Here is a great big smorgasbord of all the books and services that I highly recommend. These are all products or books that I use already, I wouldn’t recommend anything that I don’t stand behind!

Blogging and web

Whether you’re an advanced or beginning blogger, I can’t recommend enough the really low-cost kits and workshops available at Blogging with Beth. She has a lot of reasonably-priced workshops most of which are available as an MP3 download with accompanying handouts after the fact — Making Money with your Blog, Creating Great Blog Content, Increasing Traffic to your Blog, Basics of Blogging Toolkit, Basics of LinkedIn, Basics of Facebook, Basics of Twitter, and more… She does in-person workshops, online kits, teleseminars, and private consulting.

I use Bluehost to host my blog and website and I *love* them. They’re really easy to use, lots of push-button solutions, unlimited storage, email addresses, the works.

Clickers

Peer Instruction is the “bible” of clicker usage, including sample questions in physics. This text will change the way you teach! Derek Bruff’s new book Teaching with Classroom Response Systems comes highly recommended by Eric Mazur himself, which is high praise! Doug Duncan’s Clickers in the Classroom is a short and pithy gold standard of how to use Peer Instruction in the classroom.

Art & Science

Nin Andrews’ Dear Professor, Do you Live in a Vacuum? is a book of poems created from letters that her physics professor husband received from his students.

How People Learn

Of course, this section has to start with the classic, How People Learn — an easy comprehensive summary of what the research tells us about the most effective teaching and learning methods.

Teaching Physics

Joe Redish’s Teaching Physics with the Physics Suites is an oddly named classic that goes through much of the research-based methods of teaching physics. If you’re teaching physics, you need this easy to read review of pedagogical techniques in physics. McDermott’s Tutorials in Introductory Physics are the spinach of physics teaching — students don’t like them, but the carefully researched exercises in identifying misconceptions and pointing out their inconsistencies with reality really do work. Better scores on standard tests result!