Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Monthly Archives: September 2009

September 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The United States (& The World) As A 100 People

USA Today has an article today about a book and school curriculum that portrays the United States as one hundred people. I especially like the graphic that accompanies the article that illustrates that concept.

If you’re interested, here’s a similar chart for the entire world.

I’ve posted in the past about the best site for this kind of demonstration. Miniature Earth is a slideshow that uses statistics to reduce the world to 100 inhabitants, and shows how that plays out demographically, who uses what resources, etc. They periodically update the statistics.

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September 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Test scores poor tool for teacher evaluation”

David Cohen, a teacher I know from southern California through the Teacher Leaders Network, has co-written a great op ed piece in today’s Sacramento Bee. It’s called “Test scores poor tool for teacher evaluation.”

Speaking of a tests as poor tools, state-wide results of the California State High School Exit Exam just came out (you can read critiques of the test here).

The Sacramento Bee has a sample exit exam you can take you would like to see the kind of questions on it.

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September 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Part Thirty-Nine Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly

The first part of this post is my usual introduction to this series. If you’re familiar with it already, just skip down to the listing of new sites…

Here’s the latest installment in my series on The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly. As you may remember, in order to make it on this list, the web tool has to:

* be easily accessible to English Language Learners and/or non-tech savvy computer users.

* allow people to create engaging content within minutes.

* host the user’s creation on the site itself indefinitely, and allow a direct link to be able to be posted on a student or teacher’s website/blog to it (or let it be embedded). If it just provides the url address of the student creation, you can either just post the address or use Embedit.in , a free web tool that makes pretty much any url address embeddable.

* provide some language-learning opportunity (for example, students can write about their creations).

* not require any registration.

You can find previous installments of this series with the rest of my “The Best…” lists at Websites Of The Year. Several hundred sites have been highlighted in these past lists. You might also want to take a look at the first list I posted in this series — The Best Ways For Students (And Anyone Else!) To Create Online Content Easily, Quickly, and Painlessly.

You might also want to look at The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2009.

Here are the newest additions:

SEND VIRTUAL FLOWERS: With Flowers 2 Mail, you can create a virtual bouquet and send a message with it. Both can be posted on a student or teacher website.

CREATE A VIRTUAL STUDENT’S BEDROOM OR DORM ROOM: Ikea’s Spacemaker is a very cool application that students will love. It’s very simple to use — much more so than some others that are out there.

RECORD AN AUDIO MESSAGE: Audio Pal is a new tool that lets you easily record a message — either by using a phone, computer mike, or text-to-speech — and then add the embed code to your blog or website. Students can update it as often as they want, and get as many different ones that they want. It’s pretty neat.

SEND NEAT PHOTO eCARDS: Onexposure provides very unique photos to send as eCards, which can then be posted on a student blog or website (Thanks to kdwashburn for the tip).

MAKE A FLIPBOOK: The Flipbook Maker lets you make a multilple page “flipbook” that creates the illusion of movement. Students can title it, write a description, and post it (Thanks to Diana Dell for the tip).

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore nearly 300 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

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September 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Finding The Most Popular “Search” Terms

This may sound like a bit of a strange post for my “most popular” series, but please bear with me for a moment.

Google Insights is a tool that allows you to map how often, and from where, people use specific search terms. TechCrunch has a useful post about it.

When I checked to see users from which countries most searched for the term “ESL,” the top three were South Korea, Cambodia, and Mongolia. When I checked on the term “EFL,” the top three were Oman, South Korea, and Poland. And when I checked “English,” the top three were Cambodia, Mongolia, and Pakistan.

I could see this site having some opportunities to create conversation in the classroom. For example, I think it could initiate an interesting conversation with Hmong students to find that the term “Hmong” was searched for most, by far, in Laos, where some Hmong still live and from where my students’ families fled. Then, when I searched for “General Vang Pao,” the most well-known leader of the Hmong here in the United States and one of several people arrested here in Sacramento last year for allegedly planning a coup in Laos, practically all the searches came from within the United States.

I have to think a little bit more about how this new tool can be used and am interested in hearing other ideas.

In addition, here are a couple of other resources for finding the most popular “search” terms:

What People Search For – Most Popular Keywords is an article that appeared almost three years ago sharing a lot places where people could find this type of info. Surprisingly enough, practically all of the links are still live, accurate, and useful.

Chromomulator is a new site that “takes the top 100 Google searches at the moment (from Google Trends) and scours the web, collecting related news, blog posts, pictures, and videos for each search. If you need to know everything about what’s hot on the net right now, the Chromomulator can tell you. Updated several times daily.”

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I’d be interested in hearing ideas on how to use these sites and their information effectively in the classroom.

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September 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“What Can a Mathematics Teacher Do for the English Language Learner?”

What Can a Mathematics Teacher Do for the English Language Learner? is an:

“…interactive document… developed during a professional development session, led by the Texas Comprehensive Center, for mathematics and ESL specialists from the Education Service Centers in Texas.”

It was just put on the Web by SEDL, a Texas-based education “think-tank,” and I thought readers might find it useful.

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September 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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More On California Wildfires

I’ve made several additions to The Best Sites To Learn About The September 2009 California Wildfires:

Burning Near Los Angeles is another slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

California Wildfires Threaten Homes is a series of photos from The Denver Post.

Weather Aids Firefighters’ Progress is a slideshow from The New York Times.

Wildfires In Southern California is a series of images from The Boston Globe’s Big Picture.

