Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

December 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Yahoo Not Shutting Down Delicious Immediately & Looking For Buyer

Yahoo, in a statement released today, says it won’t be shutting down Delicious immediately and will be looking for a buyer. “We believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive,” the company said.

You can learn more about it here at The Atlantic.

I’ll add this link to The Best Sites For Figuring Out What To Do If Delicious Shuts Down.

December 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
5 Comments

The Best Posts To Help Understand Google’s New “Books Ngram Viewer”

I’m still trying to “get my head around” how to use Google’s new “Books Ngram Viewer,” the amazing application announced yesterday that allows you to easily analyze “the 500 billion words contained in books published between 1500 and 2008 in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Russian.” I’m sure there are ways to use it effectively with students — English Language Learners and mainstream — but I just haven’t had a chance to think about how.

Please feel free to share ideas in the comments section.

In the meantime, though, I thought I’d start collecting posts and article that provide information about the service itself.

Here are my choices for The Best Posts To Help Understand Google’s New Books Ngram Viewer:

In 500 Billion Words, New Window on Culture is from The New York Times

New Visualization Tool from Google With Data From 5.2 Million Digitized Books is from Read Write Web

The cultural genome: Google Books reveals traces of fame, censorship and changing languages is from Discover

New Tool Tracks Culture Through the Centuries via Google Books is from Scientific American

Peter Pappas shares some good ideas on how to use it with students at his post, How To Quantify Culture? Explore 500 Billion Published Words

Word-Wide Web Launches is an interesting article and video from The Wall Street Journal

You can see great examples of the Ngram Viewer in action over at The Atlantic, which has created a slideshow of comparing the usage of a number of words over time.

Here are more examples: 10 Fascinating Word Graphs, From 200 Years of Google Books

Ngrams is a blog that shares different Ngrams that people contribute.

The Google Books Ngram Viewer is a very thoughtful article by Data Visualization.

What Google Knows About Men vs. Women is a fascinating visualization using data from Google’s Ngram Viewer. It’s an analysis of how the words “he” and “she” have been used over the past two hundred years. There’s a good explanation that goes with the visualization.

Here’s a video about the Ngram Viewer (Thanks to Richard Byrne for the tip):

Coincidentally, the same day I posted a very intriguing Google Ngram about teaching in my Education Week Teacher column, TED Talks released a video about the Google Ngram:

Feedback is 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 600 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

December 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best “Year In Review” Features That Aren’t Photo Collections — 2010

Each year, I post a “The Best…” list of good and accessible “year in review” features, and I thought I’d get started now…I’ll be adding more as they come online.

This is different from The Best Year-End Collections Of Images — 2010. The sites on this list typically has more text, though most of them are relatively accessible.

Here are my choices for The Best “Year In Review” Features That Aren’t Photo Collections — 2010:

Yahoo’s 2010 Year In Review

Newsweek 2010 Year In Review

The Top 10 Everything of 2010 from TIME Magazine

The 10th Annual Year In Ideas from The New York Times

Looking Back at 2010: Teaching Ideas is a very nice piece from The New York Times Learning Network. It suggests a number of ways to use “year in review” features.

The Atlantic’s “2010 In Review” is surprising accessible and includes several slideshows.

Again, I’ll be adding more as the month progresses.

Feedback is 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 600 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

December 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

New Christmas Resources

Here are the newest additions to The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa:

ESOL Courses has created a massive Christmas resource list

Christmas Celebrations Around The World

Christmas lights illuminate the night is a series of photos from The Sacramento Bee

Christmas Cards Are For The Dogs is a video from The Wall Street Journal about dogs sending Christmas cards (?)

December 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

“The Best and Worst Countries to Be a Mother”

The Best and Worst Countries to Be a Mother is an interactive map. This is its description:

“This map shows 2010 Mothers’ Index around the world. The Mothers’ Index helps document conditions for mothers and children in 160 countries (43 developed nations and 117 in the developing world) and shows where mothers fare best and where they face the greatest hardships. All countries for which sufficient data are available are included in the Index.”

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Mother’s Day.

December 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
9 Comments

The Best Sites For Figuring Out What To Do If Delicious Shuts Down

See Delicious Unveils New Features for the most recent update…

And here are some even newer updates:

Delicious Adds Collaboration and One-Ups Pinterest With Privacy is a TechCrunch post about some new additions to the Delicious bookmarking service.

NOTE: As you might have heard already, there are changed coming to Delicious, the social bookmarking application. You can read all about it at TechCrunch, Yahoo Sells Delicious To YouTube Founders.

And, if you haven’t already received an email from Delicious telling you what you have to do in order to transfer your bookmarks to the new Delicious, you can find the instructions here.

(A day after the news broke, Yahoo says it won’t be shutting down Delicious immediately and will be looking for a buyer. “We believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive,” the company said. You can learn more about it here at The Atlantic.)

The Web is abuzz today with what appear to be fairly solid rumors that Yahoo has made a decision to shut-down the popular Delicious social bookmarking site.

At the time I’m writing this post, though, Yahoo still has not confirmed nor denied the report (and not a peep about it on the Delicious blog). Ironically, they’re making this response (or non-response) when the report from TechCrunch about their shutting it down has been the most-linked site by users of Delicious for most of the day. Other posts about its demise have been in the top ten most bookmarked links.

I’m sure I’ll be adding to this “The Best…” list, but I thought it would be useful to get it started. I doubt that — if indeed this report is true — Yahoo is going to shut it down immediately, so they’ll be time to figure out plenty of alternatives.

