As always happens just after the end of the school year, I am finding I have more time (and guilt-free time, at that!) to read what others are writing. Here are some of the blogs I have found over the last few days, written by people I am looking forward to reading again.

L’espace à Zecool – Technopédagogue, par choix et par passion…
(roughly translated to ‘Zecool’s space – tech educator, by choice and by passion)

The author is Jacques Cool, an educator from New Brunswick, who works in the area of creating and delivering learning systems for students, mainly online. The blog’s attraction for me is in the area of French resources, which he finds and shares with his readers. It is written in French.

Jim Burke: The English Teacher’s Companion – thoughts about teaching teens and English in the twenty-first century

I found Jim’s blog in a roundabout way this morning. My stats page showed his feedburner link as an incoming link to my page, I clicked on it and found some wonderful writing. Anyone that uses gardening as a metaphor for self preservation and as a method for keeping sane at this insane time of year (or at least what was this insane time of year a mere few days/weeks ago) is someone I need to keep reading.

Notions and Potions – Thoughts about teaching and learning

I think I found this blog through the one above, sometimes the route to a site is quite circuitous! The author is Dea Conrad-Curry, an educational consultant who owns Partner in Education, a company that specializes in professional development opportunities for educators. Lucky for us she also blogs and this bit of writing I found today is what will bring me back to her blog tomorrow, living in farm country it resonates with me.

…I was thinking of how farmers and teachers are alike. They both are responsible to nurture valuable commodities. Their work is both science and art. They both possess intrinsic passion, returning day in and day out to work over which they have limited control, facing the vicissitudes of nature: mother nature and human nature. And they are both being moved to change by the combined forces of technology and science.

The French Corner – the blog that’s all French, all the time

Well, it is written in English but Samantha’s posts are consistently about French, whether it be learning or teaching the language. Samantha is studying to be a high school French teacher and obviously loves the language. This blog is rich in resources and ideas. It is also beautifully presented and I think she designed it herself, which is always a bonus in my books. Samantha will make a great teacher. I’m looking forward to going back.

FSL Mania!

Yes, another fsl blog :) What got me with this one is that the author is sharing books she wrote for her Kindergarten classes, along with some accompanying workbooks. Sharing is good :) The blog is written in English, the materials en français.

Autodizactic – I really like learning

Zac Chase is currently sharing his experiences in Africa with us – his trip to the grocery store reminds me of my first trip to a grocery store in Beijing. I, too, had never seen ‘long life milk’ before then. Now I buy it at home, it’s great to keep in the cupboard for those mornings when I ran out of milk the day before and forgot to replenish with a fresh carton. It saves me and my coffee. When he isn’t in Africa he shares stories about teaching high school students, in particular about the projects they create and how he sets up the space in which to create them, in Philadelphia.

Do you have any wonderful new blogs you are reading?

ps – just found a new one, a few hours after I wrote this post but I have to add it in. It’s Classroom in the Cloud, written by John, a teacher who advocates for ubuntu in education. How could I not love him?