Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Monthly Archives: December 2010

December 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Resilience, Research, and Educational Reform”

Resilience, Research, and Educational Reform is the title of a useful article by Sara Truebridge.

Here’s an excerpt:

Resilience research in education specifically recognizes three protective factors that, when present in an educational environment, mitigate risk and enhance positive educational climates that promote student engagement, motivation, and self-efficacy, which in turn increase student success. These three protective factors are: (1) fostering caring relationships, (2) conveying high expectations, and (3) promoting opportunities for meaningful participation.

She goes on to suggest ways to implement these in the classroom.

The article is worth a visit.

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December 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Find The Most Shared Links On Facebook

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.”

You might be interested in The Best Places To Find The Most Popular (& Useful) Resources For Educators –2010.

Today, I learned about another interesting place to find “popular” items — All Things Now lists the most shared content on Facebook.

It looks like it could be useful.

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December 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Will firing 5-10 percent of teachers make us Finland?”

Will firing 5-10 percent of teachers make us Finland? is a new post at Valerie Strauss’ blog at The Washington Post. It’s written by Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute.

Here are some excerpts:

In the world of education policy, the following assertion has become ubiquitous: If we just fire the bottom 5-10 percent of teachers, our test scores will be at the level of the highest-performing nations, such as Finland. Michelle Rhee likes to make this claim. So does Bill Gates….

But anyone who says that firing the bottom 5-10 percent of teachers is all we have to do to boost our scores to Finland-like levels is selling magic beans—and not only because of cross-national poverty differences or the inherent limitations of most tests as valid measures of student learning…

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December 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Part Fifty-Five 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 — 2010.

I’ll also be publishing an “all-time best” list next year.

Here are the newest additions:

TURN A MAP INTO HOLIDAY CARD: You can send a virtual Christmas card using Google Maps.

MAKE A MUSIC VIDEO: Disneyland offers you the opportunity to create your own virtual dolls and place them in a music video with your own personal messages. You can then email the link or embed it in a blog or website. English Language Learners could have a great time making it (no registration is required and it only takes a few minutes), posting it on a student/teacher blog or website, and describing what they’ve created. The music in the video is “It’s A Small World After All,” which is also easy for ELL’s to understand. Too bad it’s annoying to so many of the rest of us :)

MAKE A WILD-LOOKING MESSAGE: Message Hop lets you create wild-looking messages with photos and text, or just text. No registration is needed, and you are given a unique url address for your creation.

CREATE A FAKE iPHONE TEXT CONVERSATION: Boy, this could be a great tool to help English Language Learner students practice writing and reading dialogue — FakeiPhoneText lets you create a text conversation that looks like the real thing and give you a unique url address of your creation. Plus, no registration is required. Obviously, this kind of conversation can also be created just as easily on paper. And, even with this app, a draft could be written on paper, and then could be typed on Word so students can use a spell and grammar check. But I’m sure they would love to be able to do a final version on something like this, which could then be posted on a student/teacher blog or website.

MAKE MUSIC BY BUILDING A CITY: At Isle Of Tune, you create music by creating a city. Yes, that’s right, you “drag-and-drop” different parts of a city — homes, cars, trees, etc. — and each one has a musical tone. Then click “Go” and the car prompts the different elements to do their thing. No registration is required, and you’re given the url address of your creation to share. As a bonus to English Language Learners, the different parts of the city are labeled, so students can pick up vocabulary at the same time. Plus, they can describe their musical creations.

Additional suggestions are 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 nearly 500 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

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December 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Isle Of Tune” Is A Super-Fun Way To Create Music

At Isle Of Tune, you create music by creating a city.

Yes, that’s right, you “drag-and-drop” different parts of a city — homes, cars, trees, etc. — and each one has a musical tone. Then click “Go” and the car prompts the different elements to do their thing.

No registration is required, and you’re given the url address of your creation to share.

