Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Many Web 2.0 applications that I have my students use require a valid email for registration.  Often they can all just use one account that I’ve already set-up and validated.

However, sometimes sites don’t allow multiple users online at the same time on one account.  Also, if everyone has access to everybody’s work, it’s possible for a student who’s feeling mischievous to play around with another student’s project.  For these reasons, and others, at times it’s good for students to have individual accounts. 

I don’t necessarily want students to use their real email address for safety reasons, and I’ve posted before about several links that I have posted on the top of my Examples of Student Work page that allow people to create email addresses that last ten minutes or so.  These enable you to receive a request for validation and then click on it.

A new site, though, just came to my attention that may be the best solution so far to this problem.  MintEmail lets you create a temporary email account that lasts four hours and says it automatically validates requests for confirmation from most websites.

So when a student sets up his/her account at the site, they don’t even have to check back in with MintEmail to click and confirm their registration — MintEmail will do it on its own.

In addition to this great free service, you can also set it up so that all emails coming to your MintEmail address for the next three months are automatically forwarded to your regular email account.

It’s very accessible to English Language Learners.  Once you to to MintEmail, a unique email address is immediately generated on the page.  All students have to do is copy and paste the email address they see.

I’ve placed the link with the other temporary email links on the Examples of Student Work page.

I’ve recently added two very different online video games to my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.  As regular readers know, I use online video games as language development exercises for students. 

In fact, Future-Making Serious Games just wrote a post that included some examples of how my students use these games.  TechLearning will have a more extensive article about it in January.

One new game is from the ASPCA called The Dog House.  It helps users understand dog-owning responsibilities.

The other is the Patriot Adventure, which is being used to introduce a new Jeep model to the market.  It’s a fairly entertaining game where the player has to regularly choose what the people in the adventure should do next.

Both games are probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, though the Jeep game might be a little difficult because it involves a lot of listening.

Sound Transit is an intriguing site.  You pick places you want to travel to in the world and, in addition to showing you your “route” on a map, you hear audio from those places.

It would certainly add a “twist” to my Geography class.  English Language Learners can email the url of the “trip” they “booked,” post it on a website or blog, and then write a description of it.

I’ve placed the link on my Geography page under the Sites That Cover Many Areas section.

Learning About Maps and Directions has a series of very simple online activities teaching basic map vocabulary and skills.   They are accessible to all levels of English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my Geography page under Introduction to Maps.

Soundboard allows individual users to add audio clips to their own “Soundboard” (collection of sounds); describe their collection, and then post it with its own url.

Its main focus is obviously music, but its Historical clips are what particularly drew my attention.  My English Language Learner History students, after having gotten some background on modern history, could certainly benefit from listening and creating their own group of Martin Luther King audio clips, for example.  Then they could describe why they chose the clips they did.

Unfortunately, even though its a small part of the site, there’s also a section called “Mature” that would be inappropriate for student use.

The site also has an extensive sound effects and animal sound collection.  I’ve played games with Beginning English Language Learners listening to sound effects CD’s and then they have to guess what it is.  Teachers could certainly use this site as a source for those sounds.

I originally placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page.  However, after thinking about the mature content accessible on Soundboard (again, even though it’s a tiny part of the site), I decided to move the link to my Teacher’s Page under Audio.

I still think it’s a good activity for students.  Teachers are just going to want to carefully monitor it.

I’ve posted in the past about The Learning Edge, the audio/ animated/text online newspaper that is designed for English Language Learners.  It provides practical jobs/careers advice in a very accessible way.

Happily, they’ve recently published a new issue.  This one focuses on “Goal-Setting.”

I’ve placed a link to it on my English Themes For Beginners page under Jobs and Careers.

The Nobel Prizes site has several interesting games, though most are not accessible to English Language Learners.  One, though, the Nuclear Weapons Game , would be accessible to high-Intermediate or Advanced students.

In the game, players have to send “peace doves” to certain countries to disarm them.  Clues, and a map, are shown, and the player has to send the dove to the correct country.

I’ve placed the link on my World History page at the bottom of the Toward The Twenty-First Century section.

Students can email any number of free virtual “gifts” with iGiftd.  They can pick from a big collection of food, animals, cars, etc. and send it with a note.

You don’t have to register to use it. It’s a simple and fun way for English Language Learners to write a note, including why they picked their gift and to whom they want to give it, and email it to a teacher.  The url can then be posted on a blog or online journal.

In order to obtain the url for the “gift” and note that was sent, you have to type in the receiver’s email address.

