A little over a month ago, Florida teacher Susan Alyn read an archived news article abouta college now being sued because professors dismissed students from their classes tooearly. Having taught in a local private college where her adult ESOL (English as a Second Language) students looked forward to the last few minutes of class -- as that’s when shetook them to visit different web sites – this Florida teacher decided to create a free onlineclassroom magazine to help other ESOL teachers, by providing them with a meaningful way to utilize every minute of class time with students.

With only limited skills on how to build a web site, Alyn decided to just stick with the standard blog format available from a site popular with bloggers. She researched online tofind suitable content to add to her own ideas for this magazine, and was delighted tolearn of a company with free content that automatically changes each day, as this aligned with her goals for the new magazine. The result was InspirationLane.blogspot.com

“Teachers often feel overwhelmed with demands being made on them in today’s world of education, and teaching English to non-English speaking students is very challenging,”says Alyn. “Teachers in classrooms with SMART boards or computer stations haveadditional needs for classroom resources that are online and offer new content daily.”

Although technically simple by many standards, Alyn’s innovative idea and onlineclassroom magazine web site caught the attention of Texas State University, home to CALICO, an international consortium of professionals involved in education and technology. CALICO decided to include Alyn’s site on their website, and to create a newcategory to do so. You can see the CALICO listing for this teacher-made website here:https://calico.org/p-221-%20Organizations.html

The Florida teacher’s new web site has already received hits from countries asfar away as China and Thailand, as well as from colleges all over the USA. “The emails from professors have been very positive,” said Alyn, who uses a Bloggerscreen name on the site. “If ESOL teachers in high school and college actually use thisnew site, and find it to be a big help to them in the classroom, then, my job is done!” Well, not quite done, as Alyn edits the new online magazine monthly for certain sections.

InspirationLane.blogspot.com can be found on the World Wide Web at: http://www.inspirationlane.blogspot.com