IF you are a teacher who lives miles from a bookshop with a good education list, www.educationarena.com could help fill the gap.
I am someone who doesn’t surf the Net, but crashes into it and bounces off in frustration, yet I found this website surprisingly pleasant to use. It is clearly laid out and the links work well.
The round-up of recently-published books was informative and the layout seductive: ordering online is easy. While not comprehensive, the back catalogue covers a wide range. The website is compiled by Taylor amp; Francis, the country’s biggest publisher of academic journals.
To help catch up with current research, you could take advantage of the free 30-day trial of their educational research abstracts database(18,000 abstracts from 700 journals). I found this a bit fiddly but it did allow access to some, if not all, recently-published journal articles.
If you’re impressed by this, but for some reason lack the pound;1,995 for an annual subscription, you can still summon selected articles from recent journals. These are free, and easy to download, though the range is limited.
Another of the site’s free services, SARA, emails you the contents pages of journals as they are published. Articles may then be ordered online, but this can be pricey. A cheaper option would be to take down the details and order through your local library.
Readers can email suggestions for future Internet Insights to Sam Saunders at JPSaunders@leeds.ac.uk
