The ESL podcasts are free and they cover a range of topics including business, daily life, relationships, entertaining and dining to name but a few.

From the ESL Podcast web page:

We believe the fastest way to improve your English is to listen to conversations and discussions you can understand….

At ESL Podcast, we provide English at a slower speed and use everyday phrases and expressions. We explain what these expressions mean and how to use them. That’s all! It’s simple, it’s obvious, and it’s very powerful.

ESL Podcasts have a blog too so check it out if you’re a TESOL student and see what you think http://www.eslpod.com/eslpod_blog/

Photo by Bent Kure
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bentk/4107213614/

National Foundation for Educational Research

FER is the UK’s largest independent provider of research, assessment and information services for education, training and children’s services. We make a difference to learners of all ages, especially to the lives of children and young people, by ensuring our work improves the practice and understanding of those who work with and for learners.

NFER is useful for students studying all types of Education and provides sources that have a professional practice aspect You can view and download their publications and policy papers directly from the website.You can also read about the NFER’s research programme which is focusing on the following areas:

• From Education to Employment
• Developing the Education Workforce

Find out more at the NFER website http://www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/

Photo: Students from a Model School
William James Topley, June 1899
Library and Archives Canada
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/7797310404/

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

The Directory of Open Access Journals enables you to browse and search many full text scholarly journals, and read the articles in full text. The journals are from all different subjects:

The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. In short a one stop shop for users to Open Access Journals

We’ve included the Directory of Open Access Journals as one of the collections within DISCOVER alongside all our other resources, so you can easily access open access articles when you’re searching for information for your assignments.

You can find the DOAJ in the Discover A-Z list of resources:

The CORE (COnnecting REpositories) Project from the Open University enables searching of online open access repositories including major UK eprints and theses repositories.

CORE http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk

Other Relevant Posts:

For more open access resources see the open access tag

The LSE has launched a free online academic service - it will review scholarly print and eBooks covering the full range of social science subject areas. Subject categories currently available include: Economics and Business studies, Gender, Law and human rights, Media and cultural studies, Philosophy, Politics and international relations, Sociology and anthropology. 

The site also has an associated Facebook page to encourage academic book discussion.

From the LSE Review of Books webpage

The LSE Review of Books seeks to encourage public engagement with and understanding of the social sciences, via involvement with their best written and most accessible products – books and ebooks. We publish timely, informative and well-written reviews of academic and serious books across all the social science disciplines.

I’m reading about quite a bit of open access material this week. Here’s another resource which you will be able to use.The World Bank released this statement on April 10th:

The World Bank today announced that it will implement a new Open Access policy for its research outputs and knowledge products, effective July 1, 2012. The new policy builds on recent efforts to increase access to information at the World Bank and to make its research as widely available as possible. As the first phase of this policy, the Bank launched today a new Open Knowledge Repository and adopted a set of Creative Commons copyright licenses.

Source: The World Bank http://go.worldbank.org/88MDDXS9W0

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) - “a discovery service for peer reviewed books published under an Open Access license” has been launched.

So far there are 756 academic peer reviewed open access books on DOAB from a range of subjects.

You can browse for books by title, subject or publisher or you can search. There are links to the full text of books at the publishers website or repository.

Find out more at the DOAB website http://www.doabooks.org

Source: teleread

Do you need to find images that you can share, use or remix? If so then you’ll find the Creative Commons Search Site useful.

I’ve just found this photograph of Sunderland’s very own Penshaw monument.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artcriminal/95445422/

Be sure to verify that any images you want to use are actually creative commons. The site has the following to say:

You should always verify that the work is actually under a CC license by following the link. Since there is no registration to use a CC license, CC has no way to determine what has and hasn’t been placed under the terms of a CC license. If you are in doubt you should contact the copyright holder directly, or try to contact the site where you found the content.

http://search.creativecommons.org/

Thanks to Phil Bradley for highlighting this resource.