June 28, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Big Picture is an online feature from the Boston Globe.
Every other day they show very large high-definition images of the day’s events with accessible captions.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Multimedia Resources From News Outlets.
June 28, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I regularly highlight my picks for the nine or ten (or, or in this month’s case, a few more) 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 (not in any order of preference):
Most Popular Education Articles On The Web
“Does Slow and Steady Win the Race?”
“Interesting Ways” Series On Using Web 2.0 Apps In Schools
The 200 Most Popular Museum Websites
“Welcome To The Web” Is An Exceptional Site
June 28, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Michael Jackson Dies Aged 50 is a new lesson from Breaking News English that includes audio support for the text.
I’ve added it to other resources in my post Michael Jackson’s Death & English Language Learners.
June 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The next ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival will be hosted by Candace Williams, and the deadline for submissions will be July 31st, with August 1st the publication date. You can contribute posts by using this easy submission form.
Anything related to teaching or learning English, including examples of student work, is welcome.
Alice Mercer published the last carnival — the eleventh edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, and it’s a darn good one. Not only are there great posts included, but also good commentary from Alice to boot!
ELL Classroom will be hosting it on October 1st. Let me know if you’d like to host future editions.
You can see all the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.
June 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The History Channel has a neat series of timeline puzzles related to its Life After People television series.
In the game, you have to put images from the series in the correct timeline order — what happens when — after humanity disappears from the planet. Each image also has a short and relatively accessible (to high Intermediate English Language Learners) explanation of it.
I’ll be adding it to my Science page when I get a chance.
June 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
The New York Times has an article today titled When the Heart Pays the Price of Anger. It’s about the negative consequences — on ourselves — that can happen when we let anger control us. The headline of this post is the last line of that column.
I think it’s worth reading and keeping in mind as we teach in our classroom (and as we operate in other aspects of our world).
Related advice comes from Marvin Marshall, who is my favorite (by far) writer/thinker on positive classroom management. He’s written question that we as teachers might want to consider asking ourselves regularly. He wrote:
Will what I am about to do or say bring me closer or will it push me away farther from the person with whom I am communicating?
Of course, we’re just human and all of this is far “easier said than done.” But it’s not a bad level to aspire towards…
June 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Sue Waters has just written a great post titled “Here’s My Top Five Mistakes Made By New Bloggers — What Are Yours?”
It’s worth a read, and, if you have a “mistake” to contribute, leave a comment on her post.
I’ve added it to The Best Sources Of Advice For Teachers (And Others!) On How To Be Better Bloggers.
June 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Each month, I publish a feature where I “look back” at posts I’ve made one and two years ago (at about this time). I share ones that I think people might still find useful.
Here are some from one year ago:
The Best Teacher Resource Sites For Social Justice Issues
“Seven Secrets Of Student Learning”
The Best Websites To Learn About California
The Best Sites For Creating Online Polls & Surveys
The Best “Today In History” Sites
And here are some interesting ones from two years ago:
June 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Onion Maps are a series of unique maps of major cities around the world. What makes them different is that they are “sort of” 3D. I say “sort of” because they’re not exactly. In fact, I don’t know the appropriate word to use to describe them.
If you click on “Attractions,” you’ll be able to zoom in on the most important sites. A window will pop-up showing information about them, along with photos.
It’s certainly accessible to English Language Learners,and I’ve placed the link on my Geography page.
June 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I couldn’t quite bring myself to create a “The Best…” list related to Michael Jackson’s death and, in fact, I hadn’t planned on writing any kind of post on the topic.
However, The New York Times just came out with a couple of interactive features that would be accessible to English Language Learners, so I thought I’d quickly put together a few quick links that might be useful in the classroom if students are familiar with Jackson.
The New York Times has one feature called Michael Jackson’s Legacy: Readers React. Readers can easily share their reaction to his death, and it shows-up on a map of the world.
The Times has another feature where users can vote on their favorite album. You can listen to a short excerpt from each one, too.
The Denver Post has posted The Life and Career of Michael Jackson in Photos.
The Sacramento Bee shares a collection of images titled World reaction to Michael Jackson’s sudden death.
