When I originally wrote The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and Careers, there were quite a few free resume-writing sites out there that had a lot of scaffolding to help people write resumes, but only one gave you the option to print it out so it looked nice on paper.

Apparently, over the past year most of these sites figured out that in order to get a job, most people were going to need a hard copy of their resume and not just a virtual one online.  So, happily, there’s more of a choice out there, and all of them seem pretty equally accessible to English Language Learners.

In fact, there are enough of them to warrant their own “The Best…” list. Thanks to a recent Mashable post, I was able to learn about more of them.

Here are my picks for The Best Places For Students To Write Their Resumes (not in any order of preference):

Emurse was the original free and accessible online tool to create resumes that I originally listed. It walks you through the process of making one. They basically have a series of text-boxes to fill-in, and have instructions written in simple English. You then end-up with a professional-looking resume.  The others sites are organized in a similar way.  However, now the other ones on this list make it easier than Emurse to actually print-out the resume.

How To Write A Resume also lets students create their resumes.  It’s free, very “scaffolded,” and provides multiple ways to download and print a hard copy.

GigTide is another similar site.

And Razume is the final one on this list.

Resumega is a new and very scaffolded site where students can create their own resumes. Lots of samples are included, and it’s easy to print out the final product.

Job Spice is a new site to create resumes for posting online or for printing out. It’s very accessible to English Language Learners. Demo Girl has also created a screencast on how to use it.  My only concern is that it appears you have to download your resume prior to printing it out, which might be a problem for some school computers that are configured to not allow downloads. I might just be missing something, though.

Resume Companion looks like a very easy, and scaffolded, tool to create a resume.

What NOT to do: 7 ways to ruin your resume is an excellent list of Yahoo. The 7 ways in bullet points are accessible to ELL’s, though the short explanations might be challenging. It’s a little out of place with the other links on this list, but I’m including it because it’s just so useful.

Careers Advice is a UK site that provides a pretty accessible step-by-step process for writing a resume. If you have students use it, though, you want to make sure they understand that a “CV” is another name for a resume.

“Free Resume Builder” is another new one

cvmaker is another good site where students can create resumes.

Resunate is an easy online tool to create a resume

I’d still encourage readers to check-out The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and Careers because it has several other excellent resources related to job-hunting and exploring careers.

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.

All of my classes — at one point or another — have to write biographies of historical figures.  They’re usually in the context of either a “straight” biography, or as part of a compare and contrast essay.

I thought I would put together a “The Best…” list of the biography-related online resources I’ve found most useful and accessible to my English Language Learner students. These will primarily be research sites. For actual writing instruction, I use the Write Institute curriculum, which I’ve posted about previously in The Best Websites For K-12 Writing Instruction/Reinforcement and is not available online.  However, I will include a short second section in this list that will share a few sites that I’ve found helpful to students in their writing, particularly for getting good model essays.

I also have quite a few “The Best…” lists on various specific figures, such as Cesar Chavez, Diego Rivera, Martin Luther King, and all the U.S. Presidents (along with quite a few others).

Here are my picks for The Best Resources For Researching & Writing Biographies:

RESEARCH

There are three (well, sorta’ four) sites that I believe are all tied for being the best and most accessible sites for biographical research.  The others, which I’ll also list, are more specialized.

The best ones are:

Fact Monster People and Biographies, which has more than 30,000 simple biographies in its database. It’s “sister site,” Infoplease People, has a similar listing, but it includes more information on each figure and isn’t quite as accessible.

The S9.com Biographical Dictionary has a listing of 21,000 biographies that are very accessible.

And then there’s the Biography Channel video database. Their written biographies are not particularly accessible, but their videos certainly are.

SweetSearch Biographies has an extensive collection of accessible biographies.

Here are other sources that are less massive, but equally as accessible to ELL’s:

Mr. Nussbaum Biographies

Famous People Lessons (these are specifically designed for ELL’s)

Spartacus Educational U.S. Political Figures

Spartacus Educational U.S. Civil Rights Figures

Spartacus Educational Women’s Suffrage Figures

Children’s Encyclopedia of Women

Garden Of Praise Biographies For Kids

Harcourt Biographies

MacMillan McGraw Hill Publishers have quite a few simple biographies of famous figures in U.S., California, and World History.

The same site also has similar biographies of people who fit into other categories.

The BBC recently revamped their excellent “Famous People” feature that provides accessible simple biographies of historical figures.Their old site, which is is still “live,” is more accessible to English Language Learners with audio support for the text. Their new site, though it has more information and adds more historical figures, does not provide audio support.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING INSTRUCTION:

I’m not very impressed by the writing instruction resources on the Time For Kids site, but it’s always a good source for model essays, including one for a biography.

The Bio Cube at Read Write Think is somewhat similar to the outline I have my students use in class to organize their essay, though it isn’t the same.

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.