Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Here’s my monthly round-up of “The Best…” lists I’ve posted in November (of course, you can find all 340 or so of them here):

The Best Sites For Teachers Of English Language Learners — 2009

The Best Sites To Learn And Teach About The Hajj — November, 2009

The “Best” Articles (And Blog Posts) About Education Policy — 2009

The Best Tools For Making Screencasts — November, 2009

The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2009

Part Forty-One Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — November, 2009

The Best Sites To Learn About Walls That Separate Us — November, 2009

The Best Ways ESL/EFL/ELL Teachers Can Develop Personal Learning Networks — November, 2009

The Best Tools For Keeping Your Own Website Or Blog “Healthy” — November, 2009

The Best Online Resources For Teaching & Learning About World War II (Part One) — November, 2009

The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2009

The Best Online Resources For Helping Students Learn To Write Persuasive Essays — November, 2009

The Best Websites For English Language Learner Students — 2009

The Best Resources To Learn About The Convention On The Rights Of The Child — November, 2009

The Best Lists Of “Best Places To Live” — November, 2009

The Best Resources For Learning About World Toilet Day & The Issue Of Public Sanitation In The Third World — November, 2009

The Best Sites For Learning & Teaching About The Day Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe — November, 2009

The Best Places To Find Lyrics On The Web — November, 2009

The Best Online Resources To Learn About Charles Darwin — November, 2009

The Best Sites For Teaching About Latitude & Longitude — November, 2009

The Best Sites For Learning Spanish Online — November, 2009

The Best Places To Find Quotations On The Web — November, 2009

Part Forty-Two Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — November, 2009

The Best Online Resources For Learning About Eid al-Adha

Singing songs is a great way to help English Language Learners get past their understandable reluctance to speak in a new language, and a good vocabulary-building activity.  In addition, you can create clozes (fill-in-the-gaps) with the lyrics, use them to teach grammar, and have students use the real lyrics as models while they write their own.

It’s easy always been easy to find lyrics on the Internet, though often there are inaccuracies and so many lyrics sites have tons of annoying pop-up ads. I thought I’d create a “The Best…” list that shares places where there appear to be correct lyrics and no pop-ups.

You might also be interested in these other “The Best…” lists:

The Best Music Websites For Learning English
The Best Online Sites For Creating Music
The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners

Here are my choices for The Best Places To Find Lyrics On The Web:

Lyrster is a search engine that appears to search only collections of lyrics to songs. Just type in a few words and your results show links to the complete lyrics.  It performed quite well in my tests. The sites it searches include some, but I don’t believe all, of the other sites on this list.

Lyrics Fly is one of the best sites out there for finding song lyrics. You can also use it to find music audio and videos, but I’m primarily interested in the lyrics. The Make Use Of blog calls it “lyric search on steroids.”

Lyrics On Call

Lyrics Mode

Just Lyrics

E Lyrics

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

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.

As a companion list to The Best Sites For K-12 Beginning English Language Learners, I thought I’d put together a short list of my similar choices for Intermediate English Language Learners.  I’ll also be creating lists focusing on older ELL’s, too.

I thought that lists like these might make it a little easier for teachers, particularly newer ones — newer to teaching or newer to using technology in their teaching. Then, at their leisure, they can explore all the other more specialized “The Best…” lists.

Of course, links to all the sites on these lists can also be found on my website, along with thousands of others.

I’ve included nine sites here (there’s a tie for first place).

Here are my picks for The Best Sites For K-12 Intermediate English Language Learners:

Number eight is Wordmaster. It’s a great game from the BBC. In it, you’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words. And after you’ve either guessed the correct word or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.

I’ve put the Audio Slideshow Gallery at Reuters at number seven. The photos are excellent, they have very short captions, and the narration, though it isn’t an exact recitation of the text, is accessible. They do an audio slideshow each week summarizing key news events.

Number six is the California Distance Learning Project – Adult Learning Activities.  This site covers many topical issues with follow-up activities, though some of its stories are also a little dated.

Sing Snap is number five.  It’s a online karaoke site — great for speaking practice.   It’s easy to use, free-of-charge, and, if you don’t want to record, you can just listen to others sing while the screen shows the lyrics. Using a webcam is an option, but unlike many Web 2.0 sites, you can still use it if you just have a computer microphone.

Number four is Listen and Write. A user first chooses a text he/she wants to hear read to him/her. Many of the choices are from the Voice of America, and are both high-interest and accessible. Their levels of difficulty are also indicated. Then the story is dictated to you, and you have to type it correctly. You can choose the speed of the reading and how often it’s repeated. When you type only the correct letters actually show-up on the screen, and you can ask for hints.

Number three is Into The Book. This is an absolutely incredible resource designed to help students learn reading strategies – visualize, predict, summarize, etc. For the past couple of years it had only been partially completed. Now, however, all its exercises were finished. Users are led through the process of learning each reading strategy with interactive exercises.

The Everyday Life Project is number two. It’s sponsored by the Goodwill Community Foundation in North Carolina, and it has extraordinary interactive exercises for Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners.  Its activities on food, money, work, shopping and maps are excellent.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s a tie for first place.

