Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

December 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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A Great Way To Become A Better ELL/ESL/EFL Teacher

Electronic Village Online 2010 sessions are a great way to learn new skills and connect with teachers from around the world. Here is a quote from the website:

For six weeks , participants can engage with ESOL experts in collaborative, online discussion sessions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions will bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by the four-day land-based TESOL convention and will allow a fuller development of ideas and themes of the convention or of professional interest in general.

The sessions are free and open to all interested parties. You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate.

To see sessions for 2010, go to the Call for Participation 2010.

You may join sessions after January 2, 2010.

I’ve participated in past sessions, and have gotten a lot out of them.

Thanks to Life Feast for the reminder.

December 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

More Climate Change Resources

Here are new additions to The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change:

The Guardian just published an infographic titled A changing pattern – world climate anomalies.

Copenhagen Climate Conference Begins is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

Impact of climate change is a series of video reports from the BBC.

The Key Effects Of Climate Change is an accessible infographic from the BBC.

The Financial Times has an interactive graphic titled “Carbon emissions past and projected.”

The Guardian has A complete guide to the Copenhagen climate change summit.

Climate Change and Global Warming for Children is a very accessible animation.

Copenhagen climate change conference 2009: we look at the problems our changing planet is facing is a slideshow from The Telegraph.

What Is Global Warming? comes from the CBBC Newsround.

December 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Kngine Might Be An Excellent Search Engine

I have to try it out some more to be sure, but Kngine looks like it might be a truly exceptional search engine for English Language Learners and other students.

It calls itself a “revolutionary Semantic Search Engine and Question Answer Engine designed to provide meaningful search results.” Users can write a question in — for example, “How many years do you have to go to college to be a teacher?” (I chose that because my students have been doing research on careers). I was really quite impressed with the results that come up in response.

My students had tried using questions like that at some of the “question/answer” sites like Wikianswers. They easily found answers, but they varied wildly in terms of quality. The answers from Kngine seemed to take the best answers from those kinds of sites and include additional resources, too.

Even though I need to experiment with it more before I’m sure, I feel good enough about it to add to The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2009.

I’d be interested in hearing what your experience with it is, too.

December 8, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

The Best Online Health Assessments For ELL’s

I think the best way to teach English is to find-out what people want to learn about, and then help them develop their language skills in the process of learning about that topic. Even though I’ve found that teenagers from all ethnic groups feel that they’re pretty indestructible, I’ve still found that using interactive online health tools for them to learn about their well-being (or the well-being of family members) have been pretty high-interest to them across the board.

And, so — another “The Best…” list is born.

This is sort of a companion list to The Best Life Expectancy Calculators. Readers might also be interested in The Best health sites for English language learners.

All the sites listed here have self-assessments for health risks or other kinds of calculators that are accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners. They’re free, and don’t require registration.

Here are my picks for The Best Online Health Assessments For ELL’s (not in any order of preference):

Your Disease Risk is a great site for both teenage and adult English Language Learners. It’s from the Siteman Cancer Center, and leads you through simple questionnaires on various illnesses to determine…your disease risk.

Cold Aid is an interactive application designed to help parents figure out if their child has a cold or a more serious illness. It has audio that is closed-captioned (be sure to click it on). It asks you a number of questions about the child’s symptoms, and then reaches a conclusion and offers a recommendation.

WebMD has a lot of interactive tools. Click on the ones you want to use and then, right under “What Does This Tool Measure?” you see “click here.”

Quality Health has a lot of accessible Health Risks Assessments.

Health Line has many similar tools.

Revolution Health also has many health calculators.

The extraordinary Measure of America website has a feature that lets you calculate your “human development level.” It’s called the Well-O-Meter.

Is It A Cold Or The Flu? comes from ABC News.

CNN has a number of health-related interactives.

MSN Health and Fitness has several similar health tools.

Better Health Conversation is an interactive from Web MD and General Electric that helps you prepare for your next doctor’s visit. It’s accessible and engaging.

A note of caution — some of the sites include Body Mass Index (BMI) calculators. There are real questions about its accuracy or usefulness. If students are going to use those, please explain some of those concerns. We certainly don’t want kids to get obsessed about their weight if their BMI reading says they’re overweight even if they are not.