The Many Faces Of Michael Jackson is from The Associated Press.
The Passing of a Pop Icon is an online video from The New York Times.
Michael Jackson Dies Aged 50 is a new lesson from Breaking News English that includes audio support for the text.
This may be hard to integrate into English language-teaching, but it’s sure a lot of fun.
Eternal Moonwalk is a Michael Jackson tribute site where people upload short videos of them doing a moonwalk…that connects to all the other moonwalks people have uploaded. It’s almost impossible to stop watching.
You could certainly have students use English to plan their dance and then describe it. I know it’s a stretch but, as I said earlier, it’s so much fun!
June 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Timeline: Aftermath of the Iranian Elections is a new interactive feature from The New York Times. It give a good day-by-day account that’s accessible and includes multimedia.
I’ve added it to The Best Sites For Learning About The Protests In Iran.
June 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Forced From Home is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal. I’ve added it to The Best Sites To Learn About The Recession.
Mexico Under Seige is a slideshow from MSNBC. I’ve added it to The Best Sites To Learn About Mexico’s Drug War.
Gangs In Hempstead is an onine video from The New York TImes. I’ve added it to The Best Sites To Learn About Street Gangs.
12 Greatest Low-Tech Inventions has been added to The Best Sites Where Students Can Learn About Inventions.
U.S. National Parks: A Camping Tour is a slideshow from The New York Times. It has been added to The Best Sites For Learning About Yosemite & Other U.S. National Parks.
Figurative Language Interactive Activities has been added to The Best Resources For Learning How To Write Response To Literature Essays.
June 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
3 Comments
Every month I make a short list highlighting my choices of the best resources I shared through Twitter, but didn’t necessarily include them in posts here on my blog.
I’ve already shared in earlier posts this month several new resources I found on Twitter — and where I gave credit to those from whom I learned about them. Those are not included again in this post.
If you don’t use Twitter, you can also check-out all of my “tweets” on my Twitter profile page or subscribe to their RSS feed.
Here are my picks for June’s Best Tweets (not listed in any order):
“School is No Place for Heroes, Says One Scholar” is a good article poking holes in the myth that one person can do it all.
12 Of The Most Iconic Photographs Ever Taken include some pretty tragic ones. Thanks to John Mikulski for the tip.
The World’s 10 Most Unique Islands has some pretty good images. Thanks to Annie Cook for the tip.
100 Portraits of Iconic People of All Time (Thanks to Russel Tarr for the tip)
Visualizing Cultures: Image Driven Scholarship a pretty neat curriculum developed at MIT, and can be adapted for ELL’s. Thanks again to Russel Tarr.
How Do Some Teachers Seem To Have Eyes In The Back of Their Head?
“A quick guide to interactive YouTube videos”
An interesting debate on the value of Interactive Whiteboards
“Fallout After A Nuclear Attack” is a slideshow of amazing photos from LIFE.
10 Breathtaking Viewing Platforms around the World
“25 Websites To Have Fun With Your Photos “
Very interesting Wordle-type representation of four US Presidents speeches on Islam from the Wall Street Journal.
Elmore Leonard’s Rules of Writing (thanks to Story tellin for the tip)
Layers of Life is a good interactive on the Rain Forest (thanks to Diana Dell for the tip).
A site for various rubrics (podcasts, cooperative learning) — Thanks to Shelly Terrell for the tip.
Here is a step-by-step guide to making videos and uploading them to the Internet. (thanks to C. Hollingsworth for the tip)
June 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Las Vegas Sun has an exceptional collection of online multimedia presentations, many which would be accessible to English Language Learners.
The stand-out among them is an amazing presentation on the history of Las Vegas, which will work will with the Las Vegas unit we teach in tenth-grade English classes at our school.
I’ve placed the link to all their interactives under Multimedia Resources From News Outlets on my website. I placed the direct link to the Las Vegas history on my Geography page.
June 26, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
3 Comments
Six weeks ago I kicked off a series of posts highlightng “most popular” lists of websites that I thought educators might find useful. Of course, there are a number of ways to gauge “popularity.” I just view these lists as opportunities to check-out some new sites, and find it interesting to see which ones might be particularly “popular.”
