The 13 MUST Know Professional Development Websites for Teachers

Professional Development is a life-long  learning process that  involves different activities including individual progress, continuing education, inservice education, peer collaboration, study groups, and peer coaching or mentoring. The importance of professional development lays in the fact that it is closely related to the overall quality of education and students achievements. Teachers who stop learning and suffice themselves with the curriculum content soon turn into hard working students only a step above their actual students.

Given this huge weight of professional development in our life in general and in the intellectual one in particular, I am sharing with you some great resources that will help you grow professionally and expand your knowledge. But before that let me quote you what Grant ( n.d ) thinks about professional development :

"Professional development ... goes beyond the term 'training' with its implications of learning skills, and encompasses a definition that includes formal and informal means of helping teachers not only learn new skills but also develop new insights into pedagogy and their own practice, and explore new or advanced understandings of content and resources. [This] definition of professional development includes support for teachers as they encounter the challenges that come with putting into practice their evolving understandings about the use of technology to support inquiry-based learning.... Current technologies offer resources to meet these challenges and provide teachers with a cluster of supports that help them continue to grow in their professional skills, understandings, and interests."

1- Education World

This is a great website that offers all the resources you need to grow professionally. It has different sections with each one full of PDFs, books, articles an many more .



2- Discovery Education

There is no way that you did not hear about this awesome website. Discovery Education provides high quality, dynamic, digital content to everyone be it a teacher, an administrator,student or even parents.



3- Staff Develop

This is another great resource for professional development.It provides articles, books, workshops, and many resources links.




4- Ed Week

Ed Week is a also one of the leading websites in education. It helps teachers and educators grow professionally by providing all kinds of resources for free.



5- Educators Professional Development

The title says it all. EPD is the largest online database of professional development conferences and workshops for educators and teachers from Early Learning to Grade 12.



6- Read Write Think

This is one of my fourites too . It has a separate section dedicated to professional development resources . check it out , it is really great.



7- Teacher Vision

Teacher Vision provides a wide range of professional development resources for educators such as articles, lesson plans, links and many more.



8- Teachers Domaine

This is a free digital media service for educational use from public broadcasting and its partners. You will find thousands of media resources, support materials, and tools for classroom lessons, and teacher professional learning communities.




9- Getting Smart

Getting Smart offers several resources for professional development. It has links, innnovative ideas, books, articles and many more.



10- Common Sense Media

CSM is dedicated to improving the lives of students and educators by providing some great resources, information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology.



11- Teacher Trap

Teacher Trap is a free , professional development resource that helps educators and librarians address common questions about the use of technology in teaching and learning by providing easy access to practical, online resources and activities.



12- Teachers Network

Teachers Network provides great resources on professional development such as lesson plans, how-to-articles, free videos and many more.



13- Intel Teach Elements

This is a free professional development platform from Intel that provides a series of compelling courses on the 21st century learning concepts.