Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Monthly Archives: January 2011

January 21, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Sandra Day O’Connor’s Site To Change Immigration Game Because Of Your Comments

Last week I posted about a questionable online game on immigration issues that had just been added to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s civics website (see Has Sandra Day O’Connor’s Site Just Added A Weird & Insulting Game On Immigration? Or Am I Being Too Sensitive?).

A few days I ago I sent the site an email encouraging them to look at the comments to that post and, because of those comments, they are making changes to the game. Here is what Jeff J. Curley, the Deputy Director of the site, wrote:

Hi Larry,

Thanks for your email about Immigration Nation. We’ve read through all of the comments, and we’re definitely open to making changes based on the constructive feedback. Designing a game for middle school students about current immigration law is obviously challenging. As evidenced by some of the posts, it’s very easy to politicize the topic. Our biggest realization is that the game may unintentionally trivialize those immigrants who are denied a path to citizenship. This came about because we did not want to put students in the position of making immigration decisions, which – while consistent with current policy – they might personally disagree with. We used silly humor to help the player differentiate legitimate requests from non-legitimate requests.

But we appreciate Kate, Bill, Kara, Agnes, and Clarissa’s comments about how this humor undermines the significance of anyone’s decision to immigrate. This was certainly not our intent, but we see how this might result in negative student perceptions about immigrants. Based on your comments and others on your blog, we plan to remove all scenarios where people are denied entry. We hope that will address the main criticism in the thread and improve the learning outcomes of the game – understanding the paths to citizenship in our country.

We work extremely hard to make our games nonpartisan and nonpolitical, and as Alice suggested, we try to “leave it to teachers as to whether they want a discussion about the politics behind” current policy. We are proud that iCivics games have been played more than 1.5 million times in just over year, and we have received less than a handful of complaints about political bias. We therefore take the comments on this thread very seriously.

Thank you for starting this dialogue, and please continue to let us know what you think of the iCivics games. We welcome feedback at http://www.icivics.org/contact

I appreciate the responsiveness of the site to this important issue…

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January 21, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Projeqt” Looks Like It Could Good For Creating Interactive Slideshows

Projeqt is a very new application — you still need an invite to use it (I requested one in December and just received it) that lets you create what you could call interactive slideshows. In some ways, I might describe it as a more sophisticated Prezi that’s easier to create and less confusing to watch.

It’s not as simple to use as the other apps on The Best Ways To Create Online Slideshows list, but English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users could pick it up pretty quickly (and I’m adding it to that list).

If you or your students wanted to create something with a little more pizazz, Projeqt might be the ticket once it gets out of beta.

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January 20, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

Michelle Rhee Moves Her Headquarters To…My Neighborhood

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, Michelle Rhee’s fiancée, announced today that she was moving the headquarters of her new organization, StudentsFirst, here to Sacramento.

Lucky us…

I have written quite a bit about Ms. Rhee and her education policies, which I don’t believe are beneficial to teachers, students, or communities.

(Read more about her move in The Washington Post)

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January 20, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Places For Students To Learn About…Their Names

One of the keys ways to help students develop their reading skills is to help them find something they’re interested in reading about.

Learning about their names, and the name of their family members and friends, could certainly fit into the “high-interest” category. And there are several websites that are designed to facilitate learning just that. After exploring these sites (or before), students can also talk with their family to learn other stories behind their names.

Here are my choices for The Best Places For Students To Learn About…Their Names:

WHAT A LOVELY NAME:

What A Lovely Name lets you type in a first name and learn about its origin and symbolism. You can actually create a logo for it, and then email the link for posting on a teacher blog or website.

It certainly would make for high-interest reading — a student could learn about his/her name or a family member’s or girl/boyfriend’s name. The descriptions are short, simple, and accessible to English Language Learners. Students could use the information they found to do a little more research (if their name has Hebrew origins, they could learn more about what that meant) and share what they learn, or they could just write what the found particularly interesting and why.

The only drawback I saw was that, even though the site appears to have a database of thousands of names, and it definitely includes ones more prevalent in Latino families, there seems to be a dearth of common Asian ones. For those of us with many Hmong, Mien, Chinese, and Vietnamese ELL students (and from other Asian countries) then, using it in the way I suggested isn’t an option. However, you can add names to the database with information, so that in itself be another assignment for an authentic audience.

PUBLIC PROFILER/WORLD NAMES:

Public Profiler/World Names is a great web tool that will easily (and for free) let you map the origin of your last name and see how far its spread throughout the world. You can read aBBC news article about it.

It’s accessible to English Language Learners and to everybody else. It can be used in a variety of ways. I’ll be making it into a combination history/geography lesson, for example. Where are the names located and what are some reasons/events do you think got them to go there?

BABY NAME VOYAGER:

Baby Name Voyager is a fascinating data visualization tool that shows you the popularity of specific names during the last thirteen decades. You just type in a name, and an interactive chart appears seconds later. It’s really pretty interesting.

But that’s not really why I’m writing about it. Even better, you click on a name and you’re given information about it, and offered the opportunity to write about it. Now, for students, this is pretty high-interest stuff — learn how popular your name has been over the past 130 years, learn about its historical roots, and write about your personal experience with it as your name.

There are some caveats, though. It only shows the most popular 1000 names in a decade, and it appears (though I can’t be sure) to show only names in the United States. It seems to have a fairly large number of Latino names, but there are very few Asian ones. So it’s problematic for teachers in a school like mine (one-third Southeast Asian) to use the site.

USA SURNAMES INTERACTIVE

USA Surnames Interactive comes from National Geographic, and is a little different from the other sites I’ve mentioned. Here, you see a map of the United States, and it shows what names are most common where.

Additional suggestions 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 over 600 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

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January 20, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Thinking About Our Ancestors Helps Us Do Better In Tests

Researchers have found that students spending a few minutes just thinking about ancestors — deceased or alive –or writing about them prior to taking a standardized test will result in greater effort and better results.

The researchers wrote:

…thinking about our ancestors should mostly remind us about eventful and successful lives. Normally, our ancestors managed to overcome a multitude of personal and societal problems, such as severe illnesses, wars, loss of loved ones or severe economic declines. So, when we think about them, we are reminded that humans who are genetically similar to us can successfully overcome a multitude of problems and adversities. In other words, because we are the successors of our ancestors and thus their genetic heritage, we tend to attribute successful problem-solving of our ancestors to our own problem-solving abilities.

They went on to conclude:

We showed that an easy reminder about our ancestors can significantly increase intellectual performance. Hence, whenever people are in a situation where intellectual performance is extraordinarily important, for example, in exams or job interviews, they have an easy technique to increase their success.

It certainly couldn’t hurt having students to this kind of exercise for a few minutes prior to a high-stakes project, like a standardized test.

I’m adding this post to My Best Posts On How To Prepare For Standardized Tests (And Why They’re Bad).

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January 20, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” Editor Moving To The Atlantic

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature has been a frequent site on “The Best…” lists. Its collection of photos on important events of the day have been unparalleled.

Now, however, the Big Picture’s creator, Alan Taylor, is leaving to create a similar feature of photo essays for The Atlantic, called In Focus.

With luck, The Globe will find someone good to continue the “Big Picture,” and we’ll all end up with two excellent photo sites.

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January 19, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“When Teaching Restrains Discovery”

As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of inductive learning — the idea of providing examples so that students discover the concept or rule (in a scaffolded way) instead of the teacher providing the concept or rule and having students implement them (deductive learning).

I write extensively about how I apply this concept in the classroom in my book on teaching English Language Learners and in my upcoming book, Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Challenges.

The great blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science (hosted at Discover), recounts a new set of experiments that demonstrate the importance of this instructional method in a post titled “When Teaching Restrains Discovery.”

It’s a little too extensive for me to explain here, so I’d encourage you to read the post there about a new paper describing the experiments. Here’s how the post ends:

Bonawitz [the lead researcher] quotes the famous child researchers Jean Piaget, who said that the “principal goal of education” was to create people “who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done”. If we’re going to do that ,we’ll need to find ways of encouraging that natural instinct to investigate, play and explore, rather than suppressing it…

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January 19, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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More Evidence That Bribes Don’t Work For Actions That Require Higher Order Thinking Skills

I’ve written about a lot of research (for example, Daniel Pink’s book “Drive”), and my own practical experience, that shows that bribes are effective in increasing activity requiring little cognitive effort, but in effective in generating action requiring higher-order thinking skills.

I have many related posts in My Best Posts On “Motivating” Students, and write extensively about it in my upcoming book, Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Challenges.

Today, The Guardian ran an article headlined Yes, bonuses do work – but for fruit-pickers, not City bankers, which provides more evidence for this perspective. Here’s an excerpt talking about a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston:

When it came to the simple chore of hitting computer keys, bonuses worked a treat: the more cash on offer, the faster the undergraduates tapped. On the more complex task of doing maths, however, incentives served to worsen performance. “Tasks that involve only effort are likely to benefit from increased incentives,” wrote the economists. “While for tasks that include a cognitive component, there seems to be a level of incentive beyond which further increases can have detrimental effects on performance.”

In other words, bonuses can spur workers on to do basic mechanical tasks faster and better – clearing a field of fruit before it goes rotten, say, or scanning in multi-packs of Andrex in busy supermarkets. But on more complex tasks, any sum beyond a paltry one is counter-productive.

When will more teachers realize it doesn’t work in the classroom over the long-term (though, as my posts on the previously-mentioned “The Best…” list and my book point out, sometimes temporary incentives for basic behavioral changes are necessary), and when will some “school reform” advocates learn merit pay won’t work for teachers, either?

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January 19, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Two Very Useful Resources On Blogging

Here are two very useful resources I’ve just added to The Best Sources Of Advice For Teachers (And Others!) On How To Be Better Bloggers:

Are science blogs stuck in an echo chamber? Chamber? Chamber? comes from Discover. It focuses on science blogs, but the same questions it raises, and suggested strategies it offers, are very applicable to education bloggers.

10 Ways To Write Better Blog Posts comes from Wes Fryer.

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January 19, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“A Brief History Of People Power”

A Brief History of People Power is the title of a slideshow from TIME Magazine. This is how they describe it:

As mass protests in Tunisia seek to bring about regime change, TIME looks at other instances of popular rebellion.

This could be a very useful tool for Social Studies teachers, and may end up in the Best Social Studies Sites of 2011 list.

By the way, you might be interested in The Best Social Studies Websites — 2010.

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January 19, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Chat With Authors Of “Teaching 2030″ This Thursday

Yesterday, I posted an interview with Barnett Berry and Ariel Sacks, two of thirteen authors of the new book, “Teaching 2030.”

This Thursday, you can have a chance to talk with the authors yourself!

Barnett Berry and one or more co-authors of Teaching 2030 will be interviewed by Steve Hargadon this Thursday as part of Steve’s Future of Education webinar series.

The events take place in Elluminate Live and are open to everyone. You can get the details on accessing the event at this page in Hargadon’s blog. But here are the basics:

Date: Thursday, January 20th, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 1am GMT
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early.

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January 19, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Posts & Articles About Videotaping Teachers In The Classroom

Videotaping teachers in the classroom has been in the news a lot lately, with the Gates Foundation spending millions on doing just that.

I thought a short list of posts and articles that I’ve found informative (or posts that I have written that have helped crystallize my thinking about the topic) might be useful to readers.

My posts on the topic include links to extensive newspaper articles on the Gates Foundation project.

Here are my choices for The Best Posts & Articles About Videotaping Teachers In The Classroom:

Teachers and Nanny Cams: Compliance vs. Trust is a good post from Barnett Berry’s blog.

Big Brother vs. Teacher Professionalism comes from Nancy Flanagan at Ed Week.

Videotaping teachers the right way (not the Gates way) originally appeared in Teacher Magazine, and then was reprinted at The Washington Post yesterday. I think it’s just about the best thing I’ve ever written.

How I Milked A Lesson For Every Last Ounce Of Learning And Why I’m An Idiot For Not Thinking Of It Earlier is a post I wrote about sharing the Post article with my students.

Tape and Analysis to Produce Growth, not a Score is the title of a post by Kelly Young at Pebble Creek Labs. Kelly is our school’s consultant, and who has been leading the videotaping effort of teachers that I’ve been writing about. So, you can now read about my perspective, my student’s perspective and, now, the perspective from the person who was actually doing the videotape and critique.

Why I’m Afraid The Gates Foundation Might Be Minimizing Great Tools For Helping Teachers Improve Their Craft is another post I’ve written.

There Are Some Right Ways & Some Wrong Ways To Videotape Teachers — And This Is A Wrong Way is the original post I wrote about the issue, and contains links to newspaper articles about the Gates project.

And here’s an article describing the use of videotape at its worst and most destructive: Big Brother at Wyoming schools? Legislature considers filming teachers

Might Some School Reformers Have Anything In Common With The Bahraini Monarchy? is the unusual title of a blog post I wrote that speaks to the videotaping topic.

Additional suggestions 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 over 600 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

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