Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Students creating online videos can be an excellent language-learning experience. Certainly, students can film their own videos, edit them, and then post their finished product online. For me, though, that’s just seemed too time-consuming and technically-complicated (however, I have convinced my school to purchase three Flip video recorders next year, so I might change my mind).

There are many online applications that allow you to create your own videos using content that’s already on the Web. For English Language Learners, these can be great opportunities for developing listening, reading and writing skills. All of these sites are very easy to use, and finished products can be developed in one class session.

I’ve decided to make a “The Best…” list highlighting these video-creation sites.

Links to these same sites can also be found on my Examples Of Student Work page.

In order to make it on this list, these online tools had to be free, accessible to English Language Learners, easy to use, use video content from sites other than YouTube (since that’s blocked by so many School Districts), and not have content available that would be inappropriate for classroom use (at least, not that I could see). This criteria really eliminated a lot of potential sites.

I haven’t necessarily listed them in order of preference, though I have saved my second-choice and my absolute favorite for the end (and believe me, they’re winners!).

Here are my picks for The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s Content):

Blink Box is a site I’ve posted about previously. The site is designed to sell DVD’s of movies and TV shows, but you can cut-and-paste scenes and add a short text message to your own creation. It’s pretty neat. However, it appears that some content is limited to only residents of the United Kingdom.

Harvest Of History helps you explore what agricultural life was in New York over 150 years ago, save video scenes from the site, and then create an online presentation comparing life with how it is today.

Who can resist making your own Star Wars clip? You can mix-and-match hundreds of scenes and add titles and audio, plus you can even add your own media.

Make a shark video from the Discovery Channel. Use sound, music and graphics to relive the movie “Jaws.”

Make a wildlife film at National Geographic. As the site says: “Make a custom nature film with animal clips, sounds, and more. Then share your masterpiece with your friends.”

Graspr is different from the other sites on this list. It’s an instructional video site. You can skip around the videos to get to the scene you want and actually write notes which can be saved and shared. It’s an intriguing site, though I’ve been having some difficulty signing-in lately and don’t know if this is indicative of larger technical issues.

You can make your own United States history movie at Digital Vaults from the National Archives. It’s super-easy, and is clearly my second-favorite site on this list.

And now, for, unquestionably the very Best Way For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s Content)… it’s Bombay TV. You can write subtitles, or actually dub with your own voice, over-the-top Bollywood movies. It’s a ton of fun, and a great language development exercise for English Language Learners. Russell Stannard, who has a site that is the gold standard for how-to Web 2.0 videos called Teacher Training Videos, has a couple that give clear instructions on how to maximize using Bombay TV.

Let me know if you have any feedback or other recommendations.

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Here’s another section in my series on The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly.

You can see what this series is about and the criteria I use to determine worthy sites by looking at previous parts of this series. I think there are some particularly engaging activities in this post.

Here are the newest web applications to make this rapidly-growing list:

WRITE A “LANGUAGE OF FLAVOR”: This Spicy Pickle viral marketing site is a perfect-fit for English Language Learners. Users first write a word, or a series of words in a sentence. Then they mix the letters up, while also writing the correct words elsewhere. Then, the link is emailed for posting on a website or blog where other users can try to figure out these word and sentence “scrambles.” When they give up, or they want to check if they’ve got it, they just have to click to get the answer.

COMPOSE MUSIC WITH FRACTIONS: Create a fraction pie musical composition. I don’t quite get it, but I’m assuming it somehow helps students understand math. Basically, with the help of some instruments, you use fractions to compose some music. It’s not real obvious how you save your creation, so here are the instructions: Click on “Email it” and copy and paste the “code for the current rhythm.” Then, when you return to the site, go directly to “Email it” again and paste that code in the box labeled “paste a code for a new rhythm” and then click “done.” Your composition will then be played. Thanks to Alice Mercer for sharing this site.

SEND A TALKING PICTURE (& HAVE PEOPLE LEAVE AUDIO COMMENTS ON IT, TOO): Earlier today I wrote a post about the online version of Qlipboard. It’s a pretty neat web tool that, like all sites that I write about in this series, does not require registration.

BUILD YOUR OWN VERSION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON’S HOME: Build Your Own House lets you create your very own Monticello and email the link to a friend or teacher for posting on a blog or website.

WRITE A SECRET MESSAGE USING A CODE FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON: As any reader of recent cheap historical thrillers knows, Thomas Jefferson was “into” secret codes. You can use the Jefferson Wheel Cipher to write a message that others would have to decode using his online decoding machine.

