Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

The Great Kitchen Escape is an example of an online video game that I think is great for English Language Learners.  It’s in the “Escape The Room” genre, and players have to collect various items found in a kitchen in order to escape.

Students can use it to develop kitchen vocabulary (the items are labeled) and use the Walkthrough in small groups when playing to develop reading skills in order to “win” the game.

You can read more about how I use these kinds of games in class in this month’s TechLearning article.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.

(Note: Sometimes, when games first come out, their servers get too busy.  If you can’t get through to the game on the link I posted, then try this one.)

Kerpoof! has been around for awhile, and other blogs have posted about it extensively.  I’m not going to reinvent the wheel and describe all of its delightful features, but I’d encourage you to read those other posts.  It’s basically a very visual site that allows students to create their own stories and movies, and is well-suited to English Language Learners and others.

I haven’t written about it, though, because up until now I felt it lacked one feature that I think is critical for any real effective student Web 2.0 tool — the ability to post what you’ve created online for people to see.   With Kerpoof! students have been able to save their work, but until today the primary way to access it was by signing-in to the free service — you really couldn’t make it easily available for others to see it.

But no more….

I just received an email from Caryn Jones at Kerpoof! who writes:

“We’ve created an easier way to get the URL (before the best way to get it was to e-mail the scene or movie to yourself). As of today, when you go to save your scene and have clicked “Save Scene” a dialogue box pops up that gives you the URL…”

This is great news and will allow teachers and students to post the url’s of their creations on their website, blog, or online journal.

Thanks for listening, Kerpoof!

I’ll be posting the link under a few sections on my Examples Of Student Work page.

I’ve posted several times in the past few weeks about my search to find the best tool to use to create a private student “social network” that would allow my classes to work with Intermediate English classes in other parts of the world.

I’ve been calling it a “social network,” but Sue Waters reminded me about a post by Vicki Davis , who more accurately calls it “educational networking.”

I had thought I had found a solution by being able to get Ning unblocked by our School District.  However, yesterday I discovered the CAPTCHA image, which are the letters/numbers that many online services (like this blog) have that you have to type in when you register (as a safeguard against spammers) is blocked.  In other words,  I can see the site, but no one can participate in it.  Sigh….. 

To be fair, I have to say the District Technology staff have been very supportive of a lot of the technology experiments we’ve been doing, though, particularly our home computer project.  I realize there are competing pressures on them.

There are, however, a number of other sites that are listed in my past posts that provide this kind of privated closed network (though none seem as good as Ning) and are not blocked.  I even learned of two additional similar applications today. One is called Snappville and the other Six Groups (thought don’t know if either is available at school yet and am not sure of their privacy settings), so there are clearly many other options.

I’ll let readers know which one I decide to use and why.

The History Channel has a site on the History of Mexico that includes several short videos accessible to English Language Learners.

The clips include ones on the Maya and Aztecs, as well as more modern history.

The site also has a fair amount of text that’s probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link in two places.  It’s on my Geography page under Latin America.  It’s also on my World History page under The Middle Ages.

Bloglines has not been picking-up any new posts from this blog for the past seven days.  In fact, it hasn’t been picking-up any new posts from the 100,000 plus blogs using Edublogs.

This has been an on-going problem with Bloglines, though all other RSS Readers pick-up the feeds without any problem.  This is an issue with Bloglines — Edublogs doesn’t contribute to the problem at all.

If you are subscribing to this blog through Bloglines, and you just happen to be visiting to see if there are new posts here, I suggest three options:

1) Continue using Bloglines for your subscriptions, hope that they eventually begin updating new posts from this blog and other Edublogs soon, and just check-in here to read new posts.

2) Change to a more reliable RSS Reader, like Google Reader, to use for your blog subscriptions.

3) Subscribe to this blog via email.  Feedblitz has been very reliable.  You can do this here.  Each day you will receive one email containing all the posts that had been made in the previous day.

I’d also encourage you to complain to Bloglines.

You can also read more subscription information at How To Subscribe To This Blog By Email or RSS.

You can create Paper Critters at a relatively new site, email the url of your creation, post it, and then write a description.

What are Paper Critters, you might ask?  Well, they are things that sort of defy description.  A picture is worth a thousand words, so you might want to go their site.

They also allow you to print-out and then put together a paper model of your creation.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Paper Critters.

I use music a lot in my teaching of English Language Learners.   I thought people might find it helpful to see which sites I believe to be the best out there to help teach English — Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced – through music.   My students have certainly found them helpful.

Music is a familiar, fun, and engaging tool to use in learning a second language.  This list includes sites that have music to listen to, activities for students to do, and ways for them to create their own.

This is latest of my “The Best…” series, also known as Websites Of The Year.  The sites on this list can be found, along with 8,000 other categorized links, on my website.  I am also in the process of designing a special page on my website so that it’s easy for students to access my lists of The Best Websites on their own.

