Review of Online Resources

In education, many magazines and online publications offer free subscriptions to provide educators up to date information and solution for real classroom situations. My favorite free online subscriptions consist of THE Journal, Tech and Learning, eSchool News, District Administration, Campus Technology, Network World, and Education Week.  I also frequent the National Media Consortium to read the Horizon Report, especial the K-12 edition.  I would also recommend becoming members of ISTE and CoSN

The journals, newsletters, online resources, and memberships discuss relevancy of specific current issues in an educator or administrator’s world.  THE Journal focuses on transforming education through instructional technology.  The resource provides a multitude of tools to anyone involved with education.  First, the journal provides articles on highly debated topics such as the BYOD movement (Are You Ready for BYOD?), properly preparing students for the digital world (Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens), the new CIPA law (The New CIPA deadline), and social media emersion (Enabling and Securing Anytime, Anywhere Learning).  Additionally, the journal site reviews education software, apps, and hardware and tries to provide the best tested solutions to the readers.

Tech and Learning relates to educators in a very similar way to THE Journal.  Tech and Learning offers best practices, blogs on a variety of education topics, free webinars, forums video, and a subscription to a free paper magazine.  I have read several excellent articles from the best practice section of the website, such as Getting to Know a Digital Textbook and Social Networking or Social Suicide: The Impact of Social Networking on Virtual DNA.  Moreover, the video vault is extraordinary.  The website video section provides videos of headline speakers discussing current matters.  Additionally, they record all over their conferences in case you could not attend.

eSchool News complements the two previous journals by offering additional great articles, funding resources and upcoming events.  The website explains how to write grants effectively and how to get your proposal noticed.  Along with suggestions, the site gives the names, locations, and deadlines a plethora of grant opportunities.  The event segment lists large education conferences, notifies of updates to the conferences, and collects all the conferences into one viewing area.

My favorite recent resource is Network World.  The free electronic newsletters and magazine subscription also adds to my knowledge and keeps me fascinated with the topics.  The newsletters send out the top most read articles and even though the articles relate to technology, I can always connect them to some facet in the education world whether its instructional technology or technology to keep the organization running.  I believe the articles on this site are top notch and the authors create a real sense of urgency to motivate change.  Some of the recent articles include Social Media a Boon for Business, but Create Security Quagmire and Is your BYOD Policy Out of Date.  I truly enjoy the slideshows.  The slideshows concentrates a great deal of content into quick to read text and pictures.  Some examples include Top 20 Windows 8 Features, 10 Ways to make Android Faster, More Productive and More Secure than iPhone, and IT Toolbox for the iPad.

The other online journals, reports and memberships I mentioned in the introduction are excellent resources as well.  I will write about them in another post.  For now I think I have given you enough to quander.  Enjoy the resources.  There are more to come.