I made the mistake, though, of using the word “popular” in the first post of this series titled The “Most Popular” Blogs That Might Also Be Useful To Educators.
In that piece, I used Post Rank‘s analysis, which uses a variety of ways to measure levels of “engagement” that readers have with specific blog posts. Recently, they’ve begun a system to tabulate this data and develop lists of the most popular blogs in many different categories. The rankings are adjusted each week or so.
It sparked a lot of discussion, including from PostRank, which stated they didn’t like to use the word “popular.” You can see many comments in that first post about PostRank, and you can also see additional thoughts on the PostRank process at Sue Waters’ blog post Latest Statistics Say My Blogs Are……?
So, even though I’m still categorizing this post in the “most popular site” grouping for the sake of my own internal organizing of posts, I’m very specifically not calling this a list of “most popular education blogs.”
I just thought it would be interesting to see what PostRank lists as the ten “most engaged” education blogs right now — six weeks after my first post on them.
Here they are:
3. Free Technology for Teachers
4. apophenia
6. Common Craft – Social Design for the Web -
9. Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
You can see PostRank’s complete listing here.
June 25, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Mary Ann Zehr wrote an excellent post this week in the EdWeek Curriculum Matters blog titled U.S. History Textbooks’ Omissions.
She writes about a study of how different textbooks cover the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the recommendations made by Michael Romanowski. I’d suggest you read the entire post, but I’d like to share a quote here:
“Romanowski urges teachers to support students in critiquing their textbooks and exploring perspectives beyond that of the texts. Teachers can ask their students, for example, to answer this question: “Whose viewpoint is presented, whose omitted, and whose interests are served?” Teachers can have them explore reactions of various Americans to a historical event, such as the attacks of 9/11, including that of the U.S. president, a member of Congress, a relative of a victim, and an Arab-American. Lastly, Romanowski recommends, teachers can use writing assignments to develop students’ critical thinking.”
Mary Ann goes on to suggest that those same recommendations can be applied to any textbook lesson.
I’d go even further, and say these are good guidelines for how all students, including English Language Learners, could respond to any expository text — whether it’s from a textbook or not.
June 25, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
A couple of weeks ago, I shared an article from the Washington Post discussing some of the research that I also share with students that highlights the effect of the “summer slump.” It’s titled Low-income students suffer greater summer-learning losses.
Reading Rockets has now published an even better article titled “Summer Reading Loss.”
Thanks to Colorin Colorado for the tip.
June 25, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
iCityData is a simple site where you can get demographic information on cities throughout the United States,and also compare cities.
It’s accessible to English Language Learners who need to do research.
For lack of a better place, I’ve placed the link on my website under Student Neighborhood Maps, even though the site doesn’t let you break the data down by zipcodes (the other links in that section do allow that level of detail).
June 25, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
Here’s my monthly round-up of “The Best…” lists I’ve posted in May (of course, you can find all 300 or so of them here). I’ve also includes a few I posted right at the very end of May — after I published a collection of May’s lists:
The Best Sites To Learn About The U.S. Supreme Court
The Best Ways To Find Other Classes For Joint Online Projects
The Best Sources Of Ideas For Simple Classroom Science Experiments
The Best Places To Find Online Video Games For Language-Learning
A Beginning List Of The Best Resources For Learning About Facebook
The “Best” Blog Carnivals
The Best Sources Of Advice For Teachers (And Others!) On How To Be Better Bloggers
The Best Teacher Resources For “TED Talks”
The Best Websites For Learning About The Fourth Of July
The Best Sources For Advice On Using Flip Video Cameras
The Best Teacher Resources For “Foldables”
The Best Sites Where Students Can Learn About Inventions
The Best Sites For Learning About The Protests In Iran
Part Thirty-Three Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
The Best Sites For Learning About World Refugee Day
Part Thirty-Six Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
June 24, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The World’s “Germiest” Attractions is a slideshow from LIFE Magazine that students will love…at the same time they yell “eeewww!”
Photos include ones of people kissing Ireland’s Blarney Stone and a “bubblegum wall.”
