Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

March 13, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Updated Multilingual Glossary Of Academic English Vocabulary

In The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills & Vocabulary, I shared a document prepared by
Carolyn Zierenberg, a talented teacher at our school. It was a simple multilingual (English/Spanish/Hmong) glossary of academic vocabulary. She had given me permission to share it on this blog and website.

The Glossary of Commonly Used English Academic Vocabulary took an incredible amount of work to complete, and now it’s been updated. Here’s the most recent version a Glossary Of Commonly Used English Academic Vocabulary — English/Spanish/Hmong.

I’ve also added it to “The Best…” list I mentioned earlier.

Of course, a list like this is only effective as a supplement and follow-up to multiple classroom activities where these words are used in a meaningful way in context.

March 13, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

“Metaphors We Teach By”

Jim Burke has written a post today that I’d encourage people to take a look at. It’s titled Metaphors We Teach By.

Here’s a small portion:

We are the metaphors we choose. If you want to change your world, change your metaphor. Don Graves, master writing teacher and mentor to so many, said we should read students’ work like doctors not judges.

What’s your metaphor and how does it shape the way you think about and do your work?

I think it’s a fascinating question, as is his entire post on the topic…

I’m still trying to figure out my answer. I’m looking forward to seeing what others write, too.

March 12, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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New York Times Series On Immigration

Yesterday, I posted about an exceptional interactive graphic The New York Times had just published on the history of immigration to the United States.

Today, I learned from reading the Learning The Language blog, that the graphic was just one part of a weekly series the paper is doing on immigration, and that the first entry was on teaching newcomers.

The article also included another infographic — a searchable database that includes the history of ethnic diversity in every school district in the country.

March 12, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Google Voice

Google is just beginning “Google Voice” which, as Mashable puts it, is like “Gmail for Voicemail.” It allows users to make phone calls (free in the U.S.), leave voice messages and also generate an automatic written transcript of the message.

Since the service isn’t public yet, it’s unclear how accessible how it will be for English Language Learners to use, but the speaking, listening and reading advantages are obvious.

Check out the Mashable post (and also one at TechCrunch). You can request an invitation from Google to use the service here.

March 12, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

More Word Games

Wordz and Words are two…word games. I especially like the second one for English Language Learners.

It know that some of the word games I post about might be blocked by school district content filters. I’ve found that our District is pretty cooperative when it comes to unblocking sites at my request — as long as I have a good reason.

I know many of these games also allow you to embed them in your own blog or website. I’m not tech savvy enough, though, to know if the games themselves would still be blocked — even if they were in a teacher’s site. I haven’t bothered to experiment since I have so many games on my website under Word and Video Games that enough of them are accessible.

March 12, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

The Best Tools To Help Develop Global Media Literacy

The title for this “The Best…” list might not be a great one. This is also going to be a very short list, though I’m hoping to identify additions.

(A companion post to this one that has numerous related resources is Where To Find The Most Popular News Stories On The Web)

In addition to thinking about how I’m going to help students learn to detect bias and plain falsehoods on various websites (and Langwitches has some great resources on that topic), I’ve been exploring accessible tools that students could use to gain a similar understanding of more mainstream media.

One is very new and is called Media Cloud — Visualizations. It’s probably worth reading Read Write Web’s extensive post on the site. In a nutshell, you can identify three media sources from throughout the world and then get a chart for their most frequently used words over the past ninety days or a comparative map showing the depth of coverage of different parts of the world. Both visualizations would be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and the discussion potential is rich.

I posted about the second site, Know The News, last year, and will basically reprint my description here.

It’s part of an organization called Link TV. It appears to be designed to give viewers a perspective on world news that might not be typically seen in the United States, and has an impressive group of funders and Board of Directors.

What I especially like, though, are some of their accessible online student activities in their Know The News section. Not only are they accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, but they provide opportunities for critical and “higher-order” thinking.

One is a Remixer activity where students can edit news clips of the same event from different countries or networks, add their own commentary, and post it online. Teachers need to register in order for their classes to participate. It appears to be free.

It also has a News Challenge game that can be played without registering. Two different short news clips are shown, and then questions are asked about them.

