Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Monthly Archives: January 2010

January 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Some Important New Resources On Haiti

I just wrote I was only going to add new sites to The Best Sites To Learn About The Earthquake In Haiti if they were truly exceptional, and I have just discovered three that fit that definition. They are:

The New York Times has finally joined most other major news organizations and created a separate page for their multimedia productions on the earthquake, and they’re superb.

Just about everything in the media is highlighting the horror of the earthquake, and the misery of Haiti’s past. Here are two sites where teachers can find important and positive aspects of the Haitian tradition that can help students understand it’s important past:

Haiti in Ink and Tears: A Literary Sampler is from The New York Times.

Haiti: A Poor Country With A Rich Culture is from National Public Radio.

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January 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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My Choice For The Very Best Place To Keep Updated On Haiti

I’ve been adding more and more resources to The Best Sites To Learn About The Earthquake In Haiti, including links to many special pages news organizations are setting-up just to host photos, graphics, and videos from there. I’ll probably stop adding any new specific sites to that post since so many of the links contain continually new resources.

I’ve got to say that among all the news organizations, I have been finding that the New York Times photo blog “The Lede” has had the best quality material, along with the most up-to-date. It has excellent multimedia resources along with short text information, and is doing a great job of scouring the web for great stuff.

I wouldn’t say it’s the best place for English Language Learners to go because the lay-out isn’t very attractive (CNN works best for student self-access), but I’d suggest teachers keep on checking The Lede for specific photo galleries and videos that they might want to show in class or specifically ask their students to view.

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January 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Do’s And Don’ts” For MLK Day & Black History Month

Teaching Tolerance has many good resources, and I’ll just share two here today.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Teaching Black History is a good guide. I’m adding it to The Best Websites To Teach & Learn About African-American History.

Do’s and Don’ts of Celebrating MLK Day is another good guide. I’m adding it to The Best Websites For Learning About Martin Luther King.

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January 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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More On Haiti

Here are the most recent additions to The Best Sites To Learn About The Earthquake In Haiti:

The Wall Street Journal has a special page on the quake.

The Miami Herald has numerous slideshows on the earthquake.

The Los Angeles Times has several audio slideshows.

Disaster In Haiti is the special CBS News page on the quake.

In Haiti, Slow Relief is a New York Times video.

MSNBC has a new interactive on the earthquake.

Crime Rises as Aid Awaits Distribution is a New York Times slideshow.

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January 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Most Recent Haiti Resources

Here are the most recent additions to The Best Sites To Learn About The Earthquake In Haiti:

Before and After is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

On The Scene In Haiti is another slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

USA Today has a useful Interactive map of Haiti and the earthquake zone.

MSNBC has several heartbreaking videos, but also one showing a successful rescue.

Haiti: Most Haunting Photos is a slideshow from LIFE.

When Haiti Was Young is another slideshow from LIFE.

Haiti’s History of Misery is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

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January 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Newscred Looks Good

Newscred looks like a great way students (and anyone else) can create their own personalized online newspaper. Of course, it’ll even be greater when their site is consistently up. They were written up in the TechCrunch blog today, and I suspect they’re being overwhelmed with traffic.

I’ve been looking for a good site performing this kind of service for awhile, and have written about my frustrations. I was finally able to get through to Newscred and was impressed. Once they work out their technical issues, it should be an ideal place for students to identify topics that they’re interested in and have an attractively designed and accessible source to read about it.

The site has 2500 news feeds. It’s simple as pie to set-up your paper, and you can create multiple papers on different topics.

Obviously, a fair amount of the information that shows-up in these feeds is going to be quite challenging for English Language Learners to understand. However, since it’s on the topics they choose, and shown in an attractive form, it will certainly provide high-interest reading material that one can hope they’d want to ‘fight-through” a bit to comprehend.

I’m tentatively adding Newscred to The Best News/Current Events Websites For English Language Learners — 2009 — assuming they fix their technical issues.

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January 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Two More Weeks To Contribute A Post To The ESL/EFL/ELL Carnival

The next edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival will be hosted by Shelly Terrell at Teacher Reboot Camp: Challenging Ourselves to Engage Our Students. Any blog posts, including examples of student work, that are related to teaching or learning English are welcome. You can contribute a post by using this easy submission form. The deadline is January 30th.

Alice Mercer hosted the Fourteenth Edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Carnival. Alice did a great job! ESL/EFL bloggers from around the world contributed thoughtful posts about issues related to teaching and learning English, and it’s not to be missed.

Karenne Sylvester at Kalinago English: Teaching Speaking Using Technology will host the following Carnival April 1st. Please leave a comment if you’re interested in hosting a future edition.

You can see all the previous fourteen editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

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January 14, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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A Growth Mind-Set For Educators

I’ve written a fair amount about the work of Carol Dweck, especially in the context of lessons I’ve done with students about looking at their brain as a muscle instead of something that’s set-in-stone.

