Favorite Education Blogs of 2008

Mathews: Jacobs is a former mainstream newspaper reporter and columnist, with a tendency to confound the conventional wisdom. She is writing books now, as well as blogging. I love detailed contrarian takes on the latest debates, which are her specialty.

· A Passion for Teaching and Opinions. http://ukiahcoachbrown.blogspot.com/

Mathews: Exciting and candid inside-school stuff from a social studies teacher and basketball coach in Ukiah, Calif.

· A Shrewdness of Apes. http://shrewdnessofapes.blogspot.com/

Mathews: The blogger, who identifies herself only as "Ms. Cornelius," confesses that she teaches high school kids somewhere in the United States. She feeds my fascination with what real teachers are thinking about their often difficult lives.

· Susan Ohanian. http://susanohanian.org/

Mathews: No education blog list is complete without America's most passionate education polemicist, constantly at war with what she calls standardistas, like me. We rarely agree, but her wit and energy are irresistible.

· Teaching in the 408. http://roomd2.blogspot.com/

Mathews: Another teacher/coach, this one apparently in the vicinity of San Jose, who tells the truth about life inside a school.

Here are Bernstein's bonus blogging tips:

"Sometimes there is important blogging about education on non-educational blogs. The most widely read community blog on the political left, http://www.dailykos.com,has a number of members of the community who write on education.

"The best way to see these items is to go to the site, and look on the right at the Diaries list. Under the banner RECENT DIARIES is a search capability. One can search by Tag (labels placed on diaries to help categorize them), using tags such as schools, NCLB, teaching, education, students, etc. To use this search facility you must be a registered member (registration is free) and logged in. Twenty-four hours after you are registered you can begin posting comments and one week later you can post your own entry -- on education or anything else. Some of those who post on these topics are, as am I, classroom teachers. Others are principals, retired educators, etc. Often the comments on the diaries are as rewarding as the diaries themselves. But a caution -- not everything that will be listed searching with these tags is necessarily going to be about education.

"Many blogs will have a blog roll, a list of other blogs they believe will interest their readers. For example, if you look along the right hand side of Jim Horn's blog, you will see a number of blogs that might also be of interest. And for those who would like to explore further -- and there are hundreds of good blogs, two resources worth recommending are:

"Top 100 Education Blogs http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blogs, and Education Blogs in Yahoo http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/News_and_Media/Blogs/; and

"Of course, anyone can start their own blog on education, or on many of these blogs engage in discussions by posting comments. Enjoy your time in the educational blogosphere. Peace."

The same goes for me.