The Internet is an great tool for teacher development. If you thought the Web was just for entertainment, think again. Here are some simple ideas to get you started.

1. TDSIG.org – Obviously, the first thing to do is sign up for this website. Our objective is to provide the best in teacher development news and views from around the world. So if there’s just one thing you do, sign up for our Email Updates. We also have RSS feeds, Facebook and Twitter.
2. Other SIG websites – As far as I can gather, all the IATEFL Special Interest Groups have their own website. Some are more active than others. One of my favourites is the BESIG site, but there are many others to take a look at.
3. Twitter – It’s the latest thing in teacher development. Many TEFL teachers centre their PLE (Personal Learning Environment) around Twitter. If you don’t know anything about Twitter and you want to find out more, read the post I wrote about Twitter on my personal blog.
4. TeachEnglish – While the forums on the British Council site aren’t the easiest to use (where oh where are the RSS feeds?), there’s some great teacher development stuff here and well worth making the effort to set up an account and get involved in the debate.
5. TEFL blogs – There are some great TEFL-related blogs out there. They tend to fall into two main categories – those that present lesson plans and classroom handouts, and those that present more general reflections on the world of TEFL. Many TEFL blogs combine both approaches. Often critcal and always interesting, the blogosphere has a wide range of bloggers to choose from. At the moment, some of my “must-reads” in Google Reader are Alex Case’s TEFLtastic, Lindsay Clandfield’s  Six Things, and Jamie Keddie’s TEFLclips.

So as you can see, there’s plenty going on out there in cyberspace. What are you waiting for?