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I think having English Language Learners create short online animations is a great benefit the Web provides. Students can work individually or in a group very methodically by making well-thought-out storyboards and then implement them, or they can make “quick and dirty” ones right on the spot.

Their creations can then be posted for all to see and comment on, both online and in-person.

Because they can be so useful to English Language Learners, and to other students, I’ve decided to create another “The Best…” list — this time highlighting the sites that I think are most accessible to English Language Learners (and are free).

You can also find links to these sites, and to other animation sites that didn’t make this list, on my Examples of Student Work page.

All of these sites are very good (or else they wouldn’t be on my list!). However, there is one that stands-out among the rest. So even though I’m not ranking them all like I usually do, I will be highlighting one as the best.

Here are my picks for The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations:

I’ll start off with the site I think by far is the best (and which has appeared in other “The Best…” lists) — Dvolver Moviemaker. It’s so easy, no registration is required, and it can be done quickly. Very new Beginning English Language Learners have been able to use it very effectively. You can see many examples of their work here. The company also has a more advanced application called Digital Films. You can create a more complex animation, but it is far more complicated to use — so I stick with the first version.

Junior Net is an easy animation site that’s comparable (though not quite as good) as Dvolver. You don’t have to register here, either, in order to create a show, get its url address, and then post it on a blog or website.

Myths and Legends is a United Kingdom site where students can create animations of……myths and legends. It’s pretty neat and easy, and has the added great benefit of letting students record the narration for their story. Teachers have to register, and they’re very open to schools participating from around the world.

The Zimmer Twins are another popular animation site among ESL/EFL teachers. You have to register for it, but doing so is quick and easy. One nice feature it has is that you can make a movie from “scratch” or it gives you pre-made scenes and plots (I guess its the animation equivalent of sentence-starters or sentence frames).

Kerpoof is a great site where you can make an animation and a lot more. You have to register here, too, but the process is also easy. Up until recently you weren’t able to get the url address of what you’ve created, but they’ve now developed that option.

Fuzzwich is a new site that is in the process of developing a full-blown animation process. Right now, though, you can easily create a “mini-animation” called Minivids. One advantage they offer is that, in addition to providing their url addresses, you can embed your Minivid in a blog or website.

Feel free to offer feedback and suggestions.

If you’ve found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free. You might also want to check-out my other “The Best…” lists.

I “save-up” web applications that would fit into this series of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly, and then periodically post new installments containing seven or eight new sites.

Each new site meets the criteria of being free, usable without having to register, accessible to English Language Learners, and able to be used for making engaging online content quickly & easily.

Here’s the latest crop of additions:

MAKE A WISH IN PICTURE POETRY: Nokia has a Picture Poetry tool that lets you write a short wish and then the application will find appropriate images that go with the words. You can then email your creation to a friend or teacher for posting on a website or blog. I think it looks pretty cool.

CREATE YOUR OWN YARD: I’ve posted about this site previously. You can design your own backyard in this vocabulary-building activity.

DESIGN AN ARABIAN CARPET: Design a carpet and email the url to a friend or teaching for posting.

MAKE A FACE: Create a portrait in this nice vocabulary-learning exercise for Beginning English Language Learners. Email the url address and describe it.

DESIGN YOUR OWN WALLPAPER: Come-up with your own antique wallpaper design and email it for posting on a blog or website.

SEND A SIGN BOARD: In yet another example of viral marketing, design a sign board held by a very animated person communicating your message. Email it the url address for posting.

SING ON STAGE TO YOUR FRIENDS: Anyone can sing with Juanes (I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of him, but he apparently just won a Grammy). Upload your photo, and choose one on the site, play the song, and sing along via telephone or computer microphone. Email your performance to a friend and post the url on a website or blog.

I’ll be posting most of these links on my Examples of Student Work page.

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Boy, there sure are a lot of web applications that let you make free slideshows. Because of this glut, I thought it would be helpful to my students, readers of this blog, and me to do a quick review of many of them, and identify my picks for the best ones. So, here’s another “The Best…” list.

In order to make it on this list (there is one exception), a site had to…

* be free.

* be simple. There are a number of web tools that just have too many “bells and whistles” for me, and they certainly don’t improve accessibility for English Language Learners.

* allow you to grab images off the Web, and not just from your computer.

* not have content inappropriate for classroom use readily available, at least not during the multiple times I visited the site.

* allow for the creation of captions and other writing.