The Healthy Living Assessment from the BC Cancer Agency is a good and accessible self-assessment interactive.

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.

December 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Oops! I Missed A Spelling Site

I’ve posted about Tutpup several times, and must have had a “brain freeze” when I forgot to include it in The Best Spelling Sites.

Thankfully, Steven Roberge kangirsuk reminded me about it. I’ll just quote how he described it, and you can also look at my previous posts on it:

Students must spell words that are spoken to them. The activity is a multi-player game. There are 5 levels of difficulty. Teachers can create class accounts, so they can monitor the progress and statistics of their students.

Thanks, Steven!

December 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

“California “Race To The Top” Legislation Gets Curiouser and Curiouser”

California “Race To The Top” Legislation Gets Curiouser and Curiouser is the title of a post I just wrote for my other blog on parent engagement.

Things are getting pretty weird here in the state capitol.

December 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Report On How Goal-Setting Lesson Went

Yesterday, I posted about a goal-setting lesson I was going to try today (see Student Goal-Setting Lesson I’m Trying Out On Monday).

I’m happy to say that it went quite well in both my ninth-grade English mainstream class and my Intermediate English class.

The only changes from what I described in my post were that I skipped the poster-making project because of time constraints, and I read portions of the hand-outs to my English Language Learners.

Students for the most part were quite realistic in the goals they set, and I was particularly impressed by what some of them wrote under “Three Things You Are Going To Do Each Week To Accomplish Your Goals.” Here are a few samples:

I’m going to focus on my main goals and if I don’t accomplish it that week, I’ll accomplish it the next week until it is accomplished.

Stop talking in class so much.

Read more to improve my fluency score.

Help others when they don’t know what to do.

Many wrote generic actions like “work harder in class,” and that’s okay. In addition to getting students to think more about their goals, these sheets (which we’ll revisit weekly) will give me some “ammunition” to agitate students instead of irritate them. That’s an old community organizing analysis. Agitate means challenging someone to do what they say they want to do. Irritate means challenging them to do something about you want them to do. I write about this concept both in my book on parent engagement and in my upcoming book on teaching English Language Learners.

Now, with these sheets, I can challenge them to push themselves to achieve goals they have identified and challenge them to take actions that they have said they want to take. It’s not “coming from me.”

I’ll keep you posted.

December 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Lazyfeed

Lazyfeed is a neat way to search social media, and have just updated their interface. You type in a query, and… instead of describing it, go to TechCrunch, who has written about it in a much clearer way than I could.

I’m adding Lazyfeed to Not “The Best…,” But “A List” Of Search Engines For Social Media.

December 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

The Most Popular Digg Stories From Throughout The Year

As I’ve explained in earlier pieces, I periodically post “most popular” lists of websites (and 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, and find it interesting to see which ones might be particularly “popular.”

Today I’d like to share about a new collection and data visualization feature at Digg, the social bookmarking and ranking site. It’s called Digg365, and it allows you to see the top ten stories from each month of the past year.

Thanks to Information Aesthetics for the tip.

December 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
5 Comments

Student Goal-Setting Lesson I’m Trying Out On Monday

I’ve been trying to make students setting their goals and evaluating their progress towards achieving them a regular part of my classes this year (see The Best Part Of The President’s Speech & How I’ll Use It). Each week, students complete a goal sheet that includes a reflection piece.

It’s gone relatively well, though sometime both they and I get a bit lazy about them. There’s a fair amount of research highlighting its effectiveness, though, so I’m trying to make it a priority.

To combat this laziness, every few weeks I do a special lesson on goal-setting. I thought people might find what I’m doing this week useful. It’s designed to help students focus between now and the break, and during the holiday break.

I’m first going to break students into pairs to read aloud to each other the Harvard Business School Goal Story (actually, that story is a myth. You can find my replacement reading at Uh Oh, Harvard Goal Study Is An “Urban Legend”). While they’re reading, I’m going to ask them to highlight two phrases they like (not more than eight words each) and then write a one sentence summary of the information. Then they’ll share both their highlighted phrases and sentence summary with another pair of students, and I’ll have a few students share with the entire class.

