Ahh, summertime. Time to vacation and read magazines. Shamefully, that includes the Us subscription that comes to Chandra Dunlap at my house. Don’t know her but God love her for the address mixup that delivers trashy goodness weekly.

Also, there’s time to pick up a Popular Science at the airport. Time to read the mental_floss cover-to-cover. Ahh, summertime.

So that has me thinking – why not use magazines in class? Maybe just for the reading. Maybe we actually do something with what we read. I dunno yet. But this ad in Popular Science made me want these sources of inspiration in my classroom:

What magazines would I want? What would you choose for your room?

I love Wired because of the range of articles on technology topics. Several articles on this best of Wired list still resonate with me. (The first time I read Neal Stephenson was the “Mother Earth Mother Board” article and I was hooked!)

Going in another direction is mental_floss, which I describe as the smartypants magazine. Good stuff for the classroom in every issue, including articles on why we feel phantom cellphone vibrations and can you really tell the distance to lightning by counting to the thunder? (shoot, those both come from the most recent issue!).

After Wired and mental_floss, I ran out of ideas. So I hit up twitter.

The best responses: @jsb16 tells me I should look into National Geographic and Popular Mechanics; @jybuell suggests Make and Servo.

GeekDad over at Wired curated a list of the best geeky magazines that also inspired me.

Next stop: the bookstore to pick up current issues. Research!

What else should I be reading?