Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

My Cyber Twin is a virtual personality you can develop of yourself online.  It can carry on conversations via text with anyone, and its responses are supposed to be based on how you’ve programmed it through responses to a number of questions.  

You create it, get a url for it, and then other people can “talk” to it while you’re off-line.  You can get a copy of the conversation.  You can also restrict who gets to talk to your “Cyber Twin” by requiring an access code.

It seems to me that this would be an interesting activity for English Language Learners to participate in — both creating a Cyber Twin and talking to someone else’s Twin.

I’ve put the link near the bottom of my Examples of Student Work page and called it Student Cyber Twins.

I have many links to sites that offer lesson plans and hand-outs to use with English Language Learners.  You can find them on my Teacher’s Page under the ESL Hand-Outs and Lesson Plans category.

Today, I’d like to draw your attention to what I think is one of the best of the bunch.  It’s called English Raven.  You can find it near the top of that section. It required a low-cost paid subscription until recently (and was well-worth the price) but is now free. It has a lot of creative ideas and excellent materials that I’ve been able to use in my class.

Some of the other sites are quite good, too, and I’ll highlight more of them in a future post.

Browser Books are a series of simple leveled books where students can click on words in the story to hear them spoken.  They are from the website of Kathy Cassidy, a Canadian teacher.  Just go to the “Books By Level” index to select the ones you want.  While you’re there, you might want to check out other interesting places on Mrs. Cassidy’s site.

I’ve placed the Browser Books links under the Stories section of my English For Beginners page.  As you may know, English Language Learners can find literally thousands of “talking” stories under that category.

If you want to learn how we’ve used these stories effectively at our school, you might want to check out the Techlearning article Computers Help New Immigrants Learn English.

I’ve recently placed two new links at the bottom of the Audio Conversations category on the English For Beginners page.  One is called Listening To Movies where a French teacher of English has placed several audio and video clips from films, and students have to write down what is said.

The other is from Tokyo International University and has faculty members talking about themselves, followed by questions that need to be answered by students.

Having English Language Learner students create an online survey or poll and then write about the results is an excellent thinking and writing activity.  There are many sites that allow these to be created easily and for free, and I’ve recently put links to some new ones.  You can find all of them on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Surveys.

Snappoll might be the easiest one — no registration is required and the interface is quick and simple, and the poll is hosted on their site.  Quimble is another one that is pretty easy, though, on Quimble and most of the other sites, you have to register to create a poll (though registration is very, very fast and simple on all of them).

Others on my website include Survey Builder, Vizu, QuestionForm, Polldaddy,  Zoho Polls  (which I recently learned about from a blog called Grumpy Old Teacher) and a brand new site called Flextor.Flextor looks particularly interesting, because it seems like it allows you to do many things (polls, slideshows, videos, eCards) in a visually appealing and simple process.  I need to explore it further.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I have a separate section of my website which has categorized links for advanced and native English speakers.  However,  some of the links in those areas are indeed appropriate for high beginner or intermediate English Language Learners, too.  One of these days I’ll take time to reorganize them all!

Today, I’d like to highlight several categories on my Social Studies page.  I’ve used links in the African-Americans, Careers, Economics, and This Day in History categories successfully in my Social Studies classes for English Language Learners.

The African-Americans section has good links useful for U.S. History; Careers has some more involved links than the Jobs and Careers section on my English Themes for Beginners and Early Intermediate page;  you’ll find some engaging materials to help students think realistically about finances in Economics; and This Day in History is always good for students to investigate what happened on certain days (including their birthdays) in U.S. or World History.

This Social Studies page, though, should not be confused with my two Social Studies pages that only have links for English Language Learners –Geography and United States History,  and World History.

I try to send out a newsletter each month to people who don’t necessarily want to receive daily updates from my blog about new content.These newsletters are a “Top Ten” of the fifty-to-one-hundred new links I highlight in my blog monthly. I’ll also make this Top Ten list a blog entry.

I will not list the top ten sites in order of priority, though.It was hard enough to pick ten, much less to try to prioritize the ones I chose!

