Shaking things up a bit every so often is a good thing, I think, and recently I've done a major piece of shaking. With the help of a merry band of volunteers who helped me test it, I've adopted Mailerlite as my newsletter sending company.
That's a large part of the reason for the fact that I've not published a newsletter for over a month now. Testing takes time, as does familiarising oneself with a different way of working.
Anyway, although I'm sure I'll make a few mistakes in the new environment, I feel ready to go. I've written the next issue of the newsletter, and the next thing to do is format it. That's on the agenda for this afternoon, so with any luck and a fair wind I should be able to get the new issue out by this evening or tomorrow morning. Here's some of what it contains:
- Conferences: several good-looking ones coming up, plus a link to conferences taking place all over the world. (2 minute read)
- Teacher workload, a fairly moderate rant, if that is not oxymoronic. Find out what Damian Hinds, the Education Secretary for England and Wales, said in answer to my question about the issue. (3 minute read)
- Useful tech, in which I look at four things that could enhance your life and make you wonder how you ever managed without them. (4 minute read)
- Prize draw. Maybe you could be the lucky winner of Alex Quigley's new book, Closing the Vocabulary Gap. (1 minute read)
- New area for subscribers, with exclusive articles for subscribers only, or articles that subscribers get to see before anyone else. This supplements another subscriber-only area which contains an expanding list of freebies, the latest of which is a pdf infographic on how to evaluate research reports. (1 minute read)
- Beta readers: get the chance to read my books before anyone else does. (1 minute read)
- 7 Articles you may have missed. Useful information and also food for thought from writers in the UK, USA and Australia. (2 minute read)
- What I’ve been reading: Closing the Vocabulary Gap, by Alex Quigley (6 minute read)
If any of that appeals to you, please subscribe to Digital Education. It's free, and has been going since the year 2000 (so I must be doing something right!). Here's the link. You'll need to scroll down a bit because there's loads of stuff about what you can expect and how we treat your data (with respect, basically):