As a bonus to English Language Learners, the different parts of the city are labeled, so students can pick up vocabulary at the same time. Plus, they can describe their musical creations.

I’m adding it to The Best Online Sites For Creating Music.

Thanks to TechCrunch for the tip.

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December 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

The Best Resources For “Bill Of Rights Day”

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared December 15 to be Bill of Rights Day, and it continues to be recognized. Obviously, this year I’m a little “late to the party.” I had bookmarked all the links I prior to that date, but just didn’t have it in me to write a post earlier. At least it will be available for next year :)

You might also be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About The Constitution Of The United States.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources For “Bill Of Rights Day”:

EL Civics has a Bill of Rights Lesson designed for English Language Learners.

You can find links, lesson plans, and downloadable materials I developed for teaching the Bill of Rights to my United States History ELL class here.

Here’s the Bill of Rights Game from The Constitution Center.

Life Without The Bill of Rights is another online exercise.

Bill of Rights Match Game

The Bill of Rights Game comes from the Annenberg Foundation.

The Bill of Rights Institute also has a number of teacher resources.

Your Bill of Rights is an impressive feature from TIME Magazine.

I’d certainly be interested in hearing other suggestions, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

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.

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December 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Around The World Via A Day’s Worth Of Foods”

“Around The World Via A Day’s Worth Of Foods” is a slideshow from TIME Magazine that is somewhat similar to one I posted about a few days ago.

Here’s their description:

In their new book, What I Eat, photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio present thought-provoking portraits of individuals around the globe and the food that fuels them over the course of a single day.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures.

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December 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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My Holiday Gift To You…

I just received a special Christmas gift from Mary Ochs, a good friend who gave me my first job as a community organizer twenty-seven years ago and who was my mentor during my nineteen year organizing career.

It was an older copy of a very small book titled “Axioms For Organizers” by Fred Ross, Sr.

Fred Ross, Sr. was a legendary community organizer. While working for the Industrial Areas Foundation (which I worked for during most of my organizing career) he became Cesar Chavez’s key mentor and advisor. Ross was the author of an extraordinary book that is still available titled Conquering Goliath: Cesar Chavez at the Beginning.

Even though the little book that Mary sent me is long out-of-print, a quick Internet search found that it’s still available on a free online PDF.

The book is directed towards organizers, but all of Fred’s axioms offer important advice to teachers, as well.

I’d encourage you to review the entire PDF, which is very short, and here are a few of my favorites:

Short-Cuts –Short-cuts usually end in detours, which lead to dead ends.

Social Arsonist –A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.

People – It’s the way people are that counts, not the way you’d like them to be.

Organizing Is –Organizing is providing people with the opportunity to become aware of their own capabilities and potential.

Questions –When you are tempted to make a statement, ask a question.

I hope you enjoy my gift!

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December 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Private Foundations & Schools

Regular readers know that I have some issues with how many private foundations operate. You can learn more in my piece for The Huffington Post, Private Foundations Have A Place (And Have To Be Kept In Their Place).

Now, the National Committee For Responsive Philanthropy, an excellent organization, has just published a related and useful report titled Confronting Systemic Inequity in Education: High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy.

Here’s how the site describes it:

Every year, foundations provide billions in grants for education. Yet, our education system is in crisis: American schoolchildren – especially those from vulnerable communities – remain trapped in a continuous cycle of inequities in educational access and opportunities.

How can philanthropy be more effective at deploying its limited resources to help reform and improve our nation’s school systems? How can philanthropy help break the cycle of persistent inequality, which undermines our American ideals that public education strengthens democracy and our economy, and promotes justice, equity and opportunity?

Confronting Systemic Inequity in Education offers two high impact strategies for education grantmakers to more effectively achieve their missions and help address the root causes of intergenerational inequalities. It recommends a deliberate focus on the needs of students from marginalized communities and on supporting efforts that seek to influence education policy in the country through advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement.

It’s definitely worth checking-out.

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