August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Must Pop Words! is a fun little game from Bart Bonte, the creator of other online games I’ve posted about.
It takes the popular game theme of having to create words out of a bunch of letter and makes it a bit unique. English Language Learners and others will enjoy it.
It’s his contribution to a big contest for developers to create word games called Word Play. It’ll be fun to see what other people come-up with.
I’m adding Must Pop Words to my website under Word and Video Games.
August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Mashable has just posted a great piece, 26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog.
I’ve already included many of the resources they list in The Best Online Sources For Images and The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects. However, they also listed some sites that are new to me, especially the ones that have freely-available video (I didn’t include any video sources in my lists).
I’m also sure that a ton of additional sources will be accumulating in their comments sections. Because of that, for now, instead of just selectively adding some of their sites to my lists, I’m going to include a link to their post on both them.
August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
In 1980, my extraordinarily talented mother-in-law, Marilyn Judson, co-wrote a neat book titled Simple Folk Instruments to Make and Play.
It’s filled with simple, step-by-step instructions to easily make musical instruments.
I’ve used it for lessons with English Language Learners. Making a musical instrument provides tons of language-development opportunities — both during and after the lessons. I figure music teachers might find it fun, too.
The book is long-out-of-print, but it’s available used on Amazon for peanuts.
No new wealth will accumulate to our family by your purchase since you can only buy it used, but I think it’s a good resource for teachers to have.
By the way, not only is Marilyn talented, she’s good-hearted. She is a leader in the Davis (CA) Friends of the Library and has arranged for thousands of books to be donated to recent immigrant families.
August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Delicious, the popular “social bookmarking” tool, has just added some neat features. One is a page where you can see the most popular websites at any given moment.
I’m adding this new “Hot List” page to The Most Popular “Bookmarks” On The Web, which lists other ways to find similar information.
You can read a Tech Crunch post about this change and others on the Delicious site.
August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
PC Magazine just came out with their choices for The Top 100 Web Sites of 2009.
It’s an interesting list and work a look.
August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The National High School Center has a feature this month where anybody who has questions about teaching high school English Language Learners can send it in and get their question answered. If you go to the link at the beginning of this post you can see the questions that have already been answered.
Here’s how the Center describes what they’re doing:
Join the National High School Center featured experts Ana Díaz-Booz, Principal, School of International Business (San Diego, CA) and Libia Gil, Senior Fellow, American Institutes for Research and Senior Advisor, National High School Center as they discuss how to effectively educate English Language Learners.
Please submit your questions via email and a response will be posted with 72 hours. The National High School Center will not include personal information within our posted responses.
The Center has this feature on a different topic each month. At their site you can see previous topics and their questions & answers.
August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Oops, I included an incorrect link in my last post. Here’s the correct one for Behind the Booms. I’ve also fixed it in the original post.
August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Behind The Booms comes from the Wisconsin State Journal and provides an interactive “behind the scenes” view of fireworks. In addition to learning about how they work, users can create their own virtual fireworks show.
It’s accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Holidays.
August 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
As I’ve explained in earlier pieces, I periodically post “most popular” lists of websites that I think 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.”
Today, I’d like to share a site called the Viral Video Chart.
It uses a variety of measuring instruments to determine the most popular videos for every 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, and one year, and they do it in a variety of categories. It looks quite thorough.
Most, though not all, appear to be on YouTube. You might also want to look at The Best Ways To Access Educational YouTube Videos At School.
Magma is a new site that isn’t open to the public yet, but is worth signing-up for to get an invitation. Among other things, it shows you a continually updated listing of the most viewed videos on YouTube, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Delicious and a bunch more sites. In addition, you can collect your own lists of the ones you want to save.
Buzz Feed is another place to find what are supposedly the most popular videos on the Web. The selection appears to include some “raunchier” ones than the other sites I have listed in this post, but it does seem to have some other useful funny ones that could be used for activities with English Language Learners. I don’t know how they determine their selection — it’s obviously using a different methodology than the others.
August 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
August 1st was the 65th anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising, the battle against Nazi occupiers in Warsaw, Poland.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to pull together a few good resources accessible to English Language Learners on the event. It’s more than just a lesson in history — it can offer opportunities to discuss far deeper issues about resistance to evil, and why people make the choices they do.
Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning About The Warsaw Uprising:
Euronews has a nice, short video with a transcript about the commemoration ceremonies.
CNN has an interactive presentation on the Uprising.
How Stuff Works has two short videos on the Uprising.
Voice of America has short article summarizing both the uprising and its commemoration.
Here are photos of the uprising from The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).
The USHMM also has a short summary of the uprising.
The USHMM has some very thoughtful suggestions on how teachers can approach lessons about the uprising. It’s focused on a TV mini-series that was done, but it offers useful ideas even if you don’t show the video.
EdSitement also has a lesson plan that can be modified for English Language Learners.
As always, suggestions and feedback are 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.
August 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments
TEFL.net is a great resource for ESL/EFL teachers around the world. They have lesson plans, job announcements — you name it.
They also have a Site Of The Month Award, and this blog has just received that honor. Thanks!
More importantly, I’d encourage readers to visit the Site of The Month page and see all the previous award-winners. It’s a great list of very useful sites….
August 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments
As I’ve explained in earlier pieces, I periodically post “most popular” lists of websites or books that I think 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 or books, and find it interesting to see which ones might be particularly “popular.”
Today I thought I’d share a list of the Top 15 Most Popular Web 2.0 Websites.
