January 24, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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How Edison Are You? is a pretty “non-linear” site about Thomas Edison. There’s a timeline and many images of his inventions.
It’s a bit tricky to navigate, and not super-accessible to English Language Learners because of it, but this resource is a nice complement to all the other Edison sites I have on my website under After The Civil War.
January 23, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Just when I thought I was done with The Best Sites For Learning About The Presidential Inauguration, I found a couple of more sites to add:
The Wall Street Journal has a multimedia feature highlighting inaugurations since 1960, including providing both the audio and text of the speeches, along with “word clouds.”
The Wilmington News Journal has a nice interactive showing videos of past inaugurations.
January 23, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Sun-Sentinel, a newspaper in South Florida, has just developed an online interactive accessible to English Language Learners on the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Guarding Controversy provides a history and background to the prison, and a virtual journey taken by a prisoner.
It would be pretty difficult to design a piece on such a complicated topic in a more accessible way to English Language Learners. I’ve placed the link on the U.S. History page of my website.
It will be especially useful now as it’s pretty clear by President Obama’s actions that it will be in the news.
January 23, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
This is the latest in a group of “The Best…” lists I’m developing around the United States’s Presidency. The others in this series include:
The Best Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidential Elections
The Best Sites For Learning About The Presidential Inauguration
The Best Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidents
There are obviously a lot of resources out there telling Barack Obama’s life story. I thought it might be useful to highlight a few of them that seem particularly accessible to English Language Learners. Some of them are already scattered among the previous three lists in this series, but I decided to bring them all together, and add some more, in one list.
Here are my picks for The Best Places To Learn About President Barack Obama’s Life:
This is a nice overview of Obama’s life from the Associated Press.
The New York Post also has one of the better interactive biographies of Obama’s life that I’ve seen.
The New York Times has a good interactive slideshow on the life of Barack Obama.
The Biography Channel has a multi-part online video series on his life.
Obama’s Road To The White House is an audio slideshow from the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s particularly interesting because they use Obama’s own voice and words to narrate his life story.
Scholastic has written a short biography in language accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.
EL Civics has a Barack Obama biography designed for ELL’s.
The excellent Famous People Lessons site has a Barack Obama Lesson Plan. You can listen to the information about President-Elect Obama first, and then students can click on “Online Exercise.” It also has a number of activities you can print-out.
The Guardian paper in the UK has a lengthy audio slideshow on Barack Obama: The Road To The White House.
ABC has a simple slideshow of his life.
Enchanted Learning has a simple cloze about President Obama.
Obama At 50 is a cool interactive timeline from The Guardian.
Please feel free to suggest additional sites.
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January 23, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
English Star is a site that offers free, classroom appropriate, videos with online follow-up activities — all designed to help people learn English.
It’s the newest addition to The Best Online Video Sites For Learning English.
When you go to the site, be sure to click “English” on the upper-left-hand corner or the instructions and registration process will be in another language (Japanese?).
Thanks to Michael Stout, a English teacher in Japan, for sharing this site.
January 23, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I’m adding two more timelines to The Best Sites To Teach About African-American History list:
InfoPlease has a simple African-American History timeline.
The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture has another one with a nifty interface.
January 23, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Here’s the latest installment in my series of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly. As you may remember, in order to make it on this list, the web tool has to:
* be easily accessible to English Language Learners and/or non-tech savvy computer users.
* allow people to create engaging content within minutes.
* host the user’s creation on the site itself indefinitely, and allow a direct link to be able to be posted on a student or teacher’s website/blog to it (or let it be embedded).
* provide some language-learning opportunity.
* not require any registration.
You can find previous installments of this series with the rest of my “The Best…” lists at Websites Of The Year. Several hundred sites have been highlighted in these past lists. A number of them are examples of “viral marketing” by companies. You can read how I use these tools as language-learning activities in the article Samuel Jackson, My ESL Students, And Me.