I’ve come up with nine web tools that I think are worthy of being on this list. They all have some unique qualities, though, that make them ideal for different projects. So they are not ranked first-to-ninth. Instead, I’ve put them into different categories.

AUDIO-NARRATED SLIDESHOWS

Having said that I wasn’t going to rank the sites, however, it’s clear that one site is clearly the best, especially for English Language Learners. The ability to combine audio narration (and comments) with the written word at VoiceThread , along with its ease-of-use, make this a great application. Combine that with the special free educator membership and its benefits and you have the best site out there, period, for English Language Learners.

You can see a lot of samples at our Student Showcase blog, where Intermediate English students from various countries created VoiceThreads.

Just FYI, at our school we’ve been having a problem logging-in the regular way recently at VoiceThread. However, we can also log-in easily here. (Thanks to Alice Mercer for that tip!)

And since, for English Language Learners, having that audio component trumps other special effects, Show Beyond is another option if you can’t access VoiceThread for some reason. It’s not as easy to use as VoiceThread, and doesn’t allow you to leave audio comments, but it’s certainly accessible to English Language Learners.

You can easily embed slideshows from VoiceThread and Show Beyond into an online journal, website or blog. You can also just post the link to your creation.

SITES THAT DON’T REQUIRE REGISTRATION

There are several slideshow creation sites that don’t require you to register and still meet all my criteria. I think for most classes, if you don’t need the audio narration feature and you’re okay just posting a link instead of embedding the show in a blog or website, these should work fine.

Bookr is another great tool for anybody, including Beginning English Language Learners. You just type in a “tag” to search Flickr for images, drag them into a book and write about them. Here are samples made by my students.

Big Huge Labs is a site that lets you grab any image off the web — not just Flickr. The interface is not as easy as Bookr’s, but you do have access to far more images.

And, for the very Beginning English Language Learner, there’s the Colgate Smile Slideshow. You just drag-and-drop from a small number of images, and then do the same for captions. This would also be a good introductory activity for younger native English speakers, too.

A SITE WITH A FEW BELLS & WHISTLES

Magtoo is a newer site that has a number of features like being able to add music, show your slides in a variety of formats, and even create panoramas. But even with these extra features, it still seems pretty simple to use. Plus, you can embed your slideshow on a blog or website.

SITES WITH A FEW BELLS & WHISTLES — PLUS THEY LET YOU COLLABORATE

There are two sites in particular that, like Magtoo, have a few easily usable bells and whistles, can be embedded, and let you create slideshows with others over the Internet (not in real-time, though). I was attracted to them because of the collaboration feature and the possibilities of using them with our international sister classes, but they are also excellent sites to use without taking advantage of that aspect of the site.

One is Mixbook, which I think is very accessible (though I wish their tool to write text was a little bit better). Fliptrack is the other site worth considering.

A SITE WITH A HISTORY FOCUS

Digital Vaults from the National Archives has an incredibly easy-to-use tool to create online slideshows related to history. You can access images from historical time periods and easily drag-and-drop them into your show, along with writing captions. It’s just one feature of this extraordinary site.

All feedback on this list is welcome.

You can find links to these sites, and to many more slideshow creators, on my website under Student Slideshows.

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Here’s the latest in my “The Best…” series, which now numbers over sixty lists. This particular one, The Best Websites To Teach & Learn Life Skills, particularly goes along with two of my previous lists, The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs & Careers and The Best Sites For Learning Economics & Practical Money Skills.

It probably also makes sense to use this list, too, in conjunction with The Best Health Sites For English Language Learners.

I haven’t really been able to find that many sites that cover a lot of different life skills, and that are accessible to English Language Learners. Those that do are ranked high on this list. Other sites just have one or two good activities that relate to a particular life skill.

Links to all of these sites can also be found on my website. I’m working to develop one page that contains these sites in a form for student self-access, but it’s not complete yet.

Here are my picks for The Best Websites To Teach & Learn Life Skills:

Number ten is a HUD sponsored site called Field Trip — Visit Awesome Places. It provides animated tours of a park, library, and city hall.

Number nine are several activities from the English Zone. They include an Envelope Reading Lesson, a nice activity about addressing and reading an envelope; and a couple on reading maps.

I’m ranking a Drivers Test Tutorial from the Department of Motor Vehicles as number eight. It will be challenging to English Language Learners, but it’s the best thing I’ve found for driver education.

Marshall Adult Education Student Lessons is the seventh-ranked site on my list. They have several excellent activities, including ones on Calling 911 and another on reading traffic signs.