So, here are my choices for The Best Sites For Figuring Out What To Do If Delicious Shuts Down:

First, of course, I have to include the TechCrunch post, Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes].

Alec Couros and others have begun a collaborative Google Doc sharing very useful information on various Delicious alternatives.

I have just revised and updated The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students, which is definitely worth a look. It also includes ideas on how I use them with students.

Vicki Davis has written a post titled Why We Need Social Bookmarking and What To Do in the Wake of Delicious’ Demise.

Delicious is Closing…how to import your bookmarks into diigo in 5 minutes is a very useful post by Michael Wacker.

6 Solid Alternatives to Delicious comes from The Next Web.

Rest in Peace, Del.icio.us by Gizmodo has some useful ideas and links.

Delicious Shutting Down: How To Save Your Bookmarks from Tech Cocktail is worth a look.

10 Alternatives To Delicious.com Bookmarking comes from Search Engine Land.

How to Export Your Delicious Bookmarks and Import Them Into Your Favorite Browser is from Lifehacker.

Here’s a site that lets you export your Delicious links to Google Bookmarks

Trunk.ly looks like another alternative worth considering.

A comparison of bookmarking tools – after Delicious’ shutting down debacle

2 Easy Ways to Keep Your Delicious Account Alive and Updated! is a useful post from Jeff Thomas. Among other things, he explains how you can easily save bookmarks to both Diigo and to Delicious at the same time, which I didn’t know about.

Google has finally created a process that makes it a lot easier to move Delicious bookmarks over to Google Bookmarks. You can read all about it at this TechCrunch post.

Backing Up diigo is a useful post from Doug Peterson.

Feel free to offer other suggestions.

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

You might also want to explore the over 500 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

December 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Posterous Launches What Might Be The Easiest Way To Create a “Social Network” On The Web

Posterous, the blogging platform, has just launched a “Groups” feature that might be the easiest way to create a public or private social network on the web.

Instead of explaining it in detail here, I’m just going to recommend you visit a TechCrunch post that provides a better explanation than I could probably write.

I’m adding these links to Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Social Network Sites and to The Best Online Tools For Collaboration — NOT In Real Time.

December 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

“What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets”

What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets is the title of a slideshow from The Telegraph. Here is how they describe it:

Husband-and-wife team Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, from California, spent three years and $1 million visiting 80 individuals around the world to document what they eat on a single day. The result is a contrasting picture of what people around the globe consume. With each image Menzel and D’Aluisio add context to the profiles with essays on food politics and cultural obsessions with diet. Here is a selection of images from the book.

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

December 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

“Researchers Give Advice for Teaching Social Studies to ELLs”

Researchers Give Advice for Teaching Social Studies to ELLs is a post by Mary Ann Zehr at the Learning The Language blog. Her post gives an overview of some new research on the topic, along with useful links.

It particularly caught my eye because it’s possible that after taking a two-year break from teaching Social Studies classes to intermediate ELL’s, I might go back to teaching a class next year.

December 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Part Two Of The Best Videos For Educators — 2010

Yesterday, I posted The Ten Best Videos For Educators — 2010.

Today, I’d like to share “Part Two,” which includes videos that didn’t quite “make the cut,” but which I think readers will find useful, anyway. In addition, this list includes some clips that weren’t actually produced in 2010, but which I learned about this year.

Here are my choices for Part Two Of The Best Videos For Educators — 2010:

Ellen Galinsky has created a great new video titled “Focus And Self Control” on the famous “marshmallow” test. You can read how I have used this in classroom at my previous post, “I Like This Lesson Because It Make Me Have a Longer Temper” (Part One).

There are two things that make this video stand-out (it’s a nice compliment to the one I’ve used in the past). One, it shows Dr. Walter Mischel, the originator of the experiment, actually saying what the long-term implications of the test might be. Since students read about him in the lesson, it will have a double impact. Secondly, the video shows a fun “reverse Simon Sez” activity designed to help children develop self-control skills. It’s obviously designed for small children, but I’m sure even high school students would enjoy doing it for a few minutes after they see the video.

The only existing moving images of Anne Frank were discovered this year. It’s only a few seconds but, if you’re studying her in class, just showing that she was truly a living and breathing person can have an impact on students.

Here’s how Mashable describes it: At the 9 second mark in the clip, you can see Anne Frank leaning out of a second-story window as she watches a bride and groom exit a neighboring address. The Guardian reports that the scene dates back to July 22, 1941 and was provided to the museum by the couple in the 1990s.

Nature By The Numbers is an incredible video “inspired on numbers, geometry and nature”:

This year, I watched the movie “Dangerous Minds” (I might have been one of the few teachers out there who hadn’t seen it earlier). It’s an engaging movie, but it’s one in a long line of nauseatingly paternalistic hero teacher films out there. However, it does have a great two minute clip of a teacher home visit that shows the importance of telling parents positive news about their children:

Volkswagen sponsors a site that shows videos designed to encourage people to do activities that promote social good by making them fun — an idea that all of us teachers might want to keep in mind. You can see all of them at The Fun Theory, and here’s the one that started it off:

Will Richardson highlighted this short clip from the movie “Apollo 13.” You couldn’t find a better one that would show what problem-based learning was all about:

I suspect many people saw “Famous Failures” before I did this year, and it’s a good one:

And everybody has got to see Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes:

As a bonus, two years ago Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach wrote an excellent post including this extraordinary video on John Dewey and progressive education:

Additional contributions are 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 600 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.