Joann's Picks and Peggy's Corner Columns Integrated into the Gateway's Facebook and Blog Accounts

As an increasing number of educators turn to social media for discussion, resource-sharing, and professional development, JES & Co. has created a more seamless platform for users to interact with one another through these social networking tools and to discuss and share Gateway to 21st Century Skills (Gateway) resources and topics brought up in the weekly columns.

Hard economic times and limited educational budgets have teachers scrambling for free, quality learning resource. This fall, innovative and frugal educators have turned to specialty online Web 2.0 search tools like The Gateway to 21st Century Skills (www.thegateway.org) as a way to keep students learning. The result: in October of 2008, the Gateway experienced a jump to almost 67% of first time visitors adding the Gateway to their Internet browser list of bookmarked or favorite sites.

The Gateway to 21st Century Skills provides free online access to a collection of over 50,000 learning resources provided by organizations like NASA, the National Science Foundation, PBS, the National Science Digital Library and more than 700 other contributors. Resources are cataloged using state-of-the-art processes to provide fast searches and easy access through Web 2.0 technologies.