For lower-and-mid-level Intermediate ELL’s, U.S.A Learns is number one.   It’s an incredible website to help users learn English.  Even though it’s primarily designed for older learners, it seems very accessible to all but the very youngest ELL’s.  It’s free to use. Students can register if they want to save their work and evaluate their progress.

For higher-level Intermediates, I’d recommend BITS Interactive Resources. It has nineteen “sets” of five different excellent reading activities focusing on “signs, details, matching, gist, and gap.”

I know others might feel differently about the sites I’ve placed on this list, and their ranking.  Feel free to offer feedback and make other suggestions.  I’m all ears!

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.

English Child Songs has a ton of ….children’s songs in English that are sung with animation, and also show the lyrics.

I’ve placed the link along with many other similar sites on my website under Music.

Over the past year I’ve posted about several sites that allow you to search for songs and then lets you play them off the Web. Most also let you create playlists you can maintain.

I use a lot of music when I’m teaching English Language Learners, especially with Beginners and Early Intermediate students. If these sites are legal, and if they’re not blocked by school content filters, they can be a great source of useful music. I always test them by searching for Raffi songs, and all the ones listed here have passed that test.  Others have not, and they did not make the list.

But “if these sites are legal” is the “rub.”  The sites say they are, and blogs that are far bigger and more respected than this one say they are, though it’s difficult for me to understand how that is the case. I haven’t really found anything they questions their legality, though.  I think it might have something to do with the fact they don’t actually allow downloads and people can only listen from the Web, but that’s just a guess. I’d appreciate somebody explaining to me in the comments section how that works.

Given my concern (which may be unfounded), and given that I also can’t really find much difference between how most of these sites work, I’m not officially labeling it one of my “The Best…” lists.

You can also find links to these sites on my webpages under Movies and Music For ESL.

You might also be interested in these “The Best…” lists:

The Best Music Websites For Learning English
The Best Online Sites For Creating Music
The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners

One of my next lists will highlight sites for lyrics.

Here’s my “List” of Music Sites where a teacher can find useful songs (they’re not in any order of preference except for the first one):

Soundflavor is an intriguing new site that does have one unique feature — you can search for music by subject (nature, war, peace, work, money, etc.). It looks like the results are a little uneven, but even so this kind of capability could be very helpful to an ESL/EFL teacher who’s being hard-pressed to find a song connected to a theme he/she is teaching in class.  That feature prompted me to place it on The Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners — 2008 list.

Mix Turtle

Grooveshark

Songza

Audiolizer

Dizzler

Fizy

Read Write Web just posted about a new online music service called Just Hear It.

Project Playlist

Favtape

Mixtape (Here’s a screencast on how Mixtape works)

MixPod

Meuzer

iZaRia

Moof

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.

Sing Snap is the newest addition to The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners.

It has all the best qualities of the other sites on that list — easy to use, free-of-charge, and, if you don’t want to record, you can just listen to others sing while the screen shows the lyrics. Using a webcam is an option, but unlike many Web 2.0 sites, you can still use it if you just have a computer microphone.

As I’ve mentioned before, I use music a lot — especially with Beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners. It’s a far less “threatening” way to become more comfortable speaking a second language.

Thanks to Mashable for the tip.

Materials about the famous 1914 Christmas Day Truce during World War I seemed to be worth adding to The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa. Here are some:

Social Studies For Kids has a very accessible and short description of the truce.

There are some excellent “music videos” on YouTube showing images with the soundtrack from two good songs about the Truce. Since so many districts block YouTube, you can download them into your laptop and use a converter so it’s viewable at school, or upload it into an Internet service like EdublogsTV.

One video features the song “Bellau Wood” and is sung by Garth Brooks. Here are the lyrics. The language is fairly accessible to English Language Learners. Here’s another video using images from the truce with the same song.

This video has good images and uses a different song called “Christmas In The Trenches.” It’s sung by John McCutcheon, and you can find the lyrics here. The language is a little difficult and “old-fashioned” since it’s taken from a letter written by a soldier who participated in the Truce.

Lyrster is a search engine that appears to search only collections of lyrics to songs. Just type in a few words and your results show links to the complete lyrics.

It performed quite well in my tests. The sites it searches include ones I’ve posted highly about in the past. Singing songs is a great way to help English Language Learners get past their understandable reluctance to speak in a new language, and a good vocabulary-building activity.

I’m adding it to my website under Movies and Music For ESL on my website. You can find links to other lyrics sites there, too.

Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa are all coming-up, and I thought it would be timely to create a “The Best…” list focusing on those holidays.

Obviously, there are a lot more materials about Christmas out there accessible to English Language Learners than there are for the other two events, but I have found some for all of them. You can also find these links, and many more, under Holidays on my website.

Few, if any, of this links are really tailored towards “higher-order” or “critical” thinking.  They all pretty much provide “just the facts” about the holidays.  As usual, I couldn’t really find good online resources that help broaden the topic to look at issues like over-consumption or commercialism in an accessible way.   It’s certainly feasible to do so, though, in classroom lessons building off the information learned from the sites on this list.  For example, I’ve had students define what the word “gift” means, and then reflect on what have been the most meaningful gifts that they have given or received.  Students then conclude (truthfully, I hope) that they can’t use the cost of objects to measure their value. I think it’s also worth reading this article called Christmas Curriculum: Unintended Consequences.

