Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Monthly Archives: February 2009

February 28, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

The Best Articles That I’ve Written

I have a link to Articles I’ve Written on my blog’s sidebar, and you can also find them on my website under Published Articles.

However, many subscribers might not visit either place, so I thought a blog post sharing their titles and links might be useful.

Here are links to articles I’ve written:

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February 28, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

Headed Off To IB Training

I’m headed off to Houston, Texas for a few days to attend an International Baccalaureate training.  Our diverse inner-city high school also includes an IB program, and next year one of the classes I’ll be teaching will be “Theory of Knowledge.”  That, along with my regular ninth-grade English and Intermediate English classes, should make for an interesting year. (If anybody has any suggestions on resources that will help me be a better “Theory of Knowledge” teacher, I’m all ears!)

Since I don’t have a laptop, and prefer yellow legal pads to take notes, I may be disconnected to the Internet until I get back.  I’ve got a few posts scheduled to appear while I’m gone, but I won’t be responding to comments very promptly.

I do dread having to catch-up on my Google Reader…

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February 28, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Post Rank’s Top Postings For February

I regularly share my picks for the most useful posts of each month. I also publish a list of the month’s most popular posts, based on the number of times they are “clicked-on.”

I’m also going to start sharing a list of Post Ranks’ analysis of each month’s top posts. Post Rank uses a variety of ways to measure level of “engagement” that readers have with specific blog posts.  I have a constantly updated “widget” on my blog’s sidebar that lists these posts, but I thought a monthly post would be helpful/interesting to subscribers who don’t regularly visit the blog itself.

I’m not quite sure, though, if it’s possible to rank posts over a month-long period — at least, I’m not sure how to do it.  But these regular posts will highlight what appears to me to be the ones they rank the highest during that period.

Here are their rankings:

1. The Best Places To Create (And Find) Internet Scavenger Hunts & Webquests

2. The Best Sites For Learning About St. Patrick’s Day (and April Fool’s Day)

3. The Best Educational Web Resources Worth Paying For…

4. Virtual Grammar Lab

5. The Best Sites To Learn About The Recession

6. Awesome Stories Has Just Gotten More “Awesome”

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February 28, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Deadline For The Next ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival Is In A Month

The next EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival will be posted on April 1st, with submissions due the day before. Nik Peachey will be hosting it at his Quick Shout blog.

You can contribute posts from your blog using 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 of the Carnival. You can see all prior editions here.

David Deubelbeiss did a great job hosting the most recent carnival here.

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February 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Sites To Learn About Diego Rivera

While I’m gone from the classroom for a couple of days next week, students will be doing a  project on the artist Diego Rivera.  This morning I tooka few minutes to pull together a quick “The Best…” list for them to review today as an introduction to his life. They’ll go through these sites while we’re in the computer lab later today.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites To Learn About Diego Rivera (and are accessible to English Language Learners):

This link brings you to a very simple and very accessible short biography. In addition, the same site has many lessons about Rivera that can be downloaded.

Here’s a slideshow from the New York Times recognizing the fiftieth anniversary of Rivera’s death

Here’s another slideshow — this time showing works by both Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

One more slideshow of his works.

A short biography of Rivera from Fact Monster.

Another biography (that’s probably less accessible to ELL’s) that includes some self-portraits.

A Gallery of paintings by the artist

A Gallery of Murals by Rivera.

Works of art by Frida Kahlo, the gifted artist who was married to Rivera.

The Museum Of Modern Art has an amazing interactive on Diego Rivera murals.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.

 

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February 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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February’s Most Popular Blog Posts

Here’s a listing of the most popular posts in this blog during the month of February:

THE TOP TEN “THE BEST…” LISTS:

1. The Best Sites To Learn About Valentine’s Day

2. The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2008

3. The Best Resources About President’s Day

4. The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects

5. The Best Sites To Learn About San Francisco

6. The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet

7. The Best Sites For ELL’s To Learn About The Dangers Of Smoking

8. The Best Places To Learn About Education Grants

9. The Best Sites For K-12 Beginning English Language Learners

10. The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”

THE TOP TEN POSTS THAT WERE NOT “THE BEST…” LISTS:

1. Free Rider 2

2. Tutpup Math and Spelling Games

3. Votes Are In For 2008′s Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education

4. Virtual Grammar Lab

5. Pete’s PowerPoint Station

6. Two Excellent Sites For Beginning Readers

7. Mel Zoo Is An Excellent Search Engine

8. Screentoaster Is Now Open To The Public

9. Simple Technology Guides

10. “Technology Is Not The Panacea For Education”

TOP TRAFFIC SOURCES TO THIS BLOG (not including sources like Stumbleupon, Delicious, Twitter, etc):

1. Ressources Pour Le College

2. Synthasite Blog

3. TechCrunch

4. EFL Classroom 2.0

5. Classroom 2.0

6. The Edublog Awards

7. Learning The Language

8. I Want To Teach Forever

9. Welcome to NCS-Tech

10. The Edublogger

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February 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Additions To Smoking Dangers List

Here are some additions to The Best Sites For ELL’s To Learn About The Dangers Of Smoking:

An interactive on How Tobacco Damages Your Body from Northwest Community Hospital (accessible to Intermediate ELL’s).