Next, students will read Michael Jordan On Setting Goals, and will do the same kind of highlighting, summarizing, and sharing.

Then each student will complete a End Of Semester Goal Sheet I’ve created. They then will have the option of sharing which ever goals they feel comfortable sharing with their partner. I’m going to collect them, make copies, and return their sheets to them the following day, and then we’ll review student progress each week. Student will have the option of having their sheets signed by their parents.

After students complete the End of Semester Goal Sheet, each one will make a poster picking one of the phrases they highlighted in the two articles and illustrate it.

We’ll see how it goes. Any feedback is welcome. I’ll certainly write a post letting people know how it goes.

December 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
6 Comments

The Best Spelling Sites

There are a lot of sites out there designed for spelling practice. I thought it would be helpful to create a “The Best…” list to narrow them down a bit.

For English Language Learners, and for others, the best spelling sites are ones that offer audio and also use the words in the context of sentences. Websites that offer both are the most highly-rated on my list. And, of course, they have to be free to be here, too.

You can also find links to the sites here, and to many other spelling related resources, on my website under Spelling.

Here are my ranked choices of The Best Spelling Sites (that are best for English Language Learners):

Number thirteen is Catch The Spelling. It’s a series of games specifically geared towards English Language Learners.

Number twelve is the Alpha-Bot game. It’s a nice game where you first listen to the word spoken and then have to find the correct letters to spell it. I probably should place it a little higher on the list, but I learned about this game after I completed this post, and was just too lazy to change the rankings .

Number eleven are spelling quizzes from The Interlink Language Center. They’re simple exercises, but there are a lot of them.

Number ten is Kidspell. There are a ton of spelling games, and you can also easily create ones using your own spelling lists. However, they’re not offered in context and there’s no audio pronunciation.

Number nine is Word Sort from Houghton Mifflin. In addition to providing audio, it has the added feature of challenging students to look for word patterns. However, the words are not used in sentences.

[This one may be permanently off-line, but I'm leaving it on this list just in case it starts working again]Number eight is Spellbee!, a spelling game where, after you register, you choose a player to compete with in a spelling contest. Each player chooses from a variety of words and challenges their opponent online to correctly spell the word that is spoken to them in the context of a sentence. It’s a pretty neat concept and, though the text-to-speech software it uses is definitely not top-tier, it’s still a game students would enjoy playing and would be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners. It’s quite easy for players to register very quickly. There’s also a slightly more complicated registration process that students and teachers can use in order for teachers to monitor student progress.

Number seven is Spin and Spell. It’s an excellent spelling and vocabulary-building exercise for ELL’s. Images and audio are provided, and players select the categories they want to use. It, too, however, doesn’t use the words in sentences.

Number six is Spellits, an excellent site from the BBC. It provides some direct instruction in spelling patterns — using audio and text — and has a number of games that provide the same level of support.

I don’t think that Spelling Bees different schools and communities sponsor are particularly healthy or educational for kids. However, there are several online versions that I think would work well with ELL’s. I’m ranking Spelling Bee: The Game at number five. It has lots of great features. The only it’s missing, though, is that it appears like you can’t pick your level of difficulty.

Number four is no longer working.

Number three is the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee. You don’t have to register to play, and it automatically adapts to your spelling ability. It remembers which words you got right and wrong and quizzes you periodically on words at your spelling level that you spelled incorrectly in the past. A human voice, and not a computerized one, says the words. Plus, it shows you a diagram of similar words. It doesn’t give you a sentence example using the word, but I guess you can’t have everything…

Number two is The Spelling Bee from Annenberg Media. Not only does it let you pick your level of difficulty, provide audio support, and give the words in context, but the context is not just in a sentence — it tells you a story.

And, now, the number one Best Spelling Site is….Spelling City. It has all the features that one can ask for, and is plenty of fun. You can make your own word list, or create your own.

