25 Useful Forums and Blogs for New Teachers...
0 comments Posted by Special Agent Syazwan at 1:50 PMI found out this list of 25 Useful Forums and Blogs for New Teachers...Might be helpful..
Whether you’re having a tough time with your students or want to share your successes in the classroom, talking with other teachers can be a great help, both personally and professionally. Through the easy accessibility of the Internet, teachers can get together in forums and blogs to collaborate, share information or just talk about their experiences. If you’re new to teaching, here are a few forums and blogs that can help you learn more about the ins and outs of teaching from other teachers and educational professionals.
Forums
Chat with your fellow professionals on these helpful sites.
- A to Z Teacher Stuff: In addition to the other educational resources this site provides, teachers can take advantage of a forum to discuss issues like behavior management, substitute teaching and grade specific lessons.
- The Teacher’s Corner: Share inspirational stories, discuss primary and secondary education, learn about educational technology and more on this active teaching forum.
- Teacher Focus: Both new and experienced teachers will find discussions that can be to their benefit on this forum and chat site ranging from grade specific to subject related.
- Teach-Nology: Ask questions, read posts and get advice for new teachers on core subjects and even on pen pals through this technology oriented forum.
- Homeroom Teacher Forum: Teachers from elementary to high school can come here to talk about teaching related issues or just about anything else.
- Teacher Talk: This forum provides K-12 teachers with a chance to share ideas on lesson plans, discuss classroom management, and create a supportive community.
- The Education Forum: No matter what type of teacher you are, from music to Chinese, you’ll find discussions and helpful advice here.
- Teachers.net Chatboard: Teachers can discuss everything from the classroom to their personal lives on this chatboard.
- The Teacher’s Forum: This forum has discussion boards for elementary, secondary, and college teachers as well as places to discuss all subjects from PE to social studies.
- Great Teacher: Communicate with teachers from all over the world on this helpful discussion board. For more interactive discussions, users can also check out the chatroom.
Blogs
Read up on issues related to teaching, personal experiences and more on these blogs.
- EduWonk: Stay up to date on the latest news in education and get some commentary from a fellow education professional to go along with it in this informative blog.
- History is Elementary: History teachers will enjoy the information on this blog, which deals with hundreds of historical issues and lessons that history teachers can use.
- Education Policy Blog: Multiple bloggers contribute to this site which discusses the current state of education. It can help you learn more about the politics and policies behind what you’re teaching.
- Shrewdness of Apes: Read about the experiences of this midwestern teacher in her blog. Posts include discussions of recent news, trivia and personal commentary.
- Bud the Teacher: Teacher Bud Hunt specializes in technology education at St. Vrain Valley School District in Colorado. His blog shares his thoughts and experiences as a teacher.
- Today’s Homework: Share in the experiences, both good and bad, in the public school classroom through the posts in this blog.
- Kathy Schrock’s Kaffeeklatsch: Teachers who would like to learn more about educational technology need look no further than this blog, which is full of ideas and applications that can help your students to learn and keep you better organized.
- From the Trenches of Public Ed: Keep up with all kinds of issues in public education with news and commentary on this blog from author Dennis Fermoyle.
- A Passion for Teaching and Opinions: This blog covers the experiences of an experienced government and economics teacher from dealing with budget issues to planning fun and informative field trips.
- The Daily Grind: Inspired teacher Mr. McNamar from Connecticut shares his thoughts in this humorous and insightful blog.
- Edublog Insights: Here you’ll find posts that discuss a variety of technology and educational issues in this instructional technology focused blog.
- Rate Your Students: Need to vent about some particularly difficult issues in your classroom? Want to share in the miserable experiences of others? You can do both on this blog, dedicated to showcasing the more difficult aspects of teaching.
- Adventures in Teaching: Your first years of teaching will more than likely be a daily adventure and you’ll be able to relate to the experiences of this English professor.
- Borderland: Blogger Doug discusses his experience teaching in the less than normal classroom in Alaska.
- Teaching Generation Z: Get some ideas on how to engage your students with some help from this forward thinking blog.
Early e-books were generally written for specialty areas and a limited audience, meant to be read only by small and devoted interest groups. The scope of the subject matter of these e-books included technical manuals for hardware, manufacturing techniques, and other subjects.
Numerous e-book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe's PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers. Multiple readers naturally followed multiple formats, most of them specializing in only one format, and thereby fragmenting the e-book market even more. Due to exclusiveness and limited readerships of e-books, the fractured market of independents and specialty authors lacked consensus regarding a standard for packaging and selling e-books. E-books continued to gain in their own underground markets. Many e-book publishers began distributing books that were in the public domain. At the same time, authors with books that were not accepted by publishers offered their works online so they could be seen by others. Unofficial (and occasionally unauthorized) catalogs of books became available over the web, and sites devoted to e-books began disseminating information about e-books to the public.
As of 2008, new marketing models for e-books are being developed, formats are beginning to homogenize, and dedicated reading hardware has been produced. E-books have achieved global distribution, and electronics manufacturers are releasing more e-book readers for general consumer use, such as Amazon's Kindle model or Sony's PRS-500. E-books have seen tremendous market growth in Japan throughout the 2000s and currently has an e-book market worth ¥10 billionAdvantages:
The e-book has several advantages over physical materials:
- Text can be searched automatically and cross-referenced using hyperlinks, making the e-book format ideal for works that benefit from such functions.
- Less physical space is required to store e-books, and hundreds to thousands of books may be stored on the same device
- Because they require little space, e-books can be offered indefinitely, with no going out of print date, allowing authors to continue to earn royalties indefinitely.
- Readers who have difficulty reading printed books can benefit from the adjustment of text size and font face.
- Text-to-speech software can be used to convert e-books to audio books automatically.
- E-book devices allow reading in low light or even total darkness by means of a back light.
- An e-book may be more comfortable for some to hold because it need not be held open like a physical book and can also be set down and read without needing to be held.
- It costs little to reproduce or copy an e-book, which is ideal for archival and backup purposes.
- Ease of distributing e-texts means that they can be used to stimulate higher sales of printed copies of books.[2]
- E-books can often be purchased from reading devices themselves and do not require one to visit a bookstore to obtain.
- Although they require electricity to be read, the production of e-books does not consume the paper, ink, and other resources that are used to produce print books.
Disadvantages:
- Some e-book requires the purchase of an electronic device and/or peripheral software to display.
- As an e-book is dependent on equipment to be read, it can be affected by faults in external hardware or software, such as hard disk drive failure.
- All e-book devices require electrical power.
- Certain e-book formats may become obsolete and incompatible with future devices.
- eBook readers are more likely to be stolen than paper books.[citation needed]
- eBook readers are more fragile than paper books and more susceptible to physical damage.
- If an e-book device is stolen, lost, or broken beyond repair, all e-books stored on the device may be lost (this can be avoided by backup either on another device or by the e-book provider).
- Screen resolution of reading devices may be lower than actual paper.[3]
- E-books can be hacked, or disseminated without approval from the author or publisher, through the use of hardware or software mods.
- There is a loss of tactility and aesthetics of book-bindings.