Yesterday I posted about two excellent sources sharing sources to find education-related blogs to read.  They are both very good posts, and I’m still working through their recommendations.  I’d encourage readers to do the same.

Those two resources offer many good suggestions, and they inspired me to come-up with a shorter “The Best…” list of my own that included recommendations that were a little more specific to my particular interests — ESL/EFL, resource-sharing, and education policy.  In addition, I thought I would highlight the blogrolls (the lists of other blogs that bloggers read) and survey lists of a few key people  whose judgment I particularly value, and where I periodically go to learn about new blogs that I should be reading.

Here are my picks for The Best Places To Find Good Education Blogs:

ESL/EFL:

Carla Arena has put together a great page aggregating the recent blog posts from over twenty ESL/EFL teachers from around the world.

David Deubelbeiss of EFL Classroom 2.0 has created a similar Pageflakes site where you can see updated posts from a variety of ESL/EFL-related blogs. You can aslo access other good ESL/EFL resources if you click on some of the “tabs” at the top of that page.

RESOURCE-SHARING:

The Best blogs for sharing resource links 2007 is a list that I’ve been continuing to update.

EDUCATION POLICY:

“Education Week” has an excellent collection of blogs.  They’re all listed here.

The blogroll at the Public School Insights blog contains a good list of policy-related blogs.

BLOGROLLS & SURVEY LISTS:

Sue Waters’ list of Blogs I Read is not to be missed. She, perhaps more than anyone else in the educational blogosphere, has her “hand on the pulse” of this blogging community.

I’d also recommend taking a look at Alice Mercer’s blogroll. I’ve learned about some good blogs through her list.

Looking at nominees and winners of the Edublog Awards is also a sure-fire way to learn about high-quality blogs.

Scott McLeod’s annual list of the top 50 Education Blogs is also an important source to check.

The Social Media Explorer blog used Postrank‘s system to come-up with its own list of the top 50 education blogs.

Alltop Top Education Blogs is the newest addition to this list.  The Alltop page shows the headlines of the latest posts from many good school-related blogs.  By placing the cursor on the headline, you’ll be shown the first paragraph of the post. Alltop is a pretty massive “aggregator” of blogs from multiple categories.

Scott McLeod has been organizing the Moving Forward wiki. It has a ton of resources, including a nice list of education blogs.

The main Edublog Awards 2009 site is a great place to find the best of the best in education blogs.

Post Rank rates blog posts by an “engagement” index, and many blogs (including this one) have added their widget that highlights their most popular posts.

Post Rank has just modified their website to let you, among other things, identify not only the most popular posts by topic and by blog, but also the most popular blogs in any particular topic area. Of course, they are using their own criteria to determine popularity and what they identify as “education”, so you have to take their lists with a grain of salt. They change their ratings weekly.  You can see their education  list here.  It changes weekly.:

Lastly, though probably just about all the blogs on my public blogroll are covered in the resources I’ve already listed, you might want to take a quick glance at the ones on my blog.

Edublogs just gets better and better. Now, they’ve created a directory of education blogs that’s very well-designed and organized. Any education-related blog can be added to the directory — it doesn’t have to be hosted by Edublogs (though I still say it’s the best blogging platform around). You can read the announcement and explanation of the Directory here, and visit the Directory here.

Feedback, as always, is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.