Each link will bring you to the blog entry about that new link:

* “Creating” Online Videos with English Language Learners

*  Hello World English

* Easy Online Film-Making

* Two Best Beginning To Read Sites

* Easy Geography

* Face Match

* Many Math Activities

* Citizenship

* English 180

* Talking Stories 

* Samuel L. Jackson, My ESL Students, And Me

PBS has a site where you can create, and describe, your own vision of a Backyard Paradise.  You can then email and post the url of your creation. 

It’s a little weird (I suspect you might agree when you see the site), but it’s the closest thing I could find for my English Language Learners  to make online related to the unit on “gardens” we were studying.  And they seemed to enjoy making their “backyard paradises” and writing about them.

You can find the link on the Examples of Student Work page under Student Backyard Paradises.   You’ll also see a few examples made by my students.

Adventures in Ancient Greece, made by Mystery Productions,  is an entertaining and informative site that takes a student through the cities, history, and gods of that time and place.  It’s very visual and interactive and, though there’s no audio, the text is very simple.

I’ve placed it at the bottom of the Greece and Rome section of my World History page.

Pictaps allows you to design a person who then turns into a zillion people dancing to music.  You just have to try it to understand.

It gives you the url of your dancing people, so English Language Learners can quickly create one, paste the url into their blog or journal, and then write about it.

It’s not “deep,” but it’s fun!

I’ve placed the link on the Examples of Student Work page near the bottom and called it Student Dancing Person.

Zoom Explorers is a well-organized site from Enchanted Learning that provides brief summaries of  world explorers from throughout history.  They’re written in simple English, though probably not simple enough for Beginners.

I’ve placed the link to this site on my World History page at the bottom of the Sites That Cover Many Periods of World History section.

Virtual Villagers is a game where the player helps villagers survive on a Pacific Island.  I think it might be an interesting language development exercise for English Language Learners. Players have to continually follow a serious of written instructions written in simple English.

I’ve placed it on my English For Intermediate and Advanced page, though I suspect high-beginners would also find it accessible.  It’s at the bottom of the Word Games category. 

I think it will be helpful for reading and vocabulary development.  But, to tell the truth, I’m not quite sure.  I’d be interested in hearing other teacher’s opinions, too.  There are quite a few games like Virtual Villagers out there.  If it seems like this one is useful for English Language Learners I’ll post links to similar games.

Cake Mania is a game like Virtual Villagers (see the above post).  It gives frequent simple English instructions for actions the player should perform.  In this case, it’s to make sure the right kind of cake is baked and served.

I’ve placed it on the English For Intermediate/Advanced page (though, as in Virtual Villagers, high-beginners can access it).  It’s on the bottom of the Word Games category.

As with Virtual Villagers, I’m on the fence about how effective this type of game could be for English language development.   There are many games like them out there.  I think they might be useful for vocabulary and reading skills.

What do you think?

After I posted yesterday about ways for students to create their own online musical compositions, I realized that I had forgotten two other sites.

One is 6 Mixer from the BBC and the other is Sound Junction, which is up for a Webby Award this year.  These two sites seem to only allow instrumental compositions without lyrics.  They both can be found on my Teacher’s Page under Making Music.

I continue to be interested in hearing ideas, other than the ones I mentioned in my last post, about how to use these links for English Language development.

When you have a class of teenage students, no matter where they’re from, music is definitely a high-priority.   I know how to use this interest in the classroom — singing thematic songs, making up lyrics, etc. — but I’ve been trying to figure out how to take advantage of it when we’re at the computer lab so that it enhances English language development.

I have two links on my Examples of Student Work page which allows students to create a song using music and lyrics.  One is Coca-Cola Chill, which is a little complicated.  Another is Pop Star Producer. They’re both located under Student Songs

I have several other links on my Teacher’s Page under Making Music.  I put them there because, even though they make things pretty easy for students to create online music (without lyrics) that can be accessed on the Web, I haven’t had the time to figure out if and how they can be used to help English Language Learner students further their language skills. Of course, students could create the music, link it to their blog or online journal, and then write about it.  I’d certainly be interested in hearing other ideas.  Alix Peshette had a good suggestion in her blog about students using music they created in their online presentations of other material, though that’s getting a little complicated for my technical abilities.