Number six is Lifeskills Lessons from EL Civics For ESL Students. This fine site has also been included on other lists I’ve posted.

Multi-Cultural Educational Services in Minnesota has some excellent online exercises on writing a check, filling out a form, using a timesheet, and reading a map. It’s ranked number five here.

Number four is TV 411, which has good activities on using a library, writing a complaint letter, accessing community resources, and developing time management skills.

English For All is number three. It’s a series on online videos, many which related to life skills.

The second-ranked site is the fine series of audio and animated newsletters called The Learning Edge. There are many good articles in their back issues, especially in Issue Four. One of their other issues also has a nice exercise about phone bills.

The number one Best Website To Teach And Learn Life Skills, I think, is Everyday Life. This site has made several other lists I’ve compiled. Its activities on food, money, work, shopping and maps are excellent.

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I’m teaching an Economics class to English Language Learners this summer, so thought it would be helpful to my students, and readers of this blog, and me to make my next “The Best…” list related to that class.

My class will be primarily comprised of Intermediate English Language Learners (with a few Early Intermediates, too), so this list is only going to include sites that are accessible to that level (though most would certainly be useful to advanced and native-English speakers). I’ll be making a future list of The Best Sites For Learning Basic Money Skills & Vocabulary that will be focusing on sites for Beginning English Language Learners.

At the end of this post (but not included in the ranked list) I also share two additional sites that I think are excellent ones, but are probably only accessible to high-Intermediate or advanced English Language Learners.

I will rank sites according to which ones I think are best on this list, unlike the last few ones I’ve posted. There are a large number of financial literacy sites out there, but I have to say that I was surprised at how many of them I just didn’t think were very good.

As is the case with all of the sites on my lists, you can also find links to them on my website. Now, all these links are in various sections on my website, though I am slowly but surely adding versions of these “The Best…” lists to a separate page designed for student self-access.

By the way, this is sort of a “sister” list to The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs & Careers and my next list, The Best Sites To Learn Life Skills.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites For Learning Practical Money Skills:

Number nine is actually comprised of a number of links to economic games, and most are related to running a small business. You can operate a lemonade stand here and here, a coffee shop here, and an ice cream stand here (along with playing a few other financial games).

Hands On Banking from Wells Fargo is number eight. Most of it provides audio support for the text, and there are different levels of learning modules ranging from fourth grade to adults. I would have ranked it much higher if it was a little more interactive.

Financial Fitness For Life has a lot of similarities to Hands On Banking, and has a little more interactivity. I’ve ranked it at number seven.

Get Real is number six. It’s a game about being on your own for the first time.

I’m placing Savings Quest at fifth place. It takes you on a step-by-step engaging process on how to budget money. It would be ideal if the audio reflected the text, but it doesn’t always match-up.

Hot Shot Business from Disney is number four. It’s a small business creation site that has made some other “The Best…” lists I’ve published.

Banking On Our Future is number three on my list. You have to register for it, but it’s free, quick, and easy. It’s a very complete, and accessible, financial literacy site.

Brain Pop Economics Movies is number two, and is the only site on the list that you have to pay in order to access. Brain Pop has also made a few of my other lists. I think it’s worth the money,and you can sign-up for a free trial.

And now, for my number one rated site for learning economics and practical money skills…it’s The Everyday Life Project, which has also made other “The Best…” lists. It’s free, though you have to register for it (it’s very easy to do so). It has excellent interactive exercises on many money-related issues.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are two other sites that I consider excellent. However, I think the English required to use them is just a little too high-level for many Intermediate English Language Learners.

The two sites are What’s Up In Finance? and, one I really like, Moneyopolis.

Fee free to give feedback or make other suggestions in the comment section.

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In addition to keeping-up with the latest overall education news, I’m obviously particularly interested in the latest research and policy issues related to teaching English Language Learners.

I thought readers might find it helpful to see what I’ve found to be the best free sources of this kind of information, so I’ve developed yet another “The Best…” list.

These sites are different from the ones I shared in The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers.  Those sites share immediately practical ideas and materials that can be used in the classroom — today.

The sites on this list are more related to on-going research and policy issues connected to English Language Learners.

Here they are, not necesarily in order of preference:

There are two blogs I like that provide regular updates on ELL research and news.  One is Learning The Language by Mary Ann Zehr at Edweek. The other is ELL Advocates from The Institute For Language and Education Policy. James Crawford and Stephen Krashen are the primary writers there.