An animation from The Centers For Disease Control on The Health Consequences of Smoking on the Human Body (accessible to high Intermediate ELL’s).

A lesson plan & Internet Scavenger Hunt from PBS on smoking that would be good for ELL’s as long as it was modified a bit.

Thanks to Donna Murray for the tips.

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February 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Additions To Various “The Best…” Lists

Here is a “round-up” of recent additions to “The Best…” lists:

A slideshow from TIME Magazine titled Australia Rescues Its Koalas has been added to The Best Sites To Learn About The Fires In Australia.

Mailinator comes recommended by reader PJ Vermont and has been added to The Best Temporary Email Address Sites For Students (Or Anyone).

A Wall Street Journal slideshow on Tibetan New Year has been added to The Best Sites For Learning About New Year Celebrations.

The Sacramento Bee also has a series of images on Tibetan New Year that I’ve added to that same list.

Job Seekers Flood Local Job Fair is a slideshow from The Sacramento Bee that has been added to The Best Sites To Learn About The Recession.

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February 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
3 Comments

Not Bad Advice For Teachers…

Regular readers know that I’m a fan of Marvin Marshall and his writings on positive classroom management strategies.

He included this story in a post today. It’s worth visiting his blog to see the entire post, but here’s a story I loved:

There’s an old story of a young lady who was taken to dinner one evening by William Gladstone and then the following evening by Benjamin Disraeli, both eminent British statesmen in the late nineteenth century.

“When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England,” she said. “But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.”

It sounds like Disraeli had a perspective teachers might want to keep in mind.

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February 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
8 Comments

Second Anniversary Of This Blog

It’s now been two years now since I began writing this blog.

Over the twelve months there have been about 150,000 visits have been made to this blog, with nearly 500,000 “page views.” There are now over 2,500 subscribers, plus several hundred more who receive the monthly newsletter (of course, with Feedburner’s problems, who knows what the correct figure is?)

As always, however, the most important results of this blog are that it’s made me a better teacher because of what I’ve learned from writing it and from what I’ve learned from the people with whom I’ve connected through it.

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February 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

A Strange (But Engaging) Way To Learn “Feelings” Vocabulary

Wake-Up Your Feelings With The Power Of Touch is…something (I can quite describe what it is) on the Web that has been designed by Hewlett Packard, I’m assuming as an advertisement.

You could certainly call it an unusual tool that English Language Learners could use to learn feelings and emotion-related vocabulary.  It provides audio support for the text.

You have to wait about a minute for the introduction to finish before you see what I’m talking about.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Feelings.

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February 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Just For Email Subscribers

For some reason, the normally reliable Feedblitz system that emails posts to subscribers has missed sending a few posts to subscribers over the past few days.  Here are links to the ones that might have been missed:

The Best Sites For Learning About Women’s History

The Bests Places To Find Good Education Blogs

Looking For Some Soothing Classroom Music?

Part Thirty-Two Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly

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February 25, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Interactive Views of Obama’s Speech

Here are links to two online interactives that make President Obama’s speech last night much more accessible to English Language Learners:

The British newspaper The Guardian has a nice interactive titled We Will Rebuild, We Will Recover.

The New York Times has a video with a running transcript of the speech.

Here’s a Word Cloud showing the frequency of phrases in the speech.

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February 25, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

February “Top Ten” List

I regularly highlight my picks for the nine or ten most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best..” lists. I also use these in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see back issues of those newsletters here and my previous “Top Ten” picks at Websites Of The Month.

These posts are different from the ones I list under the monthly “Most Popular Blog Posts.” Those are the posts the largest numbers of readers “clicked-on” to read.

Here are the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written during this past month:

* Awesome Stories Has Just Gotten More “Awesome”

* Virtual Grammar Lab

* Favthumbs Could Be Very Useful To Teachers

* I’m Adding “Themes” To Several “The Best” Lists

* Citizenship Quiz

* Simply Box Might Be A Winner For Research

* Kid Rex Search Engine

* USA Today Weather & Climate Interactives

* Top Notch Citizenship Resource

* Superb English Site Back Online

* A Good Collection Of Clozes

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February 25, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Young People And The Web

As readers of this blog know, I don’t necessarily believe that technology is a transformative educational tool, and have concerns about the effects of technology on face-to-face relationships both in and outside of a school environment. You can read more about my reflections on this topic at my In Practice posts.

Even though I have concerns, I may not be as alarmist as a report that came out recently in the United Kingdom about the dangers of social networking on the minds of young people.

I was impressed by a post in TechCrunch today responding to that study (there’s a link in their post to an article about the study itself).

The author of the post, Sarah Lacy, makes some very thoughtful points about how more and more people connecting over the web use it to “extend” their face-to-face relationships. I still have the same concerns, but she’s given me something to think about…

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