The Net Is A Mine Of Teaching Resources!
Teacher resources? Why, there are plenty of books available at the libraries and book shops! But my friend, how long do you think it is going to take a teacher to go through all of them? Maybe even one life would not be enough; he or she would need several lives! Also, he/she did learn something from graduate school and is not on his/her own. There is a network of teachers to help out! Fortunately, the Internet can give access to any number of teacher resources, and it is a hypothetical situation where a person cannot have access to the World Web at all!
Plenty of websites have been designed for the benefit of teachers, by expert professionals themselves. Plus, the articles presented on these web sites are those that have been created and contributed by educators who even discuss their personal experiences in the classroom. How much a teacher can benefit with the help of such readily available resources! He/She also gets an idea of different approaches to teaching and learning, thus enhancing one’s own professional growth. Virtual classroom learning is no longer a myth–it is a reality. There are skills and strategies, concepts and methodologies all ready and waiting for the resourceful teacher!
An English instructor or one who develops online courses, benefits the most from these web sites. There are a variety of sites dealing with education and learning, rhetorical language, linguistics and literature. Since I managed to collect a vast number of online teaching resources, I can share them with you and make your task easier. Let me give you some hints about different sites, teaching strategies, ideas and databases (provided you have not yet discovered them yourself). So you can have all the information you want right at your fingertips.
Would you like to chat with fellow teachers? It is possible. There are forum boards where classifieds and jobs are displayed. Some sites give valuable information about how to get teaching grants, where articles can be submitted or published, guidelines for the same, and web exclusives. Teachers gather at these sites–pro-teacher community, tolerance.org and teachers,net. Teachers tolerance gives lesson plans exchanged between teachers, dealing with grades K to 8. The subjects dealt with are Maths and Science, Technology and how to deal with gifted students.
The teacher resources I found most helpful for developing online courses were those set up as databases and offering interactive lesson plans and materials. These premier sites are, among the many, Teacher Oz’s Kingdom of History, a WWII database developed by Tracy Osborn; Web English Teacher, ambitiously compiled by the remarkable Carla Beard; ESL Resources at OWL (Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab, offering handouts, resources, and exercises); a sometimes hard to load links site (keep refreshing) called Just for Teachers, wherein Sheboygan Falls teacher Dawn Hogue offers advice, syllabi, book lists, and links for AP English teachers; and ReadWriteThink–lesson plans, web resources, student materials, and academic standards.
The resources presented here are not the only ones–not by a million years! There are plenty more where a teacher can avail of handouts, databases and exchanges. But those websites that are mentioned here are to help you develop a better and imaginative attitude towards teaching and learning. Then, there is personal growth of the teacher, as well as the students.