OELA Newsline from the Office Of English Acquisition, U.S. Department of Education, offers a good weekly summary of articles and research, or you can subscribe by RSS Feed Reader.

The Center For Applied Second Language Studies offers an excellent weekly e-bulletin called InterCom. It gives a customized summary of information related to specific areas of your interest.

TESOL Connections is a nice e-newsletter that’s sent out twice-a-month. However, you have to be a TESOL member in order to receive it. A “second-best” free TESOL resource that’s available to anyone is a blog called In The News, which provides reports on ESL/EFL around the world.

Feel free to provide additional suggestions in the comments section of this post.

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I try to stay up-to-date with current education issues — articles, policy, school reform, research.  At the same time, I’m not interested in suffering from “information overload,” so I’ve been trying to limit what I read.

Given both of those interests, I’ve narrowed down what I read regularly to a handful of e-newsletters (I’m assuming that at least some have RSS feeds, too, but I get them all via email) that come daily or weekly.

Some of the information in this post appeared in a short article I wrote for TechLearning last year.

Here are my choices for the best free e-newsletters on educational policy issues (the links are to subscription forms):

My number-one favorite is the ASCD SmartBrief. This daily newsletter is published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), a national organization of educators.  This newsletter consistently provides thought-provoking articles from around the country.  ASCD also offers an exceptional breadth of other resources and materials.

Public Education Network Weekly News Blast is sent by…The Public Education Network, a national organization of progressive school reform groups.  It publishes a weekly newsletter of thoughtful articles that have been printed in various publications. 

Teacher Magazine Update and EdWeek Update come from Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), which publishes Education Week and Teacher Magazine.  They also publish several free e-newsletters, including the weekly Teacher Magazine Update and EdWeek Update.  The newsletters contain good education news summaries, links to lengthier articles, and highlights from educator’s blogs.

Of Particular Interest is published by Middleweb, a network of educators primarily working in the middle grades.  However, this weekly newsletter is packed with articles and newsletters that are helpful to all K-12 teachers.

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(Note: The links have now changed to the Peace Corps Training Manuals I include on this list.  The correct ones are now included)

Here’s another “The Best…” list, and this time it’s one that is specifically targeting ELL/ESL/EFL teachers. 

And that’s why it’s called The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers.

Of course, strategies, resources and teaching tools that are effective with English Language Learners can be equally effective with native-English speakers.  In fact, I’ll soon be sharing an article that the principal of our school and I co-wrote detailing how we think implementing English Language Learner teaching strategies school-wide helped us get out of Fourth Year Program Improvement Status.

I’ve been going through a stretch of finding it very difficult to rank sites in the recent lists I’ve put together.  This one is no exception.  I think all of them are excellent, and they offer different resources.  Near the end of this post I share good sites that were recommended by other readers, too.

Here are my picks for The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers:

Even though it’s hard for me to rank the sites on this list, I have to say that one of my favorites is EFL Classroom 2.0. Begun by David Deubelbeiss, it’s an extraordinary collection of every imaginable ESL/EFL resource.  David also has some strong feelings about ESL/EFL Teacher Resource sites that I generally share.  I’d encourage you to read what he wrote.

I think the Peace Corps has developed some of the best materials on how to teach English Language Learners.  Unfortunately,  their website is usually not working so you can’t download them from there.  Fortunately, the manuals are available elsewhere. The two best ones are TEFL/TESL: Teaching English As a Foreign or Second Language and Teaching English As A Foreign Language To Large, Multi-Level Classes.

There are many places that have teaching materials you can print-out.  English Raven, though, I think offers particularly engaging materials and ideas about how to use them.   Using their site has made me a better teacher.

The Internet TESL Journal may be the “grand-daddy” of ESL/EFL resource sites.  It continues to provide a wealth of constantly updated materials.

Teaching English from the British Council is another “oldie” but “goodie” site (and it’s just been revamped).  The countless resources, ideas, materials, and interactive online content make it an easy choice for this list.

The Ideas Index at Dave’s ESL Cafe has been a source of numerous lesson plans for me.  They’re short, sweet, free and numerous!

All the sites on my list offer resources for free….except for one. Alta Books is THE place to find the publications and multimedia that are worth paying for.

These next two aren’t exactly websites.  In fact, they’re listservs.  I’ve learned a lot from them over the years, though probably haven’t contributed as much as I should have.  The two are Teachers Of English As A Second Language (TESL) and the National Institute For Literacy (NIFL).  Going to both of these links will offer you the chance to sign-up for their numerous “sub” lists.