Actually, I’ll only list the top seven here, and suggest you go to the site of the people (eBizMBA) who put it together to see the rest of them (they did the work, after all). They say they used “a combination of Inbound Links, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast” to come-up with the ranking. Here’s the link to the full list.
Here are the top seven:
August 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Lights At Night is an online presentation from the National Academy of Sciences. It compares the amount of energy consumed at night by different areas of the world during different years.
It has an introductory video with closed-captioning, and is probably accessible to high Intermediate English Language Learners.
I’ve placed the link on my Science page.
August 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The acclaimed Harlem Children’s Zone is obviously doing some very good work.
If you’d like to learn more about it, and also read about some questions it raises in my mind, you might want to check-out a piece I’ve just posted over at my other blog, Engaging Parents In School. That blog is designed to support the book I’ve written (with Lorie Hammond), Building Parent Engagement In Schools, that will be published in October.
If you find that post, and the others you’ll find there, interesting, you might want to consider subscribing to that blog, too. I post once or twice a week at Engaging Parents In School.
August 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Jason Renshaw has written two excellent posts sharing ideas for writing activities with English Language Learners (though many of his suggestions are useful with all students).
They’re worth reviewing.
August 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
David Kapuler, who has an excellent blog on educational technology, has just created a nice introduction and overview of new web 2.0 tools that are worth a look.
You can read about, and access it, at his post Blog Companion.
August 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Our Courts is the website started by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to help students learn about civics. They’ve had some decent materials on the site for awhile. In fact, I had put links to some of them on The Best Sites To Learn About The U.S. Supreme Court. For an extremely long time, they’ve been hyping (both online and in newspaper articles) a game that were going to add to the site. It was just unveiled — Supreme Decision: Ben’s T-Shirt.
I appreciate Justice O’Connor’s efforts, but I have to say that it gives fodder to Scott McLeod’s recent post Do Most Educational Games Suck?
I ordinarily don’t critique a free online educational game like this, but it’s been hyped for so long that it’s a disappointment. It’s a good topic — student free speech — but it’s pretty involved and it’s difficult for me to see students getting very engaged by it.
It’s nice that it provides audio support for the text, which improves its accessiblity for English Language Learners.
I may be wrong on this judgment and, if so, it won’t be the first time. I’d be interested in hearing if others think differently.
August 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
7 Comments
One of the first “The Best…” lists I created was The Best Eleven Websites For Students To Learn About Computers. I included two-or-three sites about online safety that were accessible to English Language Learners on that list. Since that time, though, quite a few additional resources have become available, so I thought it was time to make a list entirely devoted to that topic.
You can also find these links, along with many others, on my website under Computers.
Unfortunately, most of the sites on this list — except for the first one — might be considered a bit too “childish” by teenage and adult English Language Learners. I didn’t include others that might be more mature because they had people speaking too fast or didn’t offer audio support for complex text.
Here are my choices for The Best Sites For Learning Online Safety (and are accessible to English Language Learners):
Think U Know has a good animated and audio Cyber Cafe that older ELL’s would like.
The Welcome To The Web section on Staying Safe is very good.
Brainpop has a free movie on Internet Safety. Brainpop also has a Digital Citizenship page that periodically has other related movies available at no cost.
Privacy Playground uses “cyberpigs” to teach online safety in an animated adventure.
Sid’s Online Safety Guide is pretty exhaustive.
Safe Kids has a decent online safety quiz.
The Council of Europe designed an online game “Through the Wild Web Woods” to help children learn basic Internet safety rules. It’s available in 14 different languages.
Professor Garfield: Internet Safety and You
“How To Control Your Privacy Online” is a fairly accessible interactive from The Wall Street Journal.
An infographic showing the Top 20 passwords of all-time might provide some useful information to teachers and to students.
A complete guide to web, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus privacy and security! is a must-read article by Ronnie Burt from Edublogs.
On Guard Online has a series of games accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners. It’s a Federal Trade Commission site.
I’ve previously posted about “Internet Essentials,” Comcast’s program for providing low-cost Internet service to low-income students. They’ve published a series of relatively decent online videos on using computers and online safety. They seem accessible (and also have closed captioning). I think they’re particularly good for online safety issues because most other similar programs that are accessible to English Language Learners are clearly geared toward young children, while these seem to be more engaging to adolescent and adults.
If you still need more cybersafety resources, the place to go is a page at New Jersey’s Belmar Elementary School’s website. Kevin O’Donnell has put together an exhaustive group of links together.
As always, suggestions and feedback are 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.
August 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Glencoe has a nice companion website for its Exploring Our World geography book.
If you go to the link, you’ll see resources they have for each chapter, including online games and animations called “In Motion.” They’re from National Geographic, are short, and accessible to English Language Learners.
I’m not going to do it now, but the next time I teach Geography I’ll add direct links to each one on my Geography page.
It has the same set-up for its Civics textbook, with similar “In Motion” animations (though these are not from National Geographic).
August 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
I’m doing some research on what is the most effective kind of feedback on what we as teachers can give to our students. I’ve been somewhat familiar with Carol Dweck, who has done great research on how to help students develop a “growth mindset” instead of a “fixed” one. Very simply put, we should praise effort instead of intelligence.
Daniel Sadicario on Twitter suggested an article about her work titled How Not to Talk to Your Kids.
I also found a good online recorded interview with Ms. Dweck that Will Richardson did with her and posted on his blog.
Both are worth checking-out.
