International Reading Association is an important blog for me to follow since I work for a curriculum publisher. It is very important that I stay up on all of the reading trends and research for secondary reading. You can also get updates on reading conferences that are happening all over the United States.
http://www.reading.org/General/Default.aspx
Next is ASCD, their motto is “Learn. Teach. Lead.” I love that motto. ASCD SmartBrief provides educational news from all over the U.S. It is a great tool when you sell curriculum in 4 different states. The stories they provide are great tools for our social media networking… to retweet a story or post a link on Facebook to the story gets our fans talking on our sites.
Then there is ESPN. I am a huge football fan but my job also requires me to keep up with the sports headlines. The company I work for Principle Woods writes high-interest articles and one of our biggest sources for high-interest topics are sports! Students have wonderful background knowledge of sports, which gets them involved in discussion and the class work.
Another great source of information on topics that are high-interest can be found on MSN Entertainment. When we aren’t writing about sports we are writing about pop-culture or celebrities in the news. One of the great benefits to celebrities getting in trouble is we get to write great ethical dilemmas about what the celebrities did which makes for a great open discussion in the classroom. By writing these high-interest topics it gives the teacher the opportunity to build a better student-teacher relationship.
Finally, I keep up with SmartBrief on Social Media. My company just recently entered into the world of Facebook and Twitter and this blog send us information on the do’s and don’ts of the Social Networking World. It also provides great stories of campaigns that other companies have used as well as case studies/research of social networking.