Here are the newest:
SEND A TALKING MESSAGE FROM A CHEETAH: Type in a message, and then have Chester Cheetah use a text-to-voice feature to say what you’ve written. Next, email your message so the link can be posted on a website or blog. Better yet, try using Embedit.in so you can embed — in your webpage — any student-created work that only provides a url address.
MAKE A SNOWFLAKE: Make a snowflake, describe it, and post the link on a student/teacher blog or website.
SAY THANKS FOR SOMETHING: Thanks-O-Meter is a very easy way to both help develop “feelings” vocabulary for early Intermediate English Language Learners and provide a writing opportunity. Without having to register — which is a nice feature in itelf — users can pick from a menu of things they are thankful for (friends, mother, etc.). Then they can choose from another menu of how what they chose makes them feel. Finally, an optional next step is to write a little about how you feel.
SEND A LATE HOLIDAY GREETING THAT TALKS: Storyblender is an intriguing video-creation (and mixing) site that is invitation-only right now, but might have some potential for English Language Learners down the line when it goes public. Right now, though, it does offer — to everyone — a free and easy tool to create a Holiday Letter. No registration is required. Just click on the preceding link and follow the clearly laid-out process. Steps including recording a video and uploading a photo, but you can just skip them and still end-up with a decent electronic holiday greeting that can be linked to or embedded. You can also record a holiday message with a computer microphone, which is particularly useful for ELL’s.
MAKE YOURSELF LOOK LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA: This one doesn’t quite meet my criteria, since you have to upload your photo (or someone else’s), but it’s fun. At Obamicon Me, you can easily convert your photo into the style of the well-known campaign poster and add a descriptive word. You can then get its url and, again, use Embeditin to post it on a teacher or student site.
BECOME A STAR OF A HOLIDAY MOVIE: This, too, is a little late, and requires a photo upload. At My Movie Moment pick a famous holiday movie, upload your picture, and then you become the star. You’re then given the url of your movie.
As always, feedback is welcome.
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January 22, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Swift and Able blog had an insightful analysis and commentary about the funds earmarked for education in the stimulus package being considered by Congress right now.
Within that post was a gem — a link to a document prepared by the Congressional Research Service which estimates the amount of education funding that each school district would receive from the bill.
Thanks to This Week In Education for the initial tip.
January 22, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
One of my favorite columnists, E. J. Dionne, wrote a great analysis of President Obama’s Inaugural speech. It’s titled A Radical Inaugural Speech.
I think it offers an excellent political analysis but, particularly important for my teaching English Language Learners, it highlights several words and phrases that I’m using with my students as both an opportunity to build vocabulary and to also develop higher-level thinking skills. It’s been a hectic week with semester exams, and I just haven’t had the time to think about the speech carefully. Dionne’s discussing, for example, the phrase “tolerance and curosity,” reminded me how useful those and other words in the inaugural are for follow-up activities.
The English Blog also wrote about what might be a longer analysis of the speech by the Chicago Tribune. I’m at school now, and both his blog and the Chicago Tribune site are blocked, so I can’t provide direct links. But if you go to that blog it will be easy to find the information.
January 22, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 will be hosting the next one with contributions due on January 30th and the Carnival published on February 1st.
If you’d like to submit a blog post for the next ELL/ESL/EFL Carnival you can use this easy submission form. Consider contributing anything that you think might be helpful to the teaching, or learning, of English (examples of student work are welcome!).
Let me know if you’d like to host a future edition at your blog. Nick Peachey will be hosting it after David.
You can see previous editions of the Carnival here.
January 22, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Here are some resources I’ve added to The Best Websites For Learning About Martin Luther King over the past few days:
* CBS has an interactive of famous quotes from King and other information.
* MSNBC has a slideshow on King’s life.
* The New York Times has another slideshow.
* Here’s another good interactive timeline of his life.
* Honoring Dr. King is a slideshow from CBS showing celebrations of his birthday throughout the country in 2009
January 22, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Inside Grand Central is an interactive that’s accessible to English Language Learners about the famous New York train station. It’s from National Geographic.
I’ve placed the link on my website under The United States and Canada.
