+ school districts in the U.S.A., they have a lot more clout than a couple thousand private schools do. In any case, Board Buzz is topical and well done.
"Eduwonk is a blog written by Andrew Rotherham, co-founder and co-director of Education Sector. Occasional guest bloggers will also contribute, and the author(s) of these posts are identified at the end." Thoughtful writing is the hallmark of this older blog.
"The Independent Schools Council (ISC) is the umbrella body representing 1,280 independent schools educating more than 500,000 children in the UK and Ireland. ISC schools include the famous name boarding schools, though the majority of ISC schools are day schools which are not widely known beyond their local communities. The great majority of children in UK independent schools are in ISC schools: ISC therefore speaks for the sector as a whole. ISC is strictly independent of all political parties and acts in the interests of all children." I use ISC to keep up with what's happening in Great Britain.
"PBS Teachers is PBS' national web destination for high-quality preK-12 educational resources. Here you'll find classroom materials suitable for a wide range of subjects and grade levels. We provide thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations. These resources are correlated to state and national educational standards and are tied to PBS' award-winning on-air and online programming like NOVA, Nature, Cyberchase, Between the Lions and more." I have always admired the resources PBS offers teachers.
"CASE's membership includes more than 3,300 colleges, universities, independent elementary and secondary schools, and educational associates in 59 countries around the world. This makes CASE one of the largest nonprofit education associations in terms of institutional membership. We serve more than 51,000 advancement professionals on the staffs of our member institutions and have more than 22,300 professional members on our roster." CASE keeps me in touch with the philanthropy side of private education - always an important matter.
Wesley Fryer always has some wise words for us educators. In his own words his blog is all about: "The true educator is member of a sacred profession. Learning is a journey which never ends. Every day true teachers make positive differences in the lives of other learners through their words and actions. This blog exists to document my own journey of personal growth, as well as facilitate collaborative thinking with others. I believe each moment of every day is a gift, and it behooves us to be intentional about the ways we choose to spend our limited heartbeats."
Tim Wilson is another of those remarkable teacher/technology folks with lots of ideas worth considering. "This site contains information that may be of interest to technology coordinators, technology integrationists, instructional media specialists, classroom teachers, and school administrators. Most of the articles are related to Internet technologies such as blogs, wikis, online forums, Web standards and accessibility."
Will Richardson is a speaker who draws on a wealth of expertise and knowledge to get his points across. "This site is dedicated to discussions and reflections on the use of Weblogs, wikis, RSS, audiocasts and other Read/Write Web related technologies in the K-12 realm, technologies that are transforming classrooms around the world."