The links on my Teacher’s page include a new site I just read about in Kevin Clark’s blog called Jamglue; Making Tracks from the BBC; and the music section of IKnowThat.

Again, I’m all ears for other recommendations…..

In this game, “no noun, verb or adjective is safe from the Grammar Ninja.”  That description says it all.

I’ve put the link to the game on my English For Beginners page under Grammar.

I’m generally skeptical about the educational value of students completing word searches.  It seems to me that it’s basically “make work.”

However, I’ve sometimes had my students create word searches using the vocabulary we’ve been studying, share them with their classmates, and have a little game to see who could find the most words in a short period of time.  The fact that students were creating the word searches themselves,  that we were spending just a few minutes doing it,  and that we turned it into an energizing little game justified it in my mind.

Now students can also make a word search, and other word games, online.  I’ve placed a link to a company called APTE under a new category titled Student Word Searches.  You can find it on my Examples of Student Work page.  Again, I have mixed emotions about their usefulness, but it could be a fun activity to do now and then.

Students can create word games and email them to their teacher.  You can then post the url on a website. 

You have to register on the site, but it only takes a few seconds to do so.

Using Adjectives is a link I’ve just placed at the bottom of the Descriptions section of my English Themes For Beginners and Early Intermediate page.  I’ve actually put several related links right after the other.  They all provide simple text and audio lessons on the use of adjectives.

These lessons, and a number of other links on my site (especially in the Reading category of the English For Beginners page), all come from the Elementary Test Center of the Oswego City School District.  They have hundreds of similar interactive online lessons and interactive activities.  The District also has a similar site for more advanced learners.

The Wisconsin Online Resource Center has nearly 2,000 of what they call “learning objects” on their site, and quite a few are accessible to English Language Learners.

I have posted links to several in various areas of my site, including Amendments to the Constitution and How A Bill Becomes Law in the Citizenship category of my English Themes for Beginners and Early Intermediate page.  Those don’t have audio, but the Hmong/English Introduction learning object in the Hmong section of the Bilingual Exercises page has both audio and text.

These learning objects are basically short flash presentations with interactive exercises.

You can link directly to each individual learning object, but you have to register if you want to browse through them all.  Registration is free, and takes about thirty seconds to do.

I have been “tagged” by Christina Niven to respond to a “meme” (an online question circulated among bloggers) about what magazines I read and if and how my reading habits have changed over the past couple of years.

Before I respond to that question, I would like to highlight Christina’s exceptional website, EL Civics, which is designed to help English Language Learners study American government and history.  You can find a link to her site on my English Themes for Beginners/Early Intermediate under the Citizenship category.

As to the question about what magazines I read, I’ve been a long-time subscriber to Newsweek, the New York Times Book Review (so I can sound well-read without actually having to read the books!), and The New Yorker.

I changed careers a few years ago from being a community organizer to becoming a teacher, particularly with English Language Learners.  Along with that change, I also became intrigued with how to use educational technology.

With that career change, the periodicals I regularly read also changed.  Ones I read regularly now include Language Magazine, Technology and Learning,  and Rethinking Schools.  I also read Fast Company because, even though it’s obviously business oriented,  there are usually some useful “universals” in some of the articles.

A magazine that I read regularly when I was organizing, and now read irregularly because it’s so expensive, is the Harvard Business Review.  Though it, too, is business-oriented,  many of its thoughtful articles are applicable to other areas, including education.

I also read quite a few periodicals online.  You can find links to many of them on my Teacher’s Page under Educational Technology Journals and Listservs, Listservs for ESL,  Magazines, and Online Journals.

In the spirit of this online “meme,” I would also like to tag two other Californians who’s blogs I subscribe to — Alix Peshette at Ed Tech Gold Rush and Marian Thacher at Adult Education and Technology. Both of their blogs offer very helpful teacher resources.