Free resources I return to over and over again for ideas, information, and inspiration about college teaching and online education:

1.  Faculty Focus
This site has dozens of free reports and articles about practical topics like educational assessment, online teaching, learning styles, academic leadership, and teaching strategies.  The materials are written by teachers in the trenches, making the information relevant and useful.

2.  The Sloan Consortium
"A Consortium of Institutions and Organizations Committed to Quality Online Education."  Not everything is free,but their Effective Practices are very good and many articles are freely available.

3.  Faculty Development Teaching Tips Index
From Honolulu Community College, a site with links to learning style inventories, articles on teaching, and academic policies.

4.  Classroom 2.0
"The social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and Social Media in education."  The newsletter helps me keep up with the latest Web tools for teaching.

5.  A Brief Summary of the Best Practices in College Teaching, by Tom Drummond (2001)
Instructional practices are organized under twelve headings: This site has links to information about course design and planning, teaching and assessment strategies, course evaluation, and scholarship of teaching and learning.  It's a rich source for any educator.

7.  A Berkeley Compendium of Suggestions for Teaching with Excellence, by Barbara Gross Davis, Lynn Wood, and Robert C. Wilson

This site contains general teaching tips for the university classroom and is organized by techniques.  OK, it's dated (1983)---oldies but goodies that have mostly withstood the test of time and need to be remembered.

8.  eLearn Magazine: Education and Technology in Perspective

Best Practices for eLearning, with articles, interviews, and ideas.

9.  eCampus News

Connects you to news, information, and resources on how today's colleges and universities are using technology to advance learning.

10.  eSchool News

Technology news for K-20 educators.  The same people put out #9 and #10, so some of the articles are repetitious.

I get email newsletters from many of these sites, and it takes only a few minutes to scan the headlines and see if anything grabs me.  Just reading the headlines helps me stay somewhat literate about what's going on in the field.