Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Monthly Archives: February 2009

February 9, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Places To Buy ESL/EFL Books, Software & Multimedia

I wrote a post a couple of days ago lamenting the fact that Alta Books has recently decided to stop carrying materials they don’t actually publish. For years, they have been the place to go to find and purchase ESL/EFL materials.

I put out a call for suggestions of alternatives, both on this blog and on various listservs.

It seems pretty clear to me that there are indeed two viable alternatives.

One is Delta Publishing Company, which seems to have almost as much of a selection as Alta did in the past. Delta was recommended by several people in the ESL/EFL community.

Just ordering from Amazon was the other primary recommendation. And, for that, there’s nothing better than the EFL Classroom 2.0 Bookstore. One nice benefit of using this service is that the books listed there are actually recommended by ESL/EFL teachers, and you’re not buying them “cold.”

In addition to posting this as its own separate “The Best…” list, I’m going to add this information to The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers and The Best Books For Teaching & Learning ESL/EFL.

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 9, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Blue Kids

Blue Kids is a pretty ambitious online health education for young students. You have to pay for it, but it also has several free sample activities that are accessible to English Language Learners.

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

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February 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Sites To Learn About The Fires In Australia

Though I live in California, Edublogs, the host of this blog and nearly 300,000 other education-related blogs, is based near where the terrible fires are occurring.

Since we teach a unit on Natural Disasters, a “The Best…” list will be useful for our students. James Farmer, the CEO of Edublogs, also is encouraging people to contribute to the Salvation Army to help the victims of the fires. The link in this post is to the international site, and you can earmark your donation to the Australia fires.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites To Learn About The Fires In Australia:

Wildfires In Australia is the title of a New York Times slideshow.

Wildfires Rage In Australia is a slideshow from MSNBC.

Victoria’s Bushfires is an audio slideshow from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Victoria’s Killer Fires is a slideshow from News.com in Australia.

Reuters has a video clip titled Scores Die In Australia Fires.

Wildfires Ravage Australia is both a slideshow and video from The Wall Street Journal.

Raging Wildfires Blaze In Australia is a slideshow from The Washington Post.

The Sacramento Bee has a series of images on the fires.

Deadly Wildfires Devastate Australia comes from TIME Magazine.

You can listen to this article about the fires in the International Herald Tribune by clicking on “Listen to Article.”

Here’s a video report from The New York Times.

Bushfires In Victoria, Australia comes from The Big Picture.

Our Darkest Day is a slideshow, video, and map from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Bushfires are a series of videos from TheAge.com in Australia.

Australians Return To Homes Devastated By Fires is a slideshow from The Washington Post.

Breaking News English has an online lesson — with audio support for the text — titled Australians Give Blood For Bushfire Victims.

A slideshow from TIME Magazine titled Australia Rescues Its Koalas looks engaging and informative.

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 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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I’m Adding “Themes” To Several “The Best…” Lists

Themes is a nifty application that has apparently been around for a year, but I just recently learned about it. I’m immediately adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write Online, Part Two Of The Best Sites For Students To Easily Create & Display Online Projects and The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students.

It allows you to basically create individual webpages (theoretically based on “themes”) and very easily add maps, images, documents, text, and even RSS feeds.

It’s not perfect, since it doesn’t have an embed option, and it doesn’t have a “drag-and-drop” functionality for images and webpages that some of the other sites on the best Bookmarking list have, but its ease of use makes it very attractive.  Students could certainly use it to create categories of images or texts, for example, which is something I explain a bit more in the best bookmarking sites list.

Let me know what you think.

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February 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Sites For Learning About The Hudson River Plane Crash

I know I’ve written a couple of posts about this topic already, and it’s also a bit late, but I’ve recently found some more resources that I think might be helpful to English Language Learners. It’s certainly an engaging topic.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites For Learning About The Hudson River Plane Crash:

The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom has a good interactive on the crash.

The Associated Press has an informative interactive, too.

The Wall Street Journal published an excellent video about it that’s perfect for ELL’s. It has good footage of the plane, along with an animation. But, most importantly, it includes the audio of the communication between the pilot and the air traffic controller along with the transcript showing-up on the screen (very clearly) as the words are spoken.

The New York Times has, as usual, published a number of good online multimedia pieces about the crash, particularly one on tracking the flight.

I learned about a good ELL lesson plan created by Karenne Sylvester on the U.S. Airways river landing. It’s a good frame for a number of current events topics, so it’s worth a look.

Here are some videos from Newsday.

CBS News has a series of interactives called Miracle On The Hudson.