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

I’ve posted about Action Mazes in the past, which are basically “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories like “Goosebumps.”  At different points of the story, the reader has to choose among various options about what happens next.  It’s also called Interactive Fiction, though this type of writing can also be used to teach history or provide a training simulation.

They’re excellent writing and reading opportunities for both English Language Learners and native-speakers alike.  However, to easily create them on the computer you’ve had to download software, which is always problematic with school computers.

Protagonize is a new site that I learned about from Mashable.  It makes it very easy to create these stories online.

I’ve been communicating with Nick Bouton, the site’s creator, about how to make his site more conducive to classroom work.  Right now, anyone can create “forks in the road” for any story.

He says it’s very workable to create closed groups in his next upgrade to the site so that you can limit who has the ability to work on a particular story.

We’ve talked about some other ideas, too, that he’s considering.

I’ll post again about the site after the upgrade is in place.

The Go To Web 2.0 blog recently had a post about online resume-builders.  Two of the sites they mentioned particularly stand-out as excellent tools for  Intermediate English Language Learners and mainstream students.  In fact, they’d be good tools for anyone looking to write their resume.

Both Amiko and Emurse are free and very accessible.   Both sites walk  you through a process of making a resume.  They basically have a serious of  text-boxes to fill-in, and have instructions about what to do written in simple English.  You then end-up with a professional-looking resume.

Writing for an authentic audience is always a great learning opportunity.  And preparing a resume for a potential employer is a pretty darn authentic audience.

I’ve placed both links on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Resumes.

You can find lots of geography-related games on my Geography page.  You sort of figure that there are only so many ways you can design a map-related game, right?

Well, a very creative game designer just developed a new map game that is amazing.  I don’t how how people can come up with stuff like this.

In Scribble States (which I learned about from Jay is Games) you first are shown numbered dots that you have to connect.  Then, after you’ve connected them all, you have to choose which U.S. state your drawing shows.  You’re timed, and after you finish one it shows another.

I’ve placed the link under the United States and Canada section.

There are only a couple of more days left to contribute your thoughts on “What Did You Learn In 2007?”

The deadline is just before midnight on December 31st. 

Please click on the initial post for details.

Here are some interesting posts I’ve seen around the Web recently:

* Katie at TEFL Logue offers some Tips and Tricks on working with challenging students in the ESL/EFL classroom.

* If you’re not tired of looking at year-end lists, Langwitches has an excellent Top Ten List of Educational Videos.  Even if you’re burnt-out on these types of lists (and my thirteen of them may have contributed to your feeling that way!), this one is still worth checking-out.

* History Is Elementary is hosting the most recent Carnival of Education.  It’s chock-full of good stuff.

You might want to read this excellent article by Roger Schank on accountability and the No Child Left Behind Act.  It’s called Hooray For The Democrats! Hooray For More Accountability!

The headline is an exercise in satire.

I recently learned about a new website called Mucelli.  It allows you to search, find, and access tons of songs, and videos, whenever you want — for free. It also allows you to create your own play list using the most simple “drag-and-drop” feature possible.

A teacher could use the site to play songs as a part of lessons for his/her classroom.  I quickly and easily found several that I usually incorporate in various class exercises.  It wouldn’t be appropriate for in-class  student use because of the wide-range of music accessible on the site.

Mucelli seems wonderful, but it does make me a little uncomfortable.   I don’t know much about copyright laws, but I’m curious about how the site’s creators can legally do this.  I sent an email asking them about it, but they haven’t responded.

The site’s been mentioned on several tech-related blogs, and none of them have mentioned this concern and, in fact, refer to the fact that there are similar services already out there.

Am I missing something here?  Can someone clarify this issue for me?

If and when I learn that Mucelli is not “too good to be true,” I’ll place a link to it on my Teacher’s Page.

The Viking Quest Game is from the BBC.  Players take on the role of a Viking and get to do many things, including looting a monastery.  It’s probably most accessible to High Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners.

I’ve placed it on my World History page in the middle of The Middle Ages section.

One of things I, and my students, like about my website is that in just about every section they can find links that are appropriate to their English level.

David Deubel not only keeps everything running at EFL Classroom – he also provides an enormous amount of resources helpful to all teachers.  Plus, he has a “thread” where he shares great stories applicable to teaching.  Here’s his latest contribution — a poem that all of us who are teachers at any grade level might want to think about:

The Memoirs of Jessie James
– Richard Brautigan

I remember all those thousands of hours that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.