Here are my picks for The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa (not in order of preference):

CHRISTMAS:

ESL Civics For ESL Students has an accessible Christmas Lesson with nice images and simple text.

A Florida school has a page that provides audio to support to the text giving an overview of Christmas.

The New York Times has a slideshow on how Christmas is celebrated around the world.

Watch this fun video on Decorating For Christmas using time lapse photography from The Washington Post.

Here’s another fun slideshow called Santa Gone Wild. It’s from Time Magazine, and ” shows people who dress up like Santa Claus and make fools of themselves.”

Christmas Around the World is a slideshow from CBS.

Here’s a “drag-and-drop” Christmas vocabulary activity from Visual ESL.

The “North Pole” offers several “talking Christmas stories.”

The Beacon Learning Center has a nice story about a Christmas Bear.

ELLO has a good listening game. You can play Part One and Part Two.

Here’s a news story from CBBC Newsround about childhood obesity and Christmas. It has audio support for the text.

MES Games has an online Christmas vocabulary learning activity and game.

Oxford University Press has another Christmas vocabulary game.

What’s Christmas without music? The British Council has a Christmas Song. Listen to We Wish You A Merry Christmas! (you’ll need to open up two “windows” on your computer — one to click on the mp3 in the upper left hand side, and the other to leave the page showing the words to the song). Afterward, you can do a variety of exercises related to the song. And, of course, don’t forget about Jingle Bells!

This is one you have to check-out — the Family Friendly Simon Sez Santa.  Tell Santa what to do and he’ll do it.

Christmas In Sacramento And Around The World is a collection of great images from the Sacramento Bee.

Here’s a talking story about Santa’s Home.

The British Council has just come-out with several excellent online activities I’m adding to that list, and also to the Holidays section of my website.

They include:

Whose Present , a neat listening activity.

The Busy Elf, an entertaining Christmas song.

Santa’s Little Helper, a talking story.

A Letter To Santa , a sequencing activity.

All are accessible to Beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

With the Carol-Maker you can compose a never-heard-before mashup of strange grunts with classic Christmas songs, and email it to a friend (or enemy).

Students can send a Dancing Santa Claus and then post the link on a teacher or student website.  You can do the same with this Gingerbread Cookie Card.  Or a Crafty Christmas Card?

Another is the Merry Message from Better Homes and Gardens. Have Santa Claus deliver an audio message either by recording your own voice or by using the text-to-speech feature. Students can then post the link to their message on a blog or website.

The Gingerbread Man With Everything lets you create your own virtual…gingerbread man and send or post the link.

Yahoo has a weird, but cool, site called the Emoticarolers.  Pick a few of their emoticons, choose a Christmas carol, send it off to a friend or just paste the url on a teacher blog or website. A group of emoticons then sing your carol of choice and, even better, show the words as they sing them.  But that’s not all. If you want, you can write your own words to the carol they sing.

Make a snowflake, describe it, and post the link on a student/teacher blog or website.

You can send a Critter Carol — dogs singing a Christmas song, with a message you write included. Students can create on, and then post the url of their card on a website or blog.

Students can also watch one of my favorite Christmas movies, It’s A Wonderful Life — all with closed-captioning.

The History Channel has a site about The History of Christmas.

A series of images from the Sacramento Bee titled Holiday Mail gives us a picture of the holidays through a lens we don’t usually look through.

Scholastic has some nice online Christmas resources.

I’m adding three holiday lessons from ESL Holiday Lessons to this list.  They include both online and hand-out materials and activities.

Renee Maufroid, an English teacher in France, develops a lot of excellent ESL/EFL online activities. His latest is a nice game on The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Here are two listening activities related to Christmas from ELLO.

Here are some more Christmas slideshows from The New York Times:

Ready For Christmas: Preparations Around the World

To Each, A Personal Holiday

A Christmas Superstore

Santa Makes The Rounds

And here are slideshows and sources of general information about the Christmas Tree tradition:

A History of Christmas Trees that is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

A slideshow from The New York Times about the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center

Another slideshow on various trees and Christmas Tree farms

Better Homes and Gardens shows various ways to decorate a tree in this slideshow.

Materials about the famous 1914 Christmas Day Truce during World War I seemed to be worth adding to this list.  Here are some:

Social Studies For Kids has a very accessible and short description of the truce.

There are some excellent “music videos” on YouTube showing images with the soundtrack from two good songs about the Truce. Since so many districts block YouTube, you can download them into your laptop and use a converter so it’s viewable at school, or upload it into an Internet service like EdublogsTV.

One video features the song “Bellau Wood” and is sung by Garth Brooks. Here are the lyrics. The language is fairly accessible to English Language Learners. Here’s another video using images from the truce with the same song.

This video has good images and uses a different song called “Christmas In The Trenches.” It’s sung by John McCutcheon, and you can find the lyrics here. The language is a little difficult and “old-fashioned” since it’s taken from a letter written by a soldier who participated in the Truce.

The Center For The New American Dream has a good booklet in PDF form called “Simplify The Holidays.” Its language is not accessible to anyone other than advanced English Language Learners, but teachers can modify it for classroom use. It provides a lot of good information to help students think critically about the massive consumption focus of culture during this time of the year.  You have to register in order to gain access to the PDF, but it just takes a few seconds.