January 21, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
A day or two ago I shared an article that appeared in USA Today about how much of the economic stimulus package in Congress was going to schools.
Today, Education Week published a few more details in an article titled Stimulus Plan Aids Education.
January 21, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
There are some interesting resources that have come-out today related to the Inauguration, and I figured I’d make one last list of additions to The Best Sites For Learning About The Presidential Inauguration:
The Big Picture from the Boston Globe, which is just about the best source of news photos out there, just published The Inauguration of President Barack Obama collection.
Delve Networks has applied their audio search technology to the Inaugural Speech. Basically, you type in a word in the search box below the video, and then a heat map (colored strips) will appear showing words that are related. You can then click on the stripes to be brought to the part of the video where the related words are spoken by President Obama. For example, I typed in “equality” and was shown where he spoke the words “men” and “women.” It could be an intriguing word exercise for English Language Learners (thanks to Mashable for the tip).
In The Moment is an excellent multimedia presentation by the Washington Post.
The World Watches Obama’s Inauguration comes from TIME Magazine and shows worldwide reaction.
January 21, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I’m going to prepare a future “The Best…” list on The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet.
I’ve been less-than-impressed with a lot of what I see out there. I’m looking for sources of consistently good lesson ideas, and they don’t necessarily have to be in the form of step-by-step formal plans.
They don’t have to be focused on English Language Learners, either, since good teachers can modify good lesson ideas. Of course, sources of lessons specifically for ELL’s are welcome, too.
And I’m particularly interested in sites that try to identify lessons that promote higher-order thinking and don’t just “take the easy way out.”
Two places that immediately come to mind for me are The New York Times Learning Network and Teaching Tolerance.
All contributors, and their suggestions, will be credited in the post.
Please leave your recommendations in the comments section of this post by February 1st.
January 21, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Newseum shows the front pages of hundreds of newspapers from around the world each day. Obviously, today’s papers focus on the Inauguration of Barack Obama.
However, that link will only be good until tomorrow morning. They don’t save most of the daily collections they feature. However, they do keep the ones they believe to have historical significance.
So, starting tomorrow you can find today’s historical front pages on the inauguration in their Archived Pages section. It’s worth looking at the other events they’ve chosen to save, too.
January 21, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I just learned from Phyllis’ Favorites about what looks like a great resource called Watching America. It provides English translations of what newspapers around the world are saying about world events — and, in particular, what they’re saying about what is happening in the United States.
These materials could be very useful in a number of ways.
One way that comes to mind immediately relates to something I included in The “Best” Resources For Learning About The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
The Peace Research Institute In The Middle East (PRIME) is an organization comprised of Israelis and Palestinians who have developed high school materials on the Middle East that are used in both communities. As a Newsweek article explains, each page is divided into three: the Palestinian and Israeli narratives and a third section left blank for the pupil to fill in. “The idea is not to legitimize or accept the other’s narrative but to recognize it..”
This instructional strategy could be used for many lessons, not just for the Middle East. And Watching America could be a source for one of the views.
January 21, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Here are some resources about the Inaugural Balls I’m adding to The Best Sites For Learning About The Presidential Inauguration:
The Galas, a slideshow from The New York Times.
After The Ceremony, The Celebrations is a slideshow from The Washington Post.
Inaugural Balls is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal
January 21, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Dog Whisperer is another neat interactive from National Geographic. It shows short videos of misbehaving dogs, and then you have to diagnose the problem by picking from several choices.
It’s accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and it’s out of the ordinary enough to be intriguing.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Animals.
January 20, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Here are a few more additions to The Best Sites For Learning About The Presidential Inauguration:
The New York Times also has online video of President Obama’s speech — with the text shown as the words are spoken.
The NY Times also some panoramic images of the day.
Reuters has one of the best slideshows about Inauguration Day that I’ve seen.
Here’s one from CBS on some Inaugural Balls.
The Chicago Tribune has a collection of images from the past two days.
Behind The Scenes Of Obama’s Big Day is a TIME Magazine slideshow.
A collection of images from the Sacramento Bee.