In its Watch and Rate exercise, viewers rate different clips on journalistic qualities.

ViewChange.Org has some pretty amazing short videos from around the world, and it’s also part of Link TV. This is how it describes itself:

Using the power of video to tell stories about real people and progress in global development.

Believe me, that doesn’t even begin to tell you what’s there. It’s a project of a very impressive organization called Link TV, which has been on The Best Tools To Help Develop Global Media Literacy list for quite awhile.

Euronews provides great, and short, online videos, which I’ll talk about in a minute. But first, let me tell you what I found out about the network from Wikipedia:

Euronews is a multilingual and pan-European television news channel launched on January 1, 1993 in Lyon. It covers world news from a European perspective,in many languages. In 2008 Euronews is distributed to 248 million households in 135 countries worldwide. The latest distribution report shows that Euronews is the leading international news channel in Europe. It reached more than 177 million European households by cable, satellite and terrestrial. This compared with 167 million European households for CNN International, 124 million for BBC World News and 65 million for CNBC Europe.

The site has excellent short news videos. It also has the audio transcription but, unfortunately, it’s right below the video instead of being closed-captioned. That reduces its benefit to English Language Learners.

One great feature is it’s “No Comment” section. In it, it shows videos that it believes communicates its message without any commentary. Those could be interesting for ELL’s to describe.

Because of it being able to provide a European perspective on the news, I believe it belongs on this list.

Geographical Media is the newest addition to this list. After you register (which is a free and easy process) you can see which topics are being covered in the news media in different parts of the world, and compare the differences. The site seems to have a number of other features — and it’s not particularly intuitive how to navigate through them — but the site has a lot of potential. I’m still exploring.

Newsy is a site that — in short videos — compares how major news events are covered by media throughout the world. In some ways, it’s similar to Link TV, which is also on the list. Newsy, though, isn’t quite as interactive, though you can leave comments if you’re registered.

The speaking is pretty fast and relatively high-level, so it’s probably only accessible to advanced English Language Learners. It does provide a transcript to the audio, but it’s not actually closed-captioned. That doesn’t make it particularly useful to ELL’s.

It’s a well done site. I’m probably going to be using it more with my International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge class than with my English Language Learners.

The Under-Told Stories Project is a partnership of Saint John’s University and the PBS News Hour, and has a video collection of international news stories. Here is how it describes itself:

The Under-Told Stories Project works to expand, sustain and improve coverage of the world outside America in broadcast, print and emerging new media outlets. Our challenge is to direct American eyes to the daily concerns of far away people who increasingly affect our lives. We hope to reawaken the generous curiosity of Americans –our students in particular– about a world we can no longer ignore.

Many teachers are familiar with the Newseum’s great resource of showing the front pages each day from newspapers around the world. However, some people (like me) might not know about their cool interactive map that lets you roll over the country and then it shows you the front page.

The Newseum has also just launched a new project — the Newseum Digital Classroom. They’re still in “closed beta,” so you have to request a registration key. Even without the key, though, you can check out a lot of their preview resources.

Newspaper Map shows you the front pages of newspapers from around the world, displayed on a Google Map. If it just stopped at that, it wouldn’t be much different from the well-known Newseum display of the same thing. But it doesn’t stop there. Unlike the Newseum, Newspaper Map lets you click on the front page to gain access to the entire newspaper. And, even better, with one quick click, you can choose the language you want the paper translated into. It’s very simple and easy to access.

This is how Worldcrunch describes itself:

Worldcrunch delivers the best global journalism previously shut off from English language readers: selecting, translating and editing content from top foreign-language outlets.

This is how preeeurop describes itself:

Presseurop.eu is a Paris-based news website publishing a daily selection of articles chosen from more than 200 international news titles, then translated into ten languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish and Czech).

I’m very interested in hearing additional suggestions of resources, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

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.

March 12, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Connect With English

Connect With English is a video series for English Language Learners by Annenberg Media. It has good supporting materials, is very engaging for my students, and is on The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL list. All episodes are available online and for free.

