When I started teaching in the early 1990s, my professional resources consisted primarily of the teachers in my hallway, an occasional journal article placed in my mailbox by the principal, and attending the annual local teacher’s conference. My how things have changed….

The challenge of resource-scarcity faced then has been replaced by the difficulties of managing the overabundance of information so readily available today. Time is short, resources are plentiful; how is a busy teacher to cope? This issue is one that plagues all of us, and I am frequently asked which resources are the most valuable and how they can be utilized effectively. I certainly don’t have “The Answer” because professional growth is highly personal, but I do have a few suggestions that may prove helpful for those wanting to get connected without feeling overloaded.

Of the myriad resources available, I have found that reading education blogs, participating in social networks like Ning and Twitter, and subscribing to listservs like ISED to be invaluable. Since each of these topics deserves its own post, I will briefly highlight blogs today and address the others in the near future.

Blogs: Everyone Has a Voice

Blogs can be considered in terms of reading/consuming and writing/producing. MICDS has used blogs as an instructional tool (predominately writing/producing) for several years. All Middle and Upper school students and faculty have individual blogs for school-related work. Several classes, including 6th grade language arts, 7th grade history and 8th grade French require their students to blog periodically. And while there is great value in reading our students’ work, there is much to be learned from following/consuming the thought processes of our peers…and there is certainly no shortage of reading material.

Estimates vary, but according to Technorati, there are more than 70 million blogs on the web that are updated at a rate of 18 posts per second. Finding quality blogs and managing the quantity of posts does not have to be overwhelming, however. Perusing a few good blogrolls and using an RSS aggregator will get you well on your way to being organized and informed.

Most blogs, including this one (see: Sites to Visit sidebar), include a list of links (i.e. blogrolls) to other education blogs. Because they have been hand selected, the resources are generally of a very high quality. My list is by no means comprehensive and will grow and change over time. The handful of links I’ve included, however, lead to other blogs and blogrolls, which as a whole represent several hundred excellent professional blogs full of ideas and information. Just one click and a little reading are all it takes to get started.

If you do start reading several blogs regularly, you will soon find that it is cumbersome to visit numerous sites each day/week to check for new content. Thankfully, RSS feeds can make this process manageable. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, blogs, and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS feed. Aggregators like Bloglines and Google Reader will retrieve summaries of the latest content from the sites you are interested in and save you from having to visit each site individually. Spending a few minutes creating an account can literally save you hours of time every month and ensure that you never miss an important bit of news or information from your favorite sources.

For those of you who currently do not follow any education blogs or use an RSS aggregator, I would encourage you to explore the Sites to Visit and set up an aggregator (I’m partial to Google Reader). For those of you who are already enjoying the benefits of the blogosphere, I would encourage you to let us know which blog(s) we should be reading. Technology in the Middle is but one of 70 million…surely there are others we can learn from as well!

Posted: 01|3|08 at 3:53 pm. Filed under: Professional Development.
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