I thought I would put the number-one ranked sites from all thirteen of my Websites Of The Year into one list of their own. Links to each entire list are also included in this post.

Even though this is going to be my last list for this year, I’ve decided to try to prepare similar lists in new categories once each month during 2008. Since I have over 8,000 categorized links (and growing) on my website, I figure regularly reviewing them and their features would be beneficial to my students, other teachers, and me.

These new monthly lists, however, won’t displace another regular feature I post called Websites Of The Month. There, I point out my picks for the “Top Ten” new posts I’ve written during that month. I use that list primarily for the large number of readers who have requested a monthly newsletter instead of daily blog posts.

You can get all these lists, and my daily posts, by subscribing to this blog via email or RSS Reader.

Here, now, are the best of the best for 2007:

Best Web 2.0 Application For Education:

Tumblr — This “micro-blogging” site upgraded their service this year. It’s a great place for students to easily post a whole lot of their work. Students can have individual or group “Tumblrs.” A student can also share their password with a small number of students who can leave comments.

The Best Web 2.0 Application For ESL/EFL Learners:

VoiceThread — You can upload pictures and create an audio narrative to go along with them. In addition, audio comments can be left by visitors. VoiceThread also provides a great deal to teachers by allowing them to get their premium services for free, including allowing them to create a zillion VoiceThreads for free. Happily, they’ve finally incorporated the feature of allowing you to include images off the web just by inserting its url. It’s that new feature that made me choose VoiceThread as number one.

The Best Online Learning Game:

Wordmaster — A great game from the BBC. In it, you’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words. And after you’ve either guessed the correct word or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.

Best Internet Site For English Language Learners:

Henny Jellema’s Online TPR Exercises — You’ve got to see this site to believe it. I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into creating the exercises. However, as he cautions, it’s critical to combine using his online activities with physical TPR lessons.

Best Social Studies Website:

Here, there was a tie.

One is HippoCampus. It has great (and complete) online and accessible textbooks for many subjects, including History and Government. Their resources include extraordinary multimedia presentations.

HippoCampus tied for first place with The Virtual Smithsonian. It’s a fantastic multimedia window into the artifacts, and their stories, held by the Smithsonian Institution.

Best Search Engine For ESL/EFL Learners:

Pagebull — When you enter a search term, the results that come back are not text. Visual images of the pages are actually shown on the screen. This can help students more quickly identify which sites might be accessible to them. (Unfortunately, it appears that Pagebull went out of business a few months after this list appeared. However, a new search engine called viewfour is very comparable).

Best Science Website For Student & Teachers:

California Science — It’s from MacMillan/McGraw Hill and has some great online activities. However, what makes this site stand-out (and my ESL/EFL bias is clear here) is that it contains translations in many languages (including Hmong!) of the science concepts taught in the textbooks.

Best Math Site For English Language Learners:

It’s actually three sites, all from the extraordinary Learn Alberta organization. The three math sites are Math Under The Sea, Math 5 Live, and Spy Guys Math. Instead of explaining each one, I’m going to suggest that they’re definitely worth the time to just go and check out.

Best News/Current Events Site For English Language Learners:

BBC Learning English – It was a tough choice between this and the Voice of America, but the BBC won out because its design is much more attractive and has images.

Best Article About Education:

I’m ranking Richard Rothstein’s great article in the latest issue of The American Prospect as number one. It’s called Leaving “No Child Left Behind” Behind. The title says it all.

Best Reference Website For English Language Learners:

There are several winners from this list.

Dictionaries:

The Language Guide For Beginning English Language Learners.

Harcourt’s E-Glossary for students just entering the Intermediate stage.

Answers.com works best for Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners. Once you type in the word you’re looking for, click “Word Tutor” and it will provide audio to a sentence using the word in context.

Thesaurus:

Visuwords is a unique, and fun, way to find synonyms in a visual display. It’s free, and it also functions as a dictionary.

Encyclopedia:

Simple English Wikipedia

Information On Countries & States:

A tie between Fact Monster & Infoplease.

Best Place To Learn Web 2.0 Basics:

It’s a three-way tie.

One is Sue Waters’ Mobile Technology In TAFE Wiki. Another is Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Wiki. And the third great site on my list is Russell Stannard’s Teacher Training Videos.

Best Blog For Sharing Resources/Links:

It’s a thirteen-way tie. Everyone on the list is great.

I hope this list, and the others, have been helpful. I’ll look forward to sharing more resources in the coming year.