Last month, Annenberg announced that most of their online videos now had closed-captioning, including “Connect With English.” Pretty much all the rest of their shows are not particularly accessible to ELL’s, but the closed-captioning for “Connect With English” will now make that show even more comprehensible to students.

March 11, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
3 Comments

Personalized Online Newspapers

I’ve thought for awhile that it would be nice for students to be able to create their own online daily newspaper highlighting what they are interested in — that kind of interest is at the heart of Krashen’s free voluntary reading concept.

There are personal home pages (see The Best Personal Home Page Creators) that sort of allow that kind of activity, but they don’t recreate the feel and look of a newspaper, and are not necessarily what I’m looking for. I’d love to find something that makes it extremely easy for students to identify topics of interest and, while it doesn’t necessarily have to look like a newspaper, at least has a non-cluttered and simple lay-out.

Sites like Daily Me and Meehive allow for great customization, but don’t provide a clean enough lay-out, I think, to make it particularly accessible to English Language Learners.

Simply Headlines has a great lay-out, but doesn’t have a particularly wide range of customization features. Plus, it will only email it to you, so you can’t read it outside of your email.

Any other suggestions out there?

March 11, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
8 Comments

The Best Places To Find Theatrical Movies On Science, Math, & History

I wasn’t planning to publish this post quite this soon, but a new and very useful related site called Nanocrowd just went public. So it makes this list a bit more timely. You can read more about Nanocrowd in the last section of this post.

This list is a “companion” list to The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL. That list is primarily composed of resources related to videos and movies I’ve used in my Beginning, Early Intermediate, and Intermediate English classes. This list is also somewhat related to The Best Places To Get Blog, Website, , Book, Movie, & Music Recommendations .

I had included in that ESL/EFL list some movie resources I’ve found useful in my Social Studies classes where I teach English Language Learners, too. I thought that I’d create “The Best…” list here focusing on those specific Social Studies resources and “throw-in” some math and science movie sites at the same time.

Before I share this list, I should make it clear that I very, very seldom ever show an entire movie to a class (on occasion, I’ll have a substitute teacher show one if I’m out that day). At most, I’ll show five minutes (ten in an unusual situation) that is related to the theme we’re discussing, and follow it up with a writing and/or talking prompt. With English Language Learners, I’ll also sometimes use an instructional strategy called “Back-To-The-Screen” where half the students are watching the movie with the sound off and have to describe what they’re seeing to their partner (you can read more about that method in Zero Prep:Ready-To-Go Activities For The Language Classroom by Laurel Pollard and Natalie Hess, which is on The Best Books For Teaching & Learning ESL/EFL list).

Here are my picks for The Best Places To Find Theatrical Movies On Science, Math, & History:

HISTORY:

The Internet History Sourcebook Project is an extraordinary collection of history resources. I’m particularly impressed with their Modern History in the Movies, Ancient History in the Movies, and Medieval Movies. In those three collections, movies are categorized by era and described. It’s a gold mine for any Social Studies teacher, and especially for those of us who teach English Language Learners. I use very short clips of movies, following by a writing/thinking prompt, all the time.

American History Film Resources also offers a good listing of film resources for different periods of American history.

The History Place also has a good list of movies related to social studies.

MATH:

Mathematics In Movies has a list, and links to online clips, of math-related movie scenes. Who knew Abbot and Costello could be used in teaching math?

Math and The Movies has a good description of movie scenes as well as printable worksheets that would go with them.

SCIENCE:

Here’s a list of one writer’s top ten science-related movies.

You might also find The Good And Bad Science In Popular Sci-Fi Movies useful.

“Science On The Simpsons” is a collection of video clips from The Simpsons television series that could be used by science teachers. They’re downloadable, but not set-up to stream on the web. Thanks to Beth Ritter Guth for the tip.

ALL SUBJECTS:

Teach With Movies is a good resource for finding movies connected to your subject area. It costs $11.99 to have a subscription that includes specific worksheets and lesson plans. But, for the purposes of this list, their free subject matter index that shares which movies they they are related to what subject or theme is helpful to all history, science, math and English teachers.