Finally, I obviously think that the Web offers a lot of possibilities for English Language instruction and learning.  In one of my previous lists, The Best Places To Learn Web 2.0 Basics — 2007, I highlighted three sites as the best for helping both beginners and more advanced technology users learn how to use all the Web tools that are constantly evolving. One was Sue Waters’ Mobile Technology In TAFE Wiki.  Another was Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Wiki.  And the third great site was Russell Stannard’s Teacher Training Videos.  Russell’s is particularly relevant to this list because he has a number of videos showing how these tools can be used in the ESL/EFL classroom.

Readers also had some other suggestions.

Chris Cotter suggested his own site, Heads Up English, as well as Breaking News English and ESL HQ.

Laura recommends One Stop English, Boggles World, and Nik Peachey’s fine blog. She also has nice words for this blog, too.

If you’re looking for more resources, you might want to look at the Teacher’s Page on my website.

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I’ve accumulated a number of new sites to write another part in my series about the Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly.

Just to review, in order to make it on this list a site needs to be:

* accessible to English Language Learners.

* free

* available to use without having to register.

* provide an opportunity to create engaging online content that is hosted by the site indefinitely.

* easy to post on an online blog or journal.

This list is the latest in my “The Best…” posts, which now number nearly sixty.

Here, now, are new additions to The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (by the way, I’m particularly excited about Nota, the last site on this list):

CREATE A QUIZ, SURVEY, OR POLL: I’ve listed a couple of similar online applications in previous posts in this survey, but I think Go To Quiz might be the best one of the bunch. It

MAKE A WEBNOTE: Webnotes lets you make…notes and organize them into multi-colored boxes that you can move around. They’re super-easy to create. One potential problem is that anyone with the url address can edit it. That issue is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can easily access different versions of your page by the date it was created.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR FACE (OR SOMEONE ELSE’S): You can upload your own photo or choose from a variety on PhotoFace. Then, you can “age” it, make the person heavier or lighter, and make a number of other edits. Once you’re done you can email the link to a friend or teacher for inclusion in an online journal or blog.

SEND A MEMORIAL DAY E-CARD: With Memorial Day coming up next month in the United States, students can write and send a Memorial Day E-Card for posting on a blog or online journal. Here are some direct links to good Memorial Day E-Card sites: American Greetings, Blue Mountain, and egreetings.

PREDICT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: As part of a discussion on the U.S. Presidential elections, students can use this map to predict which states will vote Democratic or Republican and either link or embed their predictions.

DESIGN YOUR OWN WEBSITE: Regular readers of this blog know how positive I feel about the online tool Jottit. It’s made a number of my “The Best…” lists and my students use it to create a website where they can display their online projects. I’ve got to play around with it a little more, but it’s possible that Nota might displace Jottit as my website-creator of choice. Nota is also extremely easy to use, but looks more attractive to Jottit. I’d encourage you to explore it and let me know what you think.

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Since I’m teaching a Government class this semester for Intermediate English Language Learners, I thought it would be helpful to identify accessible websites that might help students learn about the U.S. Presidential elections and the candidates. And, so, another “The Best…” list is born!

Here are the best ones I’ve found and used:

There’s no question in my mind that the National Mock Election Game is the best site for English Language Learners. It has a fair amount of audio support for text. Intermediate ELL’s should be able to play it.

There are a number of short online “quizzes” that users can complete to identify which candidate or political party is the best fit for them. The ones related to the candidates also includes ones that have dropped-out, but I still think the exercise is an educational one. The most accessible ones are the Political Party Predictor from Channel One and USA Today’s Candidate Match Game.

Here are a couple of sites that help you determine what kind of President you would be: PBS’ President For A Day and Are You Presidential Material? from Channel One.

All About Electing A President Of The United States is a very simple guide to the presidential election process. Ben’s Guide To The Election Of The President provides the same type of information, as does a summary from Enchanted Learning. Channel One’s Election Playbook provides a more detailed explanation accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

Time For Kids has a freely available Brainpop movie about Presidential elections.

English Page has some interactive vocabulary lessons related to presidential elections that would be helpful to English Language Learners.

After students develop some background knowledge about how the Presidential elections work, it might be useful to spend a little time on the electoral college. 270 To Win has a lot of information displayed graphically about previous Presidential elections and what polls are saying now about the upcoming election. In addition, The Washington Post has an Electoral College Prediction Map where users can predict what the 2008 results will look like and save their predictions for posting on a blog or online journal.