Here are what I believe to be the thirteen (well, really fifteen) best music websites for learning English:

Number thirteen is the Music Page from the Language Guide, the best audio/picture dictionary on the Web for English Language Learners.  It’s obviously important for students to understand some basic music vocabulary.

Number twelve is Musical English Lessons International.  This site has an enormous number of ready-to-print activities that students can use to develop their English skills while listening to music.

The English Language Listening Lab Online, also known as ELLO, has a good Music page that I’m ranking eleventh.   Students can listen to pop tunes and many, but not all, have follow-up exercises that can be accessed by clicking on “Word Challenge.”

Number ten is a new site called Lyrics Mode.  This is clearly the best source for accurate song lyrics to print-out without having to put-up with countless annoying pop-up adds that are prevalent in other lyrics sites.

I’m very tentatively naming another new site called Songza as a sort of companion on this list to Lyrics Mode, though I’m not giving it a “formal” rank.  Songza has millions of songs you can play “on-demand,” including many that I use in my teaching.  You can also create your own “playlists.”  It’s an incredible resource to be able to use in your classroom.  However, even though everything I have read about Songza and several similar sites in numerous blogs and journals doesn’t give any indication of potential legal issues, I still don’t understand how they can offer this service without violating copyright laws.   Until that’s clearer in my mind I don’t feel I can give it an official spot on my list.

Number nine is the City College of Manchester’s Grammar With Songs site that allows students to complete clozes (also known as “gap-fill”) exercises while listening to a number of popular songs.

Yahoo Korea English Songs is number eight with scores of simple animated and audio songs with text specifically designed to teach English.

Number seven is EFL Club Songs, which has been a favorite of my students.  It, too, has clozes to be completed while listening to popular songs.

Number six is another site by the incomparable Henny Jellema, who creates the most imaginative ESL/EFL exercises available on the Web.  This one is simply called Learn English By Songs.  As with his exercises that have made my other lists, I’d just suggest going there instead of my describing it here.

Number five is Teaching Language With Music.  Not only can you print out tons of activities for free from the site, you can also print-out a fabulous book listing songs that are appropriate for teaching all sorts of English themes.

I’m putting My Pop Studio at number four.  Students can create their own recording artist, the music and the lyrics.  It’s a real fun activity.

Number three are actually two musical games created by Luke Whittaker — The Sound Factory and Break In The Road.  They also both made it near the top of my Best Online Learning Games list.

Number two is a new site called Rap Happy.  This is a “qualified” ranking.  It’s a great site where students can easily create their own raps, and then email the link to a teacher or to themselves to post the url address on a blog or online journal.  I’ve spent some time on the site, and I haven’t seen inappropriate raps, so it appears that the site owners are trying to monitor for that.  I’d just suggest that teachers might want to continue to check it.

And, now, for the number one-ranked site — The Best Music Website For Learning English…..It’s 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. (Unfortunately, Sims On Stage closed down on March 31, 2009).

Using Songs In The English Classroom by Hans Mol, a teacher in Australia, is a short article that was just published in Humanising Language Teaching Magazine (which is on The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers list). It gives a very good overview of different language-development activities that can be done with music.

So goes another “The Best…” list.  If you liked this post, consider subscribing to this blog for free.

January 31st at midnight, Pacific time in the United States, is the deadline to submit posts for the Third ESL/EFL/ELL Carnival.  Any blog posts offering insights or helpful information related to learning and/or teaching English are welcome.

You can use this submission form.

I welcome comments on this blog — suggestions, affirmations, critiques.  Recent comments are highlighted on the sidebar.  I thought it would be helpful to share my present “policy” (which is always open to feedback and revision) on comments.

I generally respond to comments very quickly by emailing the person who left the comment.  I usually don’t, though, respond back in the comment section itself because I think people don’t often check the option that allows them to receive follow-up comments. I want to make sure they do indeed hear back from me.

Though I generally approve comments from the owners of sites who want my readers and me to check-out their websites, I typically will not respond to them.

My posts on the In Practice blog are a different matter.  Those posts are usually designed to initiate a public conversation about the topic of the post, and comments from readers and my responses are published in that blog’s comment section.

In the Greek Ship Game from the British Museum, students get to role-play being commanders of Greek ships fighting Persia. 

It’s a little learning about ancient Greece, a little learning about vocabulary, and a lot about smashing ships.  Students should enjoy it.  It’s certainly accessible to English Language Learners of all levels.

I’ve placed the link on my World History page under Greece and Rome.

Web2Wave is a visual bookmarking site in 3D that I think has a lot of educational potential for both English Language Learners and mainstream students.

It allows you to create “tabs” where you can categorize visual images of websites you’d like to bookmark.  You can write a short description for each website and categorize them in each “tab.”  Then, you can view your bookmarked sites in a pretty cool 3D carousel.

