It’s holiday time!

Time to relax, rest, take off the pressure, have a complete change, and be recharged.

But, recharging doesn’t necessarily mean taking our minds off what to most people in education is a passion!

What do you do when you’ve had your swim, gone for your walk, filled up your daily quota of words chatting with friends and family, devoured the barbecued steak and finished with a glass of wine? You want to try out that new iPad or iPhone, or whatever new toy you got in your stocking. Or maybe you just want to do a bit of surfing online on the old laptop.

I know, I know! Some of you are bound by some self-imposed rule: you want a break, and you’re not touching anything to do with technology—including the shaver! You just want a decent book or two.

Regardless, at some point in a holiday, the mind turns back to your great passion in the “real world”, and you want to gear up and refresh the brain with new and stimulating ideas, directions, information, news, new resources, and so on. You know only too well, once the holiday’s finished such opportunities diminish.

Knowing this, I asked some of our staff, ‘What would be on your list of professionally stimulating sites to explore and articles and books to read in this situation?’

Here’s that list, to which I’ve added some suggestions of my own. There’s twenty of them, and a list of five books!

Twenty online education resources

Some of these, you can subscribe to by email or RSS feed, so you can receive regular updates through the year.

1. Teacher’s College Record — The Teachers College Record is a journal of research, analysis, and commentary in education.
2. e-School News Online — news, reports, resources, and excellent newsletter on education technology.
3. Horizon Report — This highly respected report is the centerpiece of the New Media Consortium’s (NMC) Emerging Technologies Initiative, which charts the landscape of emerging technologies within education.
4. Edutopia — George Lucas Education Foundation web site containing many resources for educators.
5. From Now On — an educational technology journal from Canadian educator, Jamie McKenzie. (Excellent resources, free subscription.)
6. Education Week on the Web — Full-text articles from EDUCATION WEEK, TEACHER magazine, and background sources, as well as selected education articles from newspapers around the USA.
7. Learning and Leading with Technology — ISTE‘s membership magazine. Subscription is required for full access.
8. Educause — a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.
9. AERA journals —The web site of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), an organisation founded in 1916 and devoted to improving the educational process by encouraging scholarly research and dissemination and practical application of the results.
10. ICT in Education (UNESCO Bangkok) —a web site providing useful material about ICT in Asia-Pacific education including, UNESCO ICT in education projects, policies, training, measuring and monitoring change, online resources, latest news and trends.
11. ICT in Education — Terry Freedmnan’s blog “for leaders and managers of educational ICT. (Check out the left hand menu for links to articles.)
12. DEANZ Journal — The Distance Education Association of New Zealand’s web site journal of open, flexible and distance learning. (Log-in is required for full benefits of the site.)
13. Digital Citizenship at Home — A digital citizenship wiki run by CORE’s Tessa Gray. A fantastic resource about digital citizenship. Holidays could be a good time to return to read all the information.
14. The Committed Sardine — This is a great blog for keeping up with the latest in technology and educational impact.
15. Presentation Zen — Garr Reynold’s blog with great tips on professional presentations including slide design and delivery.
16. Duarte — Another site that provides information on understanding slide design and concepts.
17. TED — TED is no doubt already a favourite with many. But now’s the time to remind you about taking time out for inspiration.
18. EDtalks — A site full of videos providing inspiration from some of the world’s leading education thinkers and commentators.
19. ECE Online — A powerful and growing resource for early childhood educators.
20. CORE website — Have a look around—there’s more there than you probably realise!

And the book list…

For the solid read under the beach umbrella or tree, we’ve got a short list of interesting, motivational or thought-provoking books.

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck — fulfilling potential through a growth mindset and is applicable for individuals, parents, teachers and managers.
• Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, by John Medina — explains how the brain works in an easy to read way & great for understanding the way we learn.
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath — making changes that make a difference
• Fostering Children’s Social Competence: The Teacher’s Role, by Lillian Katz and Diane McClellan — based on research, outlines principles of young children developing understanding of social interactions along with strategies to help the process.
• The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by technology writer Nicholas Carr — he maintains that we are trading away the seriousness of sustained attention for the frantic superficiality of the web, that we are destroying our powers of concentration by the way we use computers. It’s a provocative read, and while Carr steps around the research that’s out there suggesting the opposite is true, there is much in the book to get educators thinking about the way we use technology.

Thanks to Matt, Jedd, Tara and Derek for their contributions to these lists.

Add your own suggestions

Feel free to add some of your own suggestions in the comment box below. We’d love you to share with others those great resources you’ve found.

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David Bailey

David Bailey is the Online Content Coordinator at CORE Education. He has extensive experience in graphic and web design, illustration, publishing, and content writing for the web.

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