Lastly, I should at least mention an excellent online game developed by Cable In The Classroom called eElections. However, it’s probably only accessible to very advanced English Language Learners.

Please feel free to suggest additional sites.

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I thought I’d share what my upcoming “The Best…” lists will be and invite readers to submit their own recommendations for any of them. As I always do, even if your suggestion doesn’t actually make “my” list, I’ll still include it in the post with credit to you.

Of course, one key criteria to make most, if not all, of the lists is that the site has to be accessible to English Language Learners.

Feel free to offer suggestions for other topics for “The Best…” lists, too.

Here are some I’m planning over the next few months (though not necessarily in this order):

The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers

The Best Sites To Create Online Quizzes

The Best Websites To Teach And Learn About The Environment

The Best Sites To Learn About Natural Disasters

The Best World History Websites

The Best United States History Websites

The Best Sites To Learn About Money & Life Skills

The Best Online English-Language Learning Games

The Best Sites To Teach And Learn About Space & The Planets

The Best Math Games On The Internet

The Best Sites To Learn About California

The Best Bilingual Sites For Learning English

The Best Sites For Making Online Slideshows

The Best Sites For Students To Use For Researching Demographics

The Best Sites For Students To Make Online Videos

Part Two Of The Best Websites For Creating Online Learning Games (this list will include sites that let you create good games, but don’t have the variety that the sites which made my first list, The Best Websites For Creating Online Learning Games, have.

I’ll also be posting new editions of my series on The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly.

I’m looking forward to hearing recommendations!

Movies and television shows can be an effective tool for teaching and learning English (or, for that matter, any academic subject) if used strategically and not as a “babysitting” device.

I thought it might be useful to prepare a “The Best…” list sharing resources that teachers might find useful related to using video in the ESL/EFL classroom. I’ve appreciated the suggestions that readers have offered and, even if they didn’t make my list, I’ve shared the titles that they have recommended near the end of this post.

Before I list specific movies or shows, I’ll begin by sharing some ideas, and sites, where you can get more recommendations on how to use video in the classroom.

I’ve hardly ever shown a video clip for more than ten minutes during one class period. There are many ways to use them, but I’ve primarily done so in two ways. One is just to show a clip connected to the theme we might be studying at the time, and then have students write what happened chronologically.

The other is a technique called “Back To The Screen” that I adapted from Zero Prep: Ready To Go Activities For The Language Classroom by Laurel Pollard and Natalie Hess. I pick a clip from a movie (the highway chase scene from one of the Matrix movies, for example. I then divide the class into pairs with one group facing the TV and the other with their back to it. Then, after turning off the sound, I begin playing the movie. The person who can see the screen tells the other person what is happening. Then, after awhile, I switch the groups around. Afterwards, the pairs need to write a chronological sequence of what happened, which we share in class. Finally, everyone watches the clip, with sound, together. Students really enjoy this activity.

Two excellent sites that offer countless other ideas about how to use videos in teaching and learning English are Ressources pour le College and The English Learner Movie Guide. The resources they offer are just too numerous to list here. In addition to teaching activities, you can get suggestions for which movies might work best for specific purposes.

I’ve also found
Download a great place to find movies. It’s the only site I’ve found that allows you to search for movies by subject.

Now I’ll list what I believe to be The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (by the way, links usually are connected to Amazon). I’m doing this ranking a bit differently from my past lists. All the ones I list I think are comparable in terms of usefulness in the classroom. However, there are two that I think are stand-outs. I’ll save them for the end.

Here are my picks:

I like Brum , a little talking car that has all sorts of adventures. Younger and older students find it entertaining.

Animated Tales Of The World from HBO is an excellent series of folktales from throughout the world. I’ve used them to teach geography, history, and writing.

The Pink Panther series of movies have been great, specifically the parts where Peter Sellers fights his man-servant Cato. These hilarious slapstick scenes are wonderful times to teach vocabulary related to home. However, I offer this recommendation with some hesitancy, since some could view it as perpetuating stereotypes and find it offensive. I’d be interested in hearing opinions on this issue. Certainly, none of my students, who are mostly Asian, have felt that way. I’ve engaged students in this kind of discussion everytime I’ve shown the movies.

Father Of The Bride with Steve Martin (and its sequel) provides some hilarious and teachable scenes about family, food, and home.

David Deubelbeiss, from EFL Classroom 2.0, and I agree that the movie Big is a great one. In fact, David is going to upload a bunch of classroom activities related to the movie on his site. (Since I originally posted this list, David has shared more ideas and resources here.)