I’ve been looking for a good visual bookmarking application for quite awhile that my students could use to help develop their categorization skills.  QuickieClick has potential, but they only show, for now, the images of the mainpage of the site you want to bookmark and not the actual page.  In addition, it won’t bookmark specific images — only webpages.

Web2Wave, on the other hand, appears to show the page you want to bookmark almost immediately and also allows you to bookmark images, which would provide even more opportunities for categorization exercises.

The only negative I see in the site right now is that, even though you can tag each individual website you bookmark, it doesn’t appear that you can actually name the ‘tabs.”  You can only call them Tab 1, Tab 2, etc.

I’ve emailed asking them if they anticipate allowing users to customize the names of the tabs, or asking if you can do that now and I’m just missing it.

(Editor’s Note: Oops, they just replied to my email, and I was indeed just missing it — you can do that already by  just clicking twice on the “tab” title)

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

REMC Ramblings posted today about a nice site helping young people explore careers in biotechnology and health care.    It’s called BioWorks U, and has lots of interactives and some audio support for text.  The language is pretty simple, too.

I’ve placed it on my regular Social Studies page under Careers.  Even though that page is primarily geared towards mainstream students, many of the links are accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners and above, especially in that particular section.

I just haven’t gotten around to making a separate section somewhere on my ELL pages for jobs and careers links accessible to Intermediates and Advanced ELLers.  I have plenty of jobs links, though, for Beginners and Early Intermediate students under Jobs and Careers on my English Themes For Beginners page.

Reshade is yet another online tool to resize images.  This can obviously come in handy for any number of student presentations.

Of course, there are several of these kinds of free applications on the Web.  I’m not sure Reshade stands-out among them.

You can find links to many of photo re-sizers, including one for Reshade, on my Teacher’s Page under Photo-Editing.

Readers of this blog know how positively I feel about Edublogs.  If you have a blog related to education, Edublogs is definitely the service to use.  It’s free, there’s a great sense of community,  incredible customer service, and, if any blog isn’t going to be blocked by a School District server, it’s going to be one through Edublogs.

I’ve posted earlier about how it got even better earlier this month by bringing on the great Sue Waters to start The Edublogger as a way to offer users accessible “how-to” advice about the technical aspects of their blogs.

And, now, James Farmer has brought on another incredible blogger, Lorelle VanFossen, to start Edublogs Magazine.  The Edublogger and Edublogs Magazine are definitely two more feeds you want to add to your RSS Reader, or to subscribe to via email.

What’s next, James?

Postalz is a new site that allows you to design very creative E-Cards.  Students can make them, send them to a teacher or themselves, and then post the url on a blog or online journal.  It’s a nice language-development activity for all levels of English Language Learners.

Postalz has lots of creative “bells and whistles” students can use for their E-Cards.  It will become the very best place to use for these kinds of virtual greetings when they add a feature of being able to grab images off the Net just by typing in its url address.  Then the site can be used by classes in pretty much any subject as a good vehicle for online work.  Postalz staff tell me that’s in their future plans.

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

Here are some of the latest most interesting and helpful Blog Carnivals that have been posted:

Carnival of Education (the 155th Edition!)

Tangled Bank Science Carnival (the 97th Edition)

Day/Week In A Sentence

Teachers Who Won’t Embrace Technology is the title of my latest post on “In Practice,” the group blog written by several of us who teach in low-income communties.

You can also see my previous In Practice posts here.

In my list of Best Places To Learn Web 2.0 Basics, one of the resources I highlighted was TeachersFirst’s Wiki Walk-Through.

They just announced a “fresh revision” of the tutorial, so you might want to pay it a visit.

Schoolr is a handy site that, on one page, has Google Search, a dictionary and thesaurus, a citation builder, a translator, and a unit converter — just to name a few of its functions.

It’s helpful to English Language Learners, and to many others, to have all these on one page.

I’ve placed the link on my English Themes For Beginners  page under Search Engines.

One of the most important elements of my website is that the 8,000 categorized links are designed for student self-access — even Beginning English Language Learners (perhaps after a very brief orientation) should be able to navigate through it on their own if necessary. 

This is particularly important to help families in our home computer Family Literacy Project.  It also helps classes who might be studying a particular theme (like “Telling Time,” for example) so teachers can instruct students to pick any of the links under that particular section.

All the websites that have made it onto one of my “The Best…” lists are now scattered throughout various sections on my website though, as I have mentioned in previous posts, quite a few of them can be found under the Favorite Sites section.

They will continue to remain in those scattered sections.  However, in addition, direct links to all of these high-quality sites will be on their own new page on my website.  It will be under construction for awhile, but you can get a sense of what it will look like here.   This new page is listed in the “Table of Contents” on my main English page as “The Best Websites.”

You’ll still have to go to this blog to find reviews of each site, but this lay-out should make it more accessible to students.

I’m open to hearing other suggestions about the design of that webpage, too.