More Best of the Best For 2008

I’ve continued to post new lists in the new year, and will try to (though I’m about thirty lists behind) periodically update this summary with more top-ranked sites:

Best Writing Website For K-12 Writing Instruction/Reinforcement:

BBC Bitesize Revision for Writing — Admittedly, it’s geared towards a younger audience (and perfect for English Language Learners), but their multiple activities are just great and deserve to be in first place.

Best Health Site For English Language Learners:

Medline Plus’ Interactive Health Tutorials from the National Institutes of Health. These excellent slideshows provide images, text, and audio support in accessible English explaining scores of diseases, treatments, and prevention measures. Plus, they’re all available in Spanish, too.

Best Website For Learning About Civic Participation & Citizenship:

It’s a tie for number one between US Citizenship, which provides a great online self-access course to prepare people for the Citizenship test; and EL Civics For ESL Students, which a wonderful site that provides preparation for the Citizenship test and an introduction to the U.S. and daily life.

Best Website To Help Beginning Readers:

Starfall — Starfall has been helping people learn to read for years, and is still the best out there. I’d recommend their I’m Reading section for older readers.

The Best Websites For Beginning Older Readers:

Reading Skills Stories 1 and Reading Skills Stories 2 — Marshall Adult Education in Minnesota has many leveled, high-interest accessible stories on these sites, with several follow-up activities for each one. They also have a great Student Lessons section, too.

The Best Website For Intermediate Readers

Into The Book — This is an absolutely incredible resource designed to help students learn reading strategies — visualize, predict, summarize, etc. For the past couple of years it had only been partially completed. In the course of examining sites for inclusion in this list, though, I found that all its exercises were finished. Users are led through the process of learning each reading strategy with interactive exercises.

The Best Music Website For Learning English

The Sims On Stage — This wonderful site lets users easily record themselves singing karaoke and hosts the performances on-site. If students don’t want to sing, they can listen to countless others who have while the lyrics are streaming across the screen.

When it comes to technology, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer (not to mention being sort of a Luddite).  I need things very, very simple.

I thought it would be helpful to share a list of the sites that I’ve found most helpful and accessible in explaining how to use key Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis,  Flickr, social bookmarking, RSS readers, etc.

You can also find links to the sites I list here, and many more, on the Teachers’ Page on my website.

There are three sites that I think stand above all the others.  They all provide very understandable step-by-step explanations for a variety of key tools.   And I think all three are equally good.

One is Sue Waters’ Mobile Technology In TAFE Wiki.  Another is Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Wiki.  And the third great site on my list is Russell Stannard’s Teacher Training Videos.

It would probably be okay to stop reading right here, since these three sites more than likely can provide you with all the information you need.

However, there are a few more excellent resources you might want to check-out if you have the time.

There are two other places that offer exceptional information on a number of Web 2.0 tools.  One is Common Craft, which makes simple explanatory videos.  The other is Tim Davies’ blog, where you can print-out a series of one-page guides he wrote about Web 2.0 resources.

Other sites have good resources for specific tools. 

Teachers First, which offers a huge amount of free resources to educators, has particularly good tutorials on blogs and wikis.

Jeff Utecht has a nice screencast on how to use Flickr.  Some of the information might be a little out-of-date now, however.  Webware has a newer, though a little less accessible, Flickr guide.   Webware also has a good continuing series called Newbie’s Guides which gives nice explanations on how to use a number of different Web 2.0 tools.

Finally, I’d like to mention an exceptional slideshow  developed by Vicki Davis and many others that explains how to use Google Doc’s new Presentations tool.

Feel free to make suggestions of other sites you’ve found useful.

All of my recent lists can be found at Websites Of The Year.

Here are a few predictions for 2008, and they’ll all probably turn-out to be wrong:

1) There will be some exciting developments that should allow students and teachers to very easily create extraordinary online learning games, and these new applications will be completely browser-based — no downloads will be required.

2) Interest in Second Life as a teaching/learning platform will level-off and begin to be reduced as educators and students conclude that the educational benefits of a virtual world really aren’t that great.  I’m sorry, I still just don’t get it.

3) Several new studies will be released showing that computer technology does have a significant impact on student achievement.

4) Several new studies will also be released showing that computer technology does not have a signficant impact on student achievement.

How about you — any predictions?

(Editor’s Note: Cath Riddoch makes an excellent point in the comments section — one that I had never thought of.  She writes “I hope you are wrong about Second Life. For those of us with physical difficulties Second Life is amazing! I can run and even fly on days when I cant even stand in Real Life.”  Now that I get…)