The Bear provides a lot of opportunities to discuss serious topics. It doesn’t have a whole lot of dialogue, so it’s very accessible to Beginning English Language Learners.

Globe Trekker has a ton of excellent travel videos. I’ve used them in all of my English, Geography, and History classes, and they’re very accessible.

I’m ranking two collections of TV shows as the Top Two videos for teaching and learning ESL/EFL.

Number two is America’s Funniest Home Videos. It has so many editions — family, pets, sports, animals — that you can find something to teach just about anything. They’re already divided into short clips. My only caveat, though, is that a few of them seem cruel and/or disgusting to me. So I screen them before I use a clip in class.

My absolute favorite show to use is Mr. Bean — The Whole Bean. Mr. Bean is very accessible to even Beginning English Language Learners, and he is involved in so many situations that you can find a clip that will support whatever unit you’re teaching. And he’s so funny!

Readers made a number of other suggestions. I didn’t include some of them in my list just because I haven’t seen the shows.

Sebastian recommends Seinfield and Joey, specifically the episode called Joey and the ESL. I definitely want to see that — how often is an ESL class shown in a TV situation comedy?

EFL Geek recommends several movies, including An Inconvenient Truth, Almost Famous, and Stand By Me. For TV, he likes Lost, Corner Gas, Prison Break and Smallville. I did a quick and informal poll of my students, and they agreed that Smallville helped them with their English a lot.

This doesn’t exactly fit into the title of this list, but this summer I’m going to try using Connect With English, a video series that’s designed to help students learn English and be engaging. It seems to be one of the better ones of its type out there. I’ll report back during the summer how it goes.

Feel free to offer reactions and other suggestions in the comments sections.

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In addition to teaching Beginning, Early Intermediate, and Intermediate English Language Learners, I also have a class of mainstream ninth-grade English students that includes a small number of advanced English Language Learners.

All of these students also take an introductory computer applications class. That teacher has agreed to have my students use part of their time in his class to do online projects that I assign. It’s like having them in my English class an extra fifteen or twenty minutes each day, and works well for both them and for me.

I thought readers of this blog might find it useful to hear what online projects these students do independently, and how it works. It’s the result of a series of trial and errors, mostly the latter. Even though I’ve developed this list for my mainstream class, it certainly would work well for Early Intermediate and Intermediate English Language Learners as well.

Our ninth-grade curriculum is an excellent one, and it’s thematic. You see the themes here. They include ones on Natural Disasters, Nelson Mandala, Jamaica, and Mount Everest.

Each student has their own Jottit webpage (the links to all student websites are on one webpage so they can see each others work). I don’t think there’s an easier way to make a webpage out there, and it’s a great way to display student work. Students can just copy and paste the link to their creations.

My criteria included that they be:

* accessible to English Language Learners.

* usable without having to register.

* conducive to developing an academic project that would require some research & writing.

* not be blocked by our School District filter.

Here is what I have students produce, and what applications they use to produce them:

SLIDESHOWS: Bookr and Big Huge Labs Slideshow are excellent tools that let students search for pictures and write reports that go along with them, too. Bookr just lets you search Flickr, but Big Huge Labs lets you take any image off the web.

CATEGORIES OF PICTURES: oSkope lets you search for images by category and create separate virtual “folders” for them. Each folder then has its own url address. After students have done categorization of writing examples in the classroom, I’ll have them create folders that fit those same categories and then explain on the Jottit page under the folder links why they chose them.

MAPS: ZeeMaps is slightly more complicated to use then some of the other mapmaking tools that do not require registration. However, unlike the others, ZeeMaps lets you insert images in addition to writing. Students, for example, can write about different natural disasters that have occurred around the world.

CROSSWORD PUZZLES: Just Crosswords lets students create their crossword puzzles that others can play online.

POLLS: I’m just getting ready to try this activity. Students can create a poll and have their peers answer it, and then write why they chose the question(s) and then a description and an analysis of the results (for example, asking what people think would be the worst natural disaster to experience). I’m going to have students try two web tools to see which works better — Snappoll and Polljunkie. Snappoll is about as easy as it can be, but you can only ask one question. Poll Junkie is a little more complex, but you can ask multiple questions and students can also embed it on their webpage instead of just putting a link to their poll. It also offers a lot of other options.

(Editor’s Note: I’ve just found another site called Go To Quiz that seems to be very simple to use and allows you to create a poll, survey, or quiz. I’m going to have students try that one out, too.)

BLOG COMMENTS: I haven’t done it