Movie Lens is a new recommendation/search engine for movies, and it’s by far the most effective tool — for teachers, at least – I’ve found to search for movies. The other typical sites that let you search for movies do it by genre (adventure, romance, etc.). Movie Lens is the first that I’ve found that, in addition to searching by genre, lets you search by what they call “tags.” For example, I searched for “World War II” and got an extensive list of World War II-related movies — a list that I would not have found through Amazon, Netflix, or any other tool on The Best Places To Get Blog, Website, , Book, Movie, & Music Recommendations list. This could be applicable to all subjects.

And, wouldn’t you know it, just as I write that Movie Lens is the only movie recommendation tool that has those capabilities, a new one just comes out! Nanocrowd has been written-up by Read Write Web, and their post is probably worth a look. Basically, you start typing in the name of a movie that’s similar to what you’re looking for (as you type letters, movie titles will appear). Click “enter” and you will be led to a page filled with similar movies and descriptive “tags” for those movies, too. Click on the tags, and you’ll see more of the same. Again, it’s applicable to all subjects.

Film Education is a UK site with tons of study guides and other resources on how to integrate movies into any curriculum. It also has some neat online activities.

Movie Sheets has a fairly extensive of worksheets teachers have created for many theatrical (and non-theatrical) movies. The site is divided into all subject areas.

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.

March 11, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Two More “Social” Search Engines

I’m adding two new applications to Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Search Engines For Social Media (these are search engines for “social media” that may or may not be “crawled” by the typical search engine):

Yauba (thanks to Alt Search Engines for the tip)

I’m having a hard time distinguishing much of any difference between all of them, which is why it’s called a “list” and not a “The Best…” list.

March 10, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

Obama’s Speech Today On Education Reform

President Obama gave a speech today on education reform at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Here’s the transcript.

It doesn’t sound particularly impressive to me, but I was struck by one good line in particular:

And I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.

Any other thoughts on his speech?

March 10, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

“Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success”

Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success has just been released by The Great Lakes Center For Education Research and Practice. It details “out-of-school” factors that affect learning success.

The report is similar to what Richard Rothstein (whose articles I’ve included in The best articles about Education 2007 and The “Best” Articles About Education — 2008) writes about a lot. Rothstein, and the report, talk about how schools can narrow the achievement gap, but not get rid of it unless a number of these social inequities are addressed.

I’m planning to write a longer post about this in our group blog, In Practice, but thought that readers might like to learn about the report now. Who knows when I’m going to get around to that In Practice post!

March 10, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

A Chatbot With “Emotional Cues”

I’ve posted about “chatbots” before — online virtual “people” that can carry-on a reasonable conversation with an online user. The best provide audio as well as written responses. They can provide excellent writing and listening practice to English Language Learners.

In fact, I’ll soon be posting The Best Chatbots For English Language Learners list.

Today, though, I learned about an intriguing “bot” that I thought I’d write about now. It can incorporate “emotional cues” like laughter and and yawning. It’s also an opportunity for ELL’s to develop some additional vocabulary about these emotions.

Check out the Text-To-Speech Bot With Emotional Cues and let me know what you think.

March 9, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

New Article On Home Computer Project

Online Learning Leverages Literacy To ELL Families is a short article I wrote that was just published by ASCD Express.

It describes our family literacy project where we provide computers and home Internet access to immigrant families.

March 9, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Viewista

Viewista is the latest in an almost “blizzard” of tools to come online that allow you to create one shortened url address for a group of websites — with the unusual twist of having that one address actually show images of each of the included sites and not just text. As with the others (which include MinMu, Sqworl, and ShareTabs) no registration is required.

One neat feature of Viewista is that it allows various options on how to view the multiple sites, including vertically and through a slideshow mode. One drawback is that it doesn’t let you leave any kind of tag, or comments, next to each one. I’ve sent them an email asking if they might add that feature in the future.

I’ve written about how these kinds of applications can be useful for English Language Learners in creating Internet Scavenger Hunts, for student Social Bookmarking and, of course, for url “shortening.” You can read more at the “The Best…” posts listed below.

I’m adding VIewista to:

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

The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students

The Best Ways To Shorten URL Addresses

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