The New York Times also has an interactive on the raising of one of the plane’s engines from the Hudson’s bottom.

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 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best ESL/EFL Software

One of the many replies I’ve received in the less than twenty-four hours since I asked for suggestions about where to purchase ESL/EFL books, software, and multmedia was from David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0.

EFL Classroom has some great resources that will certainly be on my upcoming list “The Best…” list on where to buy materials. David also mentioned that he’s putting together an ESL software list, and asked for my suggestions.

I thought I’d turn my response into a “The Best…” list.

As regular readers of this blog know, our school has a special program where immigrant families are provided a computer and home DSL service to help them learn English.  You can read more about the program in this article.

A small number of our families, though, live in areas where DSL service is not available.  In those cases we provide software for the families to use.  I thought it might be helpful for me to share which software we provide.

The links are to Alta Books.  As I’ve written, they no longer carry materials from other publishers. However, their catalogue pages are still active, and carry a lot of information about each item.

We use:

Live Action English

Oxford Picture Dictionary Interactive

Side By Side Interactive

Mega Series

We involved the families in the decision-making process leading to the purchases.  As far as costs go, we figured-out how much we would ordinarily spend on a one-year DSL subscription, and then spent that amount for software.

Also, Educational Freeware is a site where you can download lots of different free software, and much can be used for language-learning.

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 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Kadoo

Kadoo is a new application that has the potential of joining both the The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students and The Best Personal Home Page Creators.

However, it’s not there yet.

it’s supposed to allow you to add RSS feeds, bookmarks (including thumbnail images of the sites), and photos.  However, when I tried to save images from off the web they wouldn’t show-up as thumbnail images, and I couldn’t get any of the items I added to show-up on my “public” start page.

When I tried to seek help to see if I was doing anything wrong by going to the “support” section, I got a message saying the “support portal is disabled.”

As I said earlier in this post, however, I do think it has the potential of being a useful site for both teachers and English Language Learners alike and is worth a look.  It just looks like they might have gone “public” a little too early — before they worked out bugs in the application.

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February 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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English Raven

I highlighted English Raven in The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers list last year.  Of all the sites on the web that offer classroom materials to help teach English Language Learners, English Raven has been one of the best in providing me with a lot of useful resources and ideas.

Many of its resources are free and, if you want access to all of them, it only costs $15 each year.  It’s worth that, and several times over.

Jason Renshaw, the site’s creator, has just added a bunch of new suggestions on how to enhance ELL engagement in reading to the site in the “free section.” I think sections four through ten are particularly useful.

It’s definitely worth a visit.

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February 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Where Are The Best Places To Purchase ESL/EFL Books, Software & Multimedia?

In two previous “The Best…” lists –The Best Books For Teaching & Learning ESL/EFLand The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers — I’ve highlighted Alta Books as the place to find ESL/EFL books, software, and multimedia for purchase.

Unfortunately, as of December, 2008 Alta stopped distributing all materials except for ones they publish themselves.

Alta does indeed publish some great stuff, but there were hundreds — if not thousands — of other materials they had in their catalogue.

With Alta’s change, It’s clearly time to create another “The Best…” list — this time on The Best Places To Purchase ESL/EFL Books, Software & Multimedia.

What places do you think should be on the list?

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February 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Stimulus Update

There are different media reports on the how the Senate compromise will affect education.

According to The New York Times, the proposed economic stimulus compromise in the U.S. Senate cuts $20 billion from the originally proposed amount for school construction and $1 billion from Head Start.

In addition, the Times says it cuts $40 billion from aid meant to help states deal with their budget deficits. Of course, that cut will have a big effect on schools since states will end-up cutting at least some of their education budgets to meet those gaps.

The Wall Street Journal, though, says that only $3.5 billion was cut from school construction, along with $98 million for school nutrition.

Politico seems to have the most complete list of reductions and, based on my previous experience with their site, I tend to think their numbers are the most accurate. They agree with the reduction in state aid totals, as well as the Head Start cut. They say, though, that the school construction reduction is $16 billion. Their numbers came from a Republican legislative aide.

The best news in all of this, it seems to me, is that none of the three say there will be reductions in the original total set for Title 1 schools.

Of course, now it goes to a conference committee of the House and the Senate, and who knows what’s going to happen there…

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February 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Excellent Early American History Site

The Watertown Public Schools have put together an exceptional overview of early American History at American History Central.

It’s complete, accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, good images, and is organized very well. Too bad it stops at the year 1800!

I’ll be using it a lot in my U.S. History class. I’ve placed the link on my website under The Early Settlers of America.

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