Online Professional Development Resource
Teachers.Net: "The Ultimate Teaching Resource"
I found a website called Teachers.net “The Ultimate Teaching Resource” that looks like a very useful professional development resource for educators. It has a message board as well as a live chat feature, and has scheduled live meetings for teachers (though there was only one other person in the meeting room when I went in so I think I will try it again). There are Early Childhood live chats and Substitute Teacher live chats and a few others, but there currently doesn’t seem to be much variety. I found it interesting that the chats are archived so you can go back and view older chats (I looked at a few from 2003).
There is a teacher mail-ring where you can choose from areas of interest such as classroom management, specific subjects or grade levels, projects, distance learning and many others. I think this is a great way to share information and I like that since it is via email you can read the messages when you have time and delete those that don’t interest you. I signed up for a few of them but have yet to receive any messages.
This website also has areas for job listings where you can post a resume and search job listings, a classified section where items are available for sale or trade, and a lesson plan bank where you can search lesson plans and post your own. There’s also many different Chatboards (message boards) that I've been looking at and people seem to be posting their questions and ideas on a regular basis.
I liked how each area of this website is well organized (usually by topic or grade level) and the chat and mail-rings are great communication tools for teachers. The only thing that I found distracting was the many ads that seem to surround each page, but I suppose this is how they are able to offer these resources at no charge.