She’s recently written an article for Principal Leadership titled Mind-Sets and Equitable Education. It’s a good review of the research and work she’s done with students though, if you’re familiar with her work, you probably won’t find anything new in that area.

However, it was the first time I’ve read about the research in the context of teachers. I’d strongly encourage you to read the free article, but wanted to reprint a small portion here:

Rheinberg (as cited in Dweck, 2007), a researcher in Germany, measured teachers’ mind-sets at the beginning of the school year. Some teachers believed that students had fixed intelligence and that they, as educators, had no influence on their students’ basic intellectual capabilities. Other teachers believed that they could mold and enhance their students’ intellectual skills. Rheinberg then monitored the students’ achievement over the school year. He found that when teachers had a fixed mind-set, the students who had entered their class as low achievers left as low achievers at the end of the year. When teachers had a growth mind-set, however, many of the students who had started the year as low achievers moved up and became moderate or even high achievers. Teachers with a growth mind-set don’t just mouth the belief that every student can learn; they are committed to finding a way to make that happen.

People with a growth mind-set don’t put people in categories and expect them to stay there, but people with a fixed mind-set do. They not only believe in fixed traits, but they also believe that they can quickly and accurately judge those traits. This means that once they have decided that someone is or is not capable, they are not very open to new information to the contrary. And they may not mentor people who they have decided are not capable.

When teachers decide that certain students are not capable (or when principals decide that certain teachers are not capable), they may not take steps to help them develop their potential. In a recent study, we took people who had a fixed or growth mind-set and we asked them to respond to a seventh-grade student who had received a poor grade on the first mathematics test of the year. Those who had a fixed mind-set comforted the student and told the student that not everyone could be good in mathematics.

In sharp contrast, those who had a growth mind-set said that they knew that the student could do better, encouraged the student to try harder, and gave the student specific suggestions for study and learning strategies. For the educator with a fixed mind-set, learning is the students’ responsibility. If students don’t have what it takes, so be it. But for the educator in a growth mind-set, learning is a collaboration in which the teacher has great responsibility.

Not a bad concept for us teachers to keep in mind…..

Thanks to Claus von Zastrow for the tip.

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January 14, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Mexican Museum On The Drug War

The Washington Post has a fascinating story and slideshow today about a museum the Mexican government has to help its officials and foreign guests learn about the drug war it’s fighting. It’s not open to general public. Mexican museum details the real enemy: drug cartels is the name of the slideshow. Here’s how the article describes it:

Army Capt. Claudio Montane, the museum’s curator, meets visitors at the door and explains, “The idea is to show the history of drugs, the various methods of the narcos, our operations and interceptions against them, as well as their mode of life, the social phenomenon of this narco-culture.”

The article isn’t accessible to ELL’s, but portions could be modified. It’s titled In harsh reflection of reality, Mexico’s Museum of Drugs outgrowing its space.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About Mexico’s Drug War.

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January 14, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Part Forty-Four 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:

MAKE A STORY COLLAGE: The Library of Congress has a neat Storybook activity. First, users have to answer some simple questions from The Wizard Of Oz, The Mermaid, and Aladdin (book excerpts are provided) and then you can make a collage out of the book’s characters that you can email and post on a teacher website or blog.

CREATE SUBTITLES TO SOCCER & TV PROGRAM VIDEOS YOU CREATE: I’ve written several times about the incredibly useful and fun Bombay TV, where you can create your own videos from cheesy clips and write subtitles (it’s my number one rated app on The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s Content) list.

Well, now it’s created sister sites where you can do the same with clips from old TV programs and from soccer games. They’re called Bombay TV 2, Futebol TV and Classik TV.

SEND AN eCARD WITH AN ENVIRONMENTAL MESSAGE: The National Building Museum lets you send some very informative Green Community E-Cards, which can then be posted on a teacher/student website or blog.

CREATE A TALKING POTATO-HEAD BASKETBALL: Yes, the title is accurate. Create it, make it talk with its text-to-speech feature, and post it on a teacher/student website/blog if you dare.

MAKE A SNOWFLAKE WITH A MESSAGE: Flurrious lets you design a snowflake, write a message that goes along with it, and then send it to yourself or a friend so you can get its url address to post on a student/teacher blog or website. The site says it will donate $1 to UNICEF for every snowflake sent, but I can’t really tell who’s behind the site to confirm that claim.

Feedback is always welcome.

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

You might also want to explore the 400 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

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January 14, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Incredible Infographic

The Flowing Data blog has created an incredible infographic on world demographics. It’s designed to be a poster for sale, but there’s an online zoomable version. This is their simple description:

In whole, the report tells a story of how we live and die, and the stuff in between.

Though it’s “busy-looking,” I haven’t seen any other kind of graphical representation of this amount of data, which makes it a lot more accessible to English Language Learners than most encyclopedias.

I’m adding it to The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners.

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