(I’ve posted about Tutpup several times, and must have had a “brain freeze” when I forgot to include it originally in this list. Thankfully, Steven Roberge kangirsuk reminded me about it. I’ll just quote how he described it, and you can also look at my previous posts on it:

Students must spell words that are spoken to them. The activity is a multi-player game. There are 5 levels of difficulty. Teachers can create class accounts, so they can monitor the progress and statistics of their students.)

Spellzone is a new interactive site to learn and practice…spelling. It has practice activities, games, and I especially like that the words are grouped based on spelling patterns — plus, they have audio, too! The only negative, and it’s a big one, is that the words are not used in sentences.

The British Council has just unveiled a new feature on their site called Speak And Spell. It has lots of interactives.

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.

December 7, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Thinkmeter Looks Neat

Thinkmeter is a neat new application that is very similar to Linklist, but better. I think it offers exceptional opportunities for educators and students.

It’s designed as a survey-like tool, where you can ask a question and have people vote by clicking on the number of stars they want to give it. People can also leave comments when they vote. You can create these surveys, and vote in them, without registering. If you pick an item from Amazon, it will show an image of the item and, at least if you list a book, it will also show a description of it.

In addition, if you insert the url address of an image from the Web, it will show it.

You can post the link to your survey wherever you please.

Here are just two ways I will try using it:

* Having students pick their favorite books from Amazon and have other students rate them and leave comment.

* Having students use it for the same activities I list in The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students, like listing their favorite games from my website and having others vote on them. In many ways, Thinkmeter can function as a super-easy bookmarking tool for students. As I mention on that “The Best…” list, students can also use a tool like this to create “picture data sets” — a collection of images they can grab off the web that fit into a specific category. On Thinkmeter, once you insert the url address of a photo, the entire photo shows-up on the list, and students can leave a description and justification about why they think it belongs into that particular category.

In fact, I think Thinkmeter has so much potential that I’m adding it to that bookmarking “The Best…” list.

Thanks to the Make Use of blog for the tip.

December 6, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Edublogs Was Off-Line for Several Hours, Including This Blog

All Edublogs-hosted blogs, including this one, were off-line for several hours Sunday. Sorry if you tried to come here and, instead, found a broken link.

These things happen. Edublogs has had very little downtime the past couple of years, and I still highly recommend it as the best place to have an education-related blog. The customer service is great, it’s super-easy to use, it has neat features, and it’s not blocked by most school content filters.

December 6, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
10 Comments

What Did You Learn In 2009?

Last year, and in 2007, I invited readers to share their thoughts for an annual January 1st post where people shared what they learned during the previous twelve months.

Many people responded, and I’m doing it again this year.

Feel free to write one-to-three things you feel you’ve learned this year in the comments section of this post. I’m not going to give a specific restriction on their length, but please try to keep them short. Please submit them by December 28th. I’ll leave them in moderation until I include them in a January 1st post.

Also, please include a short sentence you’d like me to use to describe you.

December 5, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Some Neat “Personality” Quizzes

Here are some recent additions to The Best Online Personality, Career, Political & Just Plain Fun Quizzes:

The Los Angeles Times uses technology from the company Visual DNA to have users take a News Match Quiz. It’s really pretty neat. You’re asked some simple questions and shown a variety of images you use to answer — What is your favorite kind of treat? What would spark a conversation with you?

Then, at the end, you’re given a report on your personality and a series of newspaper articles the program thinks you’d be interested in.

It’s useful for English Language Learners on a number of levels. I’ve seen the Visual DNA technology used in other sites, and have liked it, they those other sites have usually been dating-related or on other sites not appropriate for the classroom.

A somewhat similar quiz sit– though not nearly as good as Visual DNA’s application — is called ID Solution. It identifies your “cultural taste.” One thing I do like about it is that some the questions ask your preferences of various texts instead of images.

December 5, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Say Good-bye to Etherpad

(Because of the negative public reaction, it appears that Google and Etherpad are changing their plans now)

Etherpad, the great collaborative tool that is on both The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration and The Best Online Tools For Collaboration — NOT In Real Time , was bought by Google yesterday and they’re shutting it down.

No new accounts can be created, and the whole service will close-up by March.

It’s too bad…

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