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September 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“A Rationale for Teaching Oral English to ELLs”

Mary Ann Zehr has written a very useful post titled A Rationale for Teaching Oral English to ELLs. She shares what she has seen in schools, which mirrors my experience — as students get older, there is a tendency to spend less time on listening and speaking, and more on reading and writing.

She also points to a very well-researched post in a new ESL blog by Ballard & Tighe, Publishers. The post, titled Speaking Of Writing: The Significance Of Oral Language In English Learners’ Literacy Development, is also worth a read.

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September 1, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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U.S.A. Learns Webcast Posted

U.S.A Learns is the number one ranked site on The Best Sites For K-12 Beginning English Language Learners and is tied for number one on The Best Sites For K-12 Intermediate English Language Learners list.

Given that I think so highly of the site, I’m just going to copy and paste the email I just received from Marian Thacher about a Webinar that was recorded and is now online about the site:

USA Learns is a free website containing three courses, a beginning English course based on Putting English to Work I, an intermediate English Course based on English for All, and an English and Reading course based on the stories from the CDLP website. This link will take you to a 45 minute recording of the Webcast on USA Learns. Evelyn Fella explains what’s on the site, and gives distance and lab teachers some tips on using it with students. It will be a good orientation for teachers new to the site. The page also contains a link to Evelyn’s slides, and to the three USA Learns site: for independent learners, for teachers, and for students registered in a class.

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September 1, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Extreme School Makeover: Creating the Conditions for Success”

Extreme School Makeover: Creating the Conditions for Success is a blog post by Claus von Zastrow that is one of the best, and most reasonable, descriptions of what it might take to “turnaround” a troubled school.

He highlights the key elements of a successful strategy and makes it clear that there is no one single answer that will provide a solution — no matter what some “expert” school reformers might think.

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September 1, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Sites To Learn About The September 2009 California Wildfires

It looks like I’ll be putting together an annual (or even more often) “The Best…” list about each year’s fires that hit us here in California.

I posted a similar list this past May called The Best Sites To Learn About The California Wildfires.  It also included a number of informational links to wildfires in general, and I won’t repeat those here.

Unfortunately, I suspect this list will be growing over the next few days.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites To Learn About The September 2009 California Wildfires (and are accessible to English Language Learners):

The Sacramento Bee has a series of photos on The California Wildfires.

Wildfires Rage In California is a Wall Street Journal video.

Fire Spreads To 100,000 Acres is a Wall Street Journal slideshow. It also has an interactive map.

On The Fire Lines are photos from the Los Angeles Times.

Southland FIres is a slideshow from The LA Times.

California Blaze Continues To Burn is a slideshow from The New York Times.

Intractable Flames Near Los Angeles is a video from The New York Times.

Fire Devastates Auburn Homes is a slideshow from the Sacramento Bee about a smaller, but still destructive fire, that we had near Sacramento last night.

Burning Near Los Angeles is another slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

California Wildfires Threaten Homes is a series of photos from The Denver Post.

Weather Aids Firefighters’ Progress is a slideshow from The New York Times.

Wildfires In Southern California is a series of images from The Boston Globe’s Big Picture.

Scientists Investigate the Aftermath of a Damaging Fire is a slideshow from the NY Times.

Suggestions and feedback, as always, 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.

Scientists Investigate the Aftermath of a Damaging Fire

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September 1, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

The Best Online Carbon Calculators

Online carbon calculators help users determine the amount of carbon emissions they (or their household) is responsible for introducing into the environment. This kind of interactive exercise can be a good language-development opportunity, as well as one for expanding content knowledge in either science or social studies.

There are quite a few of them out there, and I’ve included some on my previous The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom.

With the increase in their availability, I thought I would create a quick “The Best…” list sharing links to ones I think are the best and most accessible to English Language Learners.

I’m not going to describe each one because all the calculators on this list are fairly similar. However, I will differentiate between the first two, which are probably accessible to Beginning or Early Intermediate English Language Learners, and the last five, which are best for Intermediate and Advanced ELL’s. The primary difference between the two groups are the number of questions and amount/complexity of the text. Also, most of the ones in the second group provide more precise figures since they incorporate data from the area where you live, too.

Here are my picks for The Best Online Carbon Calculators:

FOR BEGINNING & EARLY INTERMEDIATE ELL’S:

Zero Footprint Kids Calculator

Ecologic Bigfoot Calculator

Planet Positive Calculator

FOR INTERMEDIATE & ADVANCED ELL’S

Cool Climate

The Nature Conservancy: What’s My Carbon Footprint?

Low Impact Living Calculator

Personal Footprint Calculator

Consumer Consequences

One Did It

Earth Day Footprint Calculator

You can find links to these and other calculators on the Science page of my website.

Also, there’s a somewhat related simple Water Footprint Calculator that might be worth trying-out.

The Bonneville Environmental Foundation has very engaging carbon and water calculators to determine your environmental impact. In addition, their suggestions for how to reduce them are equally well-done.

This next one doesn’t quite fit on this list, but it’s close enough: Find out how wasteful you are in this simple online quiz. It’s probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners. At the same time, you can see a list of the 25 “Least Wasteful” cities in the United States.

A Simple Switch seems to be a good personal carbon calculator.

Feel free to offer additional suggestions.

If you found this post useful, you might want to check out my other “The Best…” lists.

In addition, you can also subscribe to this blog for free.

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