Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

It’s just soooooo easy for teachers, and students, to create their own websites these days.

Mashable just posted a Web Design Toolbox listing over fifty applications, including many for beginners. 

I posted that link on my Teacher’s Page under Website Development, where it joins links to even more sites that allow you to create free webpages.

I also have some more application under Student Web Pages on my Examples of Student Work page.

A teacher’s website gives you a forum to post all the student creations from Web 2.0 links I list here.

I’ve written in the past about MixerCast and how easy it is for English Language Learners to make online slideshows using that web application.

Well, I’ve found a new site that does all the same things (and more!) and has an even easier interface for students to use.

It’s called ImageLoop.  You can easily access other photos on Flickr by just searching with a “tag,” you can write captions, and you can add all sorts of special effects.  You can also test it out first before you register (for free).

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Slide-Shows.

I’ve recently put several new links on my Science page (I’m talking about the Science page for English Language Learners, not the other Science page for very advanced or native speakers).  I’d like to highlight a few of the best ones today.

Ology is from the American Museum of Natural History, and has many online activities accessible to English Language Learners, including ones on archaelogy, biodiversity, and astronomy.  I have a few links to their individual activitities in various parts of my website, but you can find them all here, too.

Strange Matter  is an interactive exercise that comes from the Ontario Science Center and shows what happens to various raw materials after they’re processed. 

The Oregon Health and Science University has developed Dangerous Decibels, a serious of activities to help students learn about sound.

The Hobby Shop comes from Maryland Public Television and has a serious of online and interactive science experiments.

Finally,  I realized I didn’t have much about dinosaurs anywhere on my site, and found a great to Scholastic’s series of online activities about them.

Again, you’ll find all these links on my Science page.  They are all right above the section titled “Planets and Space.” 

Ana Maria Menezes , an EFL teacher in Brazil and a leader in the Learning with Computers Yahoo Group, has added her Top Ten web tools to the list I posted about yesterday.  Check it out, and submit your ten, too.

Theoworlds allows you to make an online Birthday Cake.  You can design its shape, decorations, borders, candles, etc.  You can also write a card that goes with it. 

Students can then email the url of their creation and card, and a teacher can post it on a website.

This is just another quick activity that English Language Learners can use for a little (admittedly, very little) language development.

The link is on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Birthday Cakes.

Sylvia Martinez has written a very perceptive post on her blog about Web 2.0 and education reform.  I’d encourage people to read it.

Technology and Web 2.0 are not magic bullets….

Jane Hart has an excellent blog called Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day.  She highlights technology tools that are helpful to educators.

She also has a section where her readers periodically highlight their top ten tools.  You might find it useful to see my list that I shared with her.

I’ve found it very interesting to see what her other guest writers have recommended, too.

You might want to consider sending in your Top Ten, too.  I’ll certainly highlight ESL teachers who get on Jane Hart’s list.  You can also put them in the comments here.

Google Docs, the web-based word processing application from Google, has recently added some features that might be helpful to teachers of English Language Learners.

I’ve read about them in a few places this week, but a post in the Google Blogoscoped blog gives the clearest information and examples about them.  These changes allow you to now calculate the “readability” and “grade-level” of your text (and anybody’s else’s you copy and paste).

I also saw another post (I unfortunately don’t remember where) that said some versions of Word have the same ability.

I’ve never paid attention to these measurements, and have generally used my experience and instincts (and also just asked my students) about what was comprehensible to them.  However, I can imagine that these would be helpful tools to have sometime.

As regular readers know, I’ve been adding a number of online video games to my site that I think provide great English language development opportunities.     Most of the games I’ve highlighted are pretty accessible, and students can figure out how to play them.

However, I’ve placed a few on my English For Intermediate page that are more difficult.  In fact, some of these “puzzle” games have actually “puzzled” me.  Without obtaining the “walkthroughs”(step-by-step hints)  to some of these games I would never have been able to figure out what I needed to do, for example,  to escape from being Trapped (one of the games I’ve recently added).

I learned from Graham Stanley that one way to use these more difficult games with English Language Learners is to pair students up on one computer.  One has the walkthrough, and the other is using the computer.  The student with the walkthrough reads the hints to the student on the computer.  This kind of exercise provides speaking and listening practice in an enjoyable way.  Sometimes the partners work together to read the instructions, and it’s not unusual for partners to help others as well.

I’ve placed links to many games (besides Trapped) and their walkthroughs that would work in this kind of activity.  They include Peasant’s Quest and Mystery of Time and Space.  They are with most of the other online video games at the bottom of the Word Games category.

There are plenty of these types of puzzle games and their walkthroughs are available online.  Last week, my students particularly enjoyed Phantasy Quest and Bonte Room 2.

I’ve found helping my students learn about folktales from different countries has been an important part of learning about geography.   They also have an opportunity to share folktales from their countries, both to students in our classes and in others.

I have links to a number of folktales on my Geography page.  Near the bottom of each regional category, you’ll find these links (which generally have both audio and text).  The newest one is about Paul Bunyan, and was created by a teacher in France named Renee Maufroid.  If you click on “Back to the main page” at the Paul Bunyan story you’ll see a list of a variety of other online activities Ms. (or Mr.) Maufroid has developed.

I haven’t used Wikis, and don’t quite understand how or why to use them.

However, I learned about a site from Lucy Gray’s excellent A Teacher’s Life blog that gives a good explanation about how to utilize them in education, and provides a lot of resources.  It’s called Classroom 2.0 Wikis.

I’ve placed the link on my Teacher’s Page under the Wikis section.

The site appears to be relatively new, but looks like it will become a great resource to learn about all sorts of Web 2.0 tools and education.

The Read/Write Web blog reports that the Discovery Channel, as part of its upcoming “Shark Week,” has a video-mixer web application on its site.

It’s very easy to use, and English Language Learners can quickly create a video, post its url on a blog or teacher’s website, and write about it.

I created a video in about one minute, and you can see it here.

I won’t give up my day job yet to become a film director….

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Shark Videos.

Dots and Diamond are a cat and dog detective team called into a museum to find some missing mummies. 

This is another fun game that promotes English language learning.   There are very simple English phrases, and students have to help Dots and Diamond in their quest.

I’ve placed it near the bottom of the Word Games section on my English for Intermediate/Advanced page.

Build Your Ottogram allows you to design your own otter, including clothing, headgear, and sunglasses, and then have him/her say what you want him/her to say (through a text-to-speech feature).  You can email the url, and then have it posted on a website.

I don’t know where they come up with this stuff, but it’s great for English Language Learners.

I’ve place the link on my Examples of Student Work page under…..Student Talking Otters.

Here are my picks for best posts for this month.  These are where I highlighted the Top Ten websites for the month of July.  They are the ten best new (at least to me!) sites for assisting English Language Learners and their teachers.

They are not, however, listed in any particular order:

* Great Site For U.S. History Projects

* Musical Game Room

* Amazing Karaoke Site

* ESL Listservs

* Back-up Storage

* New TechLearning Article

* Literactive

* What Was There?

* Twenty Questions Game

* Create Video Quizzes (this is actually from a few months ago, and I just realized that I’ve never put it on a Top Ten list)

I’ve added several more links to my blogroll, which you can see on the right of the screen (assuming you’re looking at my blog).

These new additions all have helpful things to say about teaching English Language Learners.  I’d encourage you to explore them.

NASA has several interactive activities they call Earth Science Modules.  They include ones on the weather, biomes, and the “earth system.”

The site is appropriate for Early Intermediate (and above) English Language Learners.  I’ve placed it on my Science page, above the section on Planets and Space.

Many of us have played the old party game of “20 Questions.”  In it, one person thinks of something, and you can ask up to twenty “yes/no” questions in an effort to guess what it is.

There’s an entertaining version of this 20 Questions Game online that Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners would enjoy.  You think of something, and the computer asks you questions (in addition to “yes/no” you can answer “sometimes/doubtful/unknown”) in an attempt to guess what you’re thinking of.

I thought of “Bangkok” and it took the web application 23 questions to determine it correctly.

After students played the game online, they did it in class.  It was excellent speaking and listening practice then, and the online game was a great warm-up.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate/Advanced page near the bottom of the Word Games category.

Claudia Ceraso has developed a nice directory of blogs written by teachers of English Language Learners.  You might want to check it out and see if you find some new blogs worth reading.

Not that it’s particularly important, but, if you read posts via subscription, you might want to visit the blog itself.  It has a new “look” that, with the new Eudblogs upgrades, took me all of two minutes to develop.