Changing The Present is an effort to encourage giving of charitable gifts over the holidays.

That in itself doesn’t make it stand-out in any major way — there are quite a few other groups with websites that do the same thing.  Changing the Present stands out, however, by two slickly-produced spoofs on typical television commercials that push consumption this time of year. These accessible videos can be excellent points to initiate discussion on the meaning of the holidays with students.

Santa Claus Boy Escape is the latest addition to this list.  It’s an online video game useful for English language-learning, as I’ve described in my article Pointing & Clicking For ESL: Using Video Games To Promote English Language Development.

The creator of the game describes it like this:

“This game is specially developed for Christmas celebration. During the beautiful season,a santa boy is trapped in a stranger’s house. No one is there to help him out. The only way to escape from the house is by using different objects and clues.”

I know it sounds strange, but if your school’s content filter will let it through, it’s a useful and fun game.

Here’s the Walkthrough.

A similar game is called Christmas Gift Escape. Here’s the Walkthrough.

Gatuno in Christmas offers the challenge of helping Gatuno find a gift for a child. Here’s the walkthrough.

The Christmas Fix is another online video game. Here’s the Walkthrough.

No Christmas Gifts This Year provides you a template of a letter you can send someone this year offering a gift of time instead of a bought present. The sentence frames are particularly good for English Language Learners, and the thought behind the idea is a good opportunity for discussion on what is important during the holidays.  You can email your letter and post it on a teacher/student website.

A Sacramento Bee slideshow on a Santa Parade

A San Francisco Chronicle slideshow about a Holiday Lights Parade…on water.

Santa Is Everywhere is a slideshow from Reuters.

MSNBC has a Faces of Santa slideshow.

The Sydney Morning Herald has a slideshow called Lighting-Up For Christmas. It has great images of how people are decorating the outside of their homes during the holiday season.

That’s A Wrap is a Washington Post slideshow on a Christmas-wrapping contest.

Holiday Lights From Around The World is a slideshow from the Hartford Courant,

Crazy Christmas Traditions is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

Santa Claus Around The World comes from the Sacramento Bee.

The Top Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Christmas is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

It Happened On Christmas Day is yet another TIME Magazine slideshow. This one highlights historical events that occurred on December 25th, and has accessible captions.

The videos shared in 17 Jaw-Dropping Christmas Light Shows are pretty amazing. When I share YouTube videos here, I generally only share the Edublogs TV link to them after I’ve uploaded the videos there. But they’re still not done moving Edublogs TV to a new server, so I can only offer YouTube versions.  These are unlikely to be accessible through school content filters.

But, even if you can’t use them in school right now, they’re pretty darn entertaining to watch at home.

You can design a virtual “holiday sweater,” describe it, and then both email and post the url address on a teacher/student website.  Just another strange example of viral marketing. You can read how I use viral marketing tools as language-learning opportunities in my article, Samuel L. Jackson, My ESL Students, And Me.

By calling a toll-free number, you can sing a Christmas duet with Elvis Presley and send it as an eCard.

A Christmas Story slideshow comes from the Las Vegas Sun.

Christmas Around The World is a slideshow from The New York Times.

Watch a Christmas tree being decorated at the Wisconsin State Capitol.

January 6th  is Three Kings Day.  This holiday is celebrated in many Latino households — often more enthusiastically than Christmas Day.

Here are some resources on Three Kings Day, also known as also known as the Epiphany and El Dia de los Reyes (some of the articles aren’t particularly accessible to English Language Learners, but can be modified by teachers):

CBS News has an article with a couple of nice photos, too.

Here’s an article in about how retail stores “cash-in” on the tradition.USA Today

Here’s a short slideshow from the Orange County Register about foods prepared for the day.

Here are some photos of a Three Kings Celebration in Spain.

Here are a series of photos from the Sacramento Bee showing how January 6th is celebrated around the world.

The New York TImes has a slideshow of a Three Kings Day parade In Harlem.

The End Of The Christmas Season is a slideshow from The Boston Globe.

Marvelous & Massive Megawatt Displays is a collection of amazing Christmas decorations.

The Washington Post has a slideshow on the Lighting of the National Christmas Tree.

Santa Makes The Rounds is a series of images from The Sacramento Bee.

A Christmas-related online reading comprehension exercise for English Language Learners.

Renee Maufroid has created several new Christmas exercises for ELL’s.

Chat with a Santa Bot.

Christmas Arrives At The Obama White House is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

Gift of Christmas Escape is an online video game. Here’s the walkthrough.

HANUKKAH:

Apples 4 The Teacher has a simple explanation of the holiday.

The History Channel has a site about Hanukkah, including a video.

Scholastic has some nice online Hanukkah resources.

Here’s another simple explanation of the Hanukkah holiday.

BBC Schools has a good site about Hanukkah, but it’s probably only accessible to advanced English Language Learners.

A Sacramento Bee slideshow on the Capitol Menorah Lighting Ceremony.

The Easy Valley Tribune has a Start Of Hanukkah slideshow.

EL Civics has a Hanukkah Lesson for English Language Learners.

The Orange County Register has a slideshow showing a synagogue’s celebration of Hanukkah.

Believe it or not, here’s a Math Game for Hanukkah.

The Start of Hanukkah is the title of another slideshow, this one from Reuters.

A Menorah Lighting slideshow comes from the Las Vegas Sun.

KWANZAA

Here’s a short piece on Kwanzaa that provides audio support for the text.

EL Civics for ESL Students has a nice lesson on Kwanzaa.

Here’s a simple explanation of Kwanzaa from Kulture Kidz.

The History Channel also has resources on Kwanzaa.

Scholastic also has online Kwanzaa resources.

The Orange County Register newspaper in southern California has a collection of excellent interactive graphics. I’m adding three of them to this list.  Coincidentally, they have ones on each of of these three holidays.  Here are the links:

Kwanzaa

Christmas

Hanukkah

I’m adding a site called American Folklore to this list.  It has many great short stories that would be accessible to English Language Learners, including one section on Holiday Stories and Winter Tales.

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.

The Boston Globe has posted the lyrics and audio of several patriotic songs.  What’s particularly interesting is that anyone who wants to can call a Boston phone number, sing one of the songs, and their version will get posted on the websit for all the world to hear.

The timing of this resource is especially good for my U.S. History class. We’re going to start studying the War of 1812 next week and, despite extensive searching, up until this link I had been unable to find the audio and lyrics together anywhere on the Web.

I’ve used music a lot with English Language Learners.  Singing feels much less threatening to many who are learning a new language.

Karaoke is a good language-development activity,  and there are quite a few karaoke sites on the Internet.  I thought it would be a good topic for a short “The Best…” list.

In order to make it on this list, a site has to be available free-of-charge (or at least some of its resources have to be free), easy-to-use, require no download, and allow students — either alone or in a group —  to record themselves singing.  A link to their performance can then be posted on a student or teacher website.

There are only a few sites that meet that criteria.  Here are my choices for The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners:

The Sims On Stage is clearly number one on the list. This wonderful site lets users easily record themselves singing karaoke and hosts the performances on-site.  If students don’t want to sing, they can listen to countless others who have while the lyrics are streaming across the screen. (Unfortunately, Sims On Stage closed down as of March 31, 2009)

A new one just opened for business today.   The Karaoke Channel Online has an extraordinary collection of songs available…for a price. However, if you choose the free option you have access to two hundred songs, though none of them are particularly up-to-date. But it’s a very easy process to record and save.

Karaoke Play is another site that lets you sing a favorite song and record it online.   What makes Karaoke Play a bit different from the others is that, in addition to showing the lyrics you need to sing, it shows a music video of the song. This difference also makes it more problematic for students. The videos are from You Tube, and most school districts block it. So, even though the site itself might get through District filters, students won’t see anything when they pick a song because the video will be blocked.  SMS Tunes is another similar site.

Sing Snap is the newest addition to this list.  It has all the best qualities of the other sites here — easy to use, free-of-charge, and, if you don’t want to record, you can just listen to others sing while the screen shows the lyrics. Using a webcam is an option, but unlike many Web 2.0 sites, you can still use it if you just have a computer microphone.

Karaoke Party is the newest free online karaoke site. Though I haven’t spent a lot of time checking it out, it seems very comparable to the others on this list.

You might also be interested in The Best Music Websites For Learning English and The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

I’d certainly be interested in hearing 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.

I’m always looking for nice sites, without a zillion pop-up ads, where I can find lyrics to songs I use in the classroom.

Searchhacker Lyrics is a newer one that seems to work relatively well.

I’ve placed the link under Movies and Music For ESL.

This is yet another installment in my “long-running” series highlighting web applications that allow English Language Learners (and any other non-tech savvy person) create engaging online content within minutes.

In addition to finding the previous twenty-three parts of this series under Websites of the Year, you can also find my picks of the best at The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2008.

Again, in order to make it on this list, the site has to allow users to create content that provides some English-language learning opportunity, be very easy to use, and also host the user’s creation and provide a link to it that can be posted on a teacher or student blog/website.

Here are my latest picks:

DESIGN AN OUTFIT: The Bravo Channel’s popular Project Runway show lets you Design An Outfit.  You can post the url of your creation on your site/blog.  In addition to providing an opportunity for English Language Learners to develop vocabulary related to clothing, they can describe their “outfit.”  Perhaps a classroom discussion on anorexia would be timely, too?

CREATE A SINGING M & M: At the Candy Lab you can upload a picture, or use of theirs, to appear on an M & M candy. Then, using the site’s text-to-speech feature, you can have your candy talk or sing.

TALK LIKE A PIRATE: Drag-and-drop various pirate-like phrases and send a talking message (spoken by a pirate) to a friend.

MAKE YOURSELF INTO A SUPERHERO: At Make Me Super you can upload your picture and create a video of yourself as a superhero.

FEEL LIKE SINGING?: In another example of the ability to use viral marketing in English-language development, English Language Learners can go to the Nokia Musical Mighty site.  There, they can “plug-in” the kind of music they like, then upload their image or choose one on the site, and then, finally, using the text-to-speech feature, they develop their own lyrics to the song that will then be sung by a computer-generated voice. The link to the final result can be emailed or embedded.

RECORD A MILK COMMERCIAL: Create an animated milk commercial and post its link on your website, and/or send it to a friend.

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This “The Best…” list is a bit different from The Best Music Websites For Learning English.  That list is geared both to helping student learn common vocabulary related to music, and to also help students use the lyrics of songs for listening, comprehension, and vocabulary knowledge.

This list is focused on free sites where English Language Learners and other students can easily create their own music, primarily instrumental, and post it on their own or a teacher’s website.  Then, students can write and speak about why they composed it and listeners (as well as the composer) can share what it makes them visualize.

In addition to being free-of-charge, in order to make this site students must not be able to access inappropriate lyrics.  Because of that criteria, I’ve omitted many sites that allow you to mix popular songs and create your own digital “mixtapes.”

Most of these sites don’t require any registration.  However, those that do offer a quick-and-easy way to do so.

Finally, I have not listed these sites in any order of preference.

Here are my choices for The Best Online Sites For Creating Music:

The Minuet Mixer comes from the wonderful New York Philharmonic Game Room.  Students can create and play their own minuets.  The url for their compositions can be emailed and posted on a blog or online journal.

Once you go to Soundbadge, you have to answer several questions about yourself.  Based on the answers, a unique musical sound is created.  You can then email the url of your “soundbadge” and post it on a blog, website or online journal.

Contrapunctus Variations (what a name!) lets you create musical compositions with your computer mouse. It’s difficult to explain in a post, but once you go there it will become clear. You can save your composition, describe it, and email the link for posting in a blog or teacher’s website.  No registration is required.

With the Carol-Maker you can compose a never-heard-before mashup of strange grunts with classic Christmas songs, and email it to a friend (or enemy).

Here’s another site where you can make your own music – this time from The Make Your Own Music Game. Email your creation for posting on a website or blog.

You can compose your own song of musical animals sounds at Nim’s Island Animal Jukebox, and then email it to a friend or teacher for posting on a website or blog.

The Japanese Federation of Construction Contractors have created Build Up!. It lets you “build” a skyscraper of music made by construction tools. It’s pretty neat. Much of the site is in English, the part about emailing your creation is in Japanese, but just click on some things and you’ll figure it out.

Jam Studio and seems pretty easy to use. English Language Learners can very quickly compose a song, email and post the url.

I like two music games designed by a creative designer named Luke Whittaker. His latest creation is an amazing online video game called Sound Factory.  It’s very hard for me to explain.  Basically,  you role-play a man in a factory who get to create music.  That description, however, does not in any way do the game justice.  There are a lot of instructions given in simple English, and students can email their final musical creation after they’ve finished the game.  I also have listed the “Walkthrough” (answers) to the game on my website so students can doubly use it as a language development exercise. In A Break In The Road students can again create their own musical composition.  It’s not quite a game, but I won’t even attempt to describe it.  Check it out for yourself.

The I Know That Music Maker is easy to use, though it does require a simple registration.

The BBC has two nice tools to make music online — 6 Mixer and VJ Masher.

KissTunes is a great web tool that lets you make some music and lets you give it a name and describe it. Then, you get a url address for your creation where others can then leave comments. You don’t even need to register!

The only way I can explain Glitchscape is it lets you make boxes and then turns them into music. You then get the url address of your creation for posting on a blog or website. No registration is required.

As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome.

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I use music a lot in teaching English Language Learners, and have posted about several of the better sites out there to find lyrics. You can also find them listed on my website under Movies and Music For ESL.

If those sites weren’t enough for you, Mashable just wrote a piece on 9 Sites For Music Lyrics. Most are already on my lists, but there are some new ones, too, that might be worth a look.

This is the third of several year-end “The Best…” lists I’m writing. The first one was The Best Online Learning Games — 2008. The second was The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2008. As with both of those lists, I’m experimenting with a reader’s poll at the bottom of this post. The Learning Games poll closes on November 1st. The poll for the “…Easily & Quickly” list will end on December 1st. The voting for this list will close on January 1st. I’ll let you guess when the voting will finish for my next list, The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2008.

I’m not too concerned about being completely consistent with these lists. Some of the sites listed on one list could easily appear on another. A couple of sites on this list are actually older sites that disappeared for awhile and then thankfully reappeared this year. One site has been around for years and I just forgot to include it in last year’s The Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners — 2007 list, so I’m including it here. And a few began prior to this year, but I didn’t learn about them until recently.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Most of the sites on this list are geared towards student self-access, though a few are obviously teacher resource pages. And speaking of student self-access, remember that links to these sites can also be found, along with 8,000 others, on my website.

If you get a chance, you might also want to look at the nearly one hundred other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled over the past year.

The twenty-seven sites on this list are ranked in order of preference, from the twenty-seventh to the first. However, they are listed in the opposite order on the poll itself following my descriptions of all the sites.

Remember that you, or your students, can only vote once in the poll. So you should take your time to carefully review all of them since you won’t get a second chance.

(Editor’s Note: On a different matter, subscribers to this blog who use Google Reader and Bloglines to get updated RSS feeds, and who subscribed prior to January, 2008, might have recently stopped receiving new posts. If that has happened to you, you can re-subscribe using this newer Feedburner feed. This issue only relates to people who subscribed prior to January — anyone who has subscribed since then is already using the Feedburner feed and shouldn’t be having any problems.)

Here are my picks for The Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners — 2008:

Number twenty-seven is Lyrics Fly. It’s one of the best sites out there for finding song lyrics. You can also use it to find music audio and videos, but I’m primarily interested in the lyrics. The Make Use Of blog calls it “lyric search on steroids.” I’m hopeful that I will never again have to waste time trying to chase down lyrics for songs I’ll be using in our ESL classes, and not have to deal with annoying pop-up ads on other lyric sites.

Number twenty-six is MixTurtle. It’s one of those music sites that I don’t understand how they can operate legally in the face of copyright laws. All you have to do is type in the name of a recording artist or a song, and you immediately get links to hear many songs, you can then create playlists and share them with others. I typed in “Raffi,” who is always my “test” on these kinds of applications, and seemed to get more choices than I’ve found on the other similar web tools (you can see a list of them under Movies and Music For ESL on my website). If these kind of sites are not blocked by school content filters, and if, as many posts from blogs far bigger than mine are right and these sites are legally and morally defensible, they can be a source of great music for ESL instruction.

Number twenty-five is the Embedded Learning Portal in the United Kingdom. It has one hundred exceptional step-by-step literacy (and math) lessons designed for adult learners. This has been around for quite awhile, but then it changed its url address and sort of disappeared. But it’s back, and well worth visiting.

Number twenty-four is Soundflavor. It’s an intriguing and new music website. It’s basically a source of online music not unlike several others I’ve already posted about and placed on my website under Movies & Music For ESL. However, it does have one unique feature — you can search for music by subject (nature, war, peace, work, money, etc.). It looks like the results are a little uneven, but even so this kind of capability could be very helpful to an ESL/EFL teacher who’s being hard-pressed to find a song connected to a theme he/she is teaching in class.

Number twenty-three is Spelling Bee. This exercise provides text with audio support of simple passages, and then students have to type in the correct words that go into blanks. I particularly like this interactive because there are various grade-levels to it, and, unlike in most online spelling activities, this one uses words in context.

Number twenty-two is Sight Words With Samson. It’s clearly one of the best websites out there to learn sight words — for English Language Learners or younger native-English speakers. There’s audio support for text and a lot of interactive fun exercises. One of the best things about it is that it also shows sight words in the context of sentences — in both audio and text. In an ideal world it would also show an image illustrating the sentence, but you can’t always have everything.

Number twenty-one is Chuala. On this free site, which you can use without registering, you hear the pronunication of English words and you can record your own pronunciation of the same word to compare the two (assuming you have a microphone, of course).

Number twenty is CloZure. It’s an exceptional new online web application developed by Peter Shanks. Using this tool, you can create a cloze (fill-in-the-gap) online activity from a gazillion Wikipedia articles. You can adjust the difficulty level of the clozes that are created, too. Students can complete the exercise online, or you can print it out and have students do it with pen and paper. The site will also develop clozes using the Simple English of Wikipedia.

Number nineteen is Rap Happy, Singing is a less threatening way to get students to start speaking English, and many younger students in particular love singing rap. Here, they get to choose a beat, record their own lyrics, and post the url of their performance on a blog or website.

Number eighteen is Into The Book. This is an absolutely incredible resource designed to help students learn reading strategies — visualize, predict, summarize, etc. For the past couple of years it had only been partially completed. Now, however, all its exercises were finished. Users are led through the process of learning each reading strategy with interactive exercises.

Number seventeen is Grooveshark Lite. I’ve posted in the past about sites that allow you to pretty much find any song you want, create a playlist, and let you do it for free. As I wrote earlier in this post about another application, I’m still amazed that these sites are legal, but, according to a bunch of prominent blogs, they’ve apparently found a way to be legitimate. Grooveshark has a particularly attractive interface, and a huge selection of music. I was able to find a ton of songs that I use with English Language Learners (Raffi songs were plentiful). Between Grooveshark and Mix Turtle, a teacher, assuming the site was allowed by his/her school’s content filter, wouldn’t have to buy music again.

Number sixteen is Lyrics On Call. It makes it quite easy for teachers to find lyrics for songs used in class. With this site, and with many others listed on my website under Movies & Music, the days of having to endure endless pop-up ads while searching for lyrics on the Internet are past.

Number fifteen is On The Tip of My Tongue. It’s a great site from France that teaches English idioms through the use of cartoons, audio, and games.

Number fourteen is Kiz Club. It has wonderful “talking stories” for beginning readers and was off-line for quite awhile. I had thought it was going to be permanent, but was pleasantly surprised to find that they’re back.

Number thirteen is Splashr. It’s an extraordinary application that students, particularly second-language learners, can use to easily create their own picture dictionary. Write in a word, choose from a ton of different presentation styles, and you get countless images representing that word. Even better, you can email the link and create your own picture dictionary.

Number twelve is English Express It’s a site developed in Alberta, Canada, and has well-done short articles that have text with audio support. They’re specifically written for ESL students, and have articles at different language levels.

Number eleven is Talking Cards. You get to choose from a variety of designs and characters and, using their text-to-speech option, have it speak whatever you want. You can use the “free” option for the cards, and the site just says your message will include some advertising. However, the ones that I’ve tried just includes advertising for the the Talking Cards site itself.

Number ten is The Tapestry For Teachers Of English Language Learners. The Tapestry is a joint project the International Reading Association, TESOL, and a large number of other organizations are doing that includes bringing together research results on what works with English Language Learners.

Number nine is English Trailers. It has many trailers from popular movies along with comprehension and cloze activities. We just added that site as one our students can use at home in our Family Literacy Project and they love it.

Number eight is Read The Words. It lets you convert any text – from a document, blog, or website – into audio with your choice from a variety of voices. You can then embed the voice player into your site. English Language Learners can easily copy and paste an essay they’re writing to hear if it sounds “right.” They can complete a story or essay, paste it into a Jottit page, and then embed a Read The Words audio player that will speak what they wrote. The site had some technical glitches when they first began, but it seems like those have been worked out.

Number seven is Sound Guide . It’s a French site with many good English language-learning activities. I like its dictation exercises, especially the sentence and phrase ones. In these dictations, you hear a sentence from a movie, and then have to “drag-and-drop” words to recreate the sentence.

Number six is the British Council’s J@M. They have a series of excellent audio and animated stories related to everyday situations. Be sure to click on “dialogue” within the animation to see the words as they’re spoken.

Number five is is iCue. It’s a collaboration between NBC and MIT. There’s a lot to the site. It’s basically an extremely interactive way to learn about the news (and has a new U.S. History component), but that’s an understatement. It’s designed for students thirteen years-old and above. You can play games, watch videos (which all have very easy and simultaneous access to its transcript at the same time — great for English Language Learners and, in my experience, unusual on the web), save student work, and a ton of other activities. You have to register, but it’s free and easy to do so.

Number four is Beat The Clock, another British Council game. The player has to complete a sentence by choosing the right word before the timer runs out. The games are categorized by theme, and there are tons of them. They are also labeled by the appropriate English level (beginner, early intermediate, etc.).

Number three is Listen and Write. It’s a new web tool that I think has a lot of potential for English Language Learners. A user first chooses a text he/she wants to hear read to him/her. Many of the choices are from the Voice of America, and are both high-interest and accessible. Their levels of difficulty are also indicated. Then the story is dictated to you, and you have to type it correctly. You can choose the speed of the reading and how often it’s repeated. When you type only the correct letters actually show-up on the screen, and you can ask for hints.

Number two is YAKIToME. It lets you copy and paste pretty much anything you want and the convert the text to speech.You can choose the type of voice (it uses ATT technology, which I’ve had a link on my website to for a longtime because it’s so good), the rate of speed (there are numerous settings), and even customize pronunciation for certain words. You choose to see the text when you’re listening to it being spoken. And you can create private groups if you want. Most importantly, it seems to work without any technical difficulties. Plus, it’s free.

And now, my pick for the number one 2008 Best Internet Site For English Language Learners is…..Mingoville. It’s an exceptional site from Denmark designed to teach Beginning English Language Learners. There are many interactive exercises and games, it’s very colorful, and there are both listening and speaking activities, including a voice recording feature. You can experiment with it as a guest for a few minutes, but then you have to register. It’s completely free, and registration took about twenty seconds.

You’ll see the poll below. Remember, people can only vote once.

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In another example of the ability to use viral marketing in English-language development, English Language Learners can go to the Nokia Musical Mighty site.

There, they can “plug-in” the kind of music they like, then upload their image or choose one on the site, and then, finally, using the text-to-speech feature, they develop their own lyrics to the song that will then be sung by a computer-generated voice. The link to the final result can be emailed or embedded.

I just learned about Lyrics Fly from the Make Use Of blog.

It is — unquestionably, in my mind — the best site out there for finding song lyrics. You can also use it to find music audio and videos, but I’m primarily interested in the lyrics. “Make Use Of” calls it “lyric search on steroids.” I’m hopeful that I will never again have to waste time trying to chase down lyrics for songs I’ll be using in our ESL classes, and not have to deal with annoying pop-up ads on other lyric sites.

I’ll be placing the link on my website under Movies and Music For ESL.

Lyrics On Call is a new site that makes it quite easy for teachers to find lyrics for songs used in class.

With this site, and with many others listed on my website under Movies & Music, the days of having to endure endless pop-up ads while searching for lyrics on the Internet are past.

I was able to find lyrics for many of the song I use with English Language Learners. Raffi is always my “test” on these sites, and this one came through with flying colors.

JamsBio is a new site with a cool idea — users pick from the millions of tracks in its database (actually, excerpts from the songs) and develop a timeline of their lives. The timelines contain the song and written comments you make about them.

This would be a great site to use for English Language Learners. Their tracks include just about every song I’ve used in class, and, in addition to timelines, students could just pick their favorites and explain why they like them. Collections can be embedded or just connected by a link.

The big problem for classroom use, though, is that, even with just containing excerpts, you can find lyrics inappropriate for classroom use. That wouldn’t really be an issue for my ESL classes — they’d have to search real hard to find them, even if they wanted to (which the vast majority aren’t going to do, anyway).

However, it is a risk, and it is not beyond imagining that a risk like this could prompt over-reactions that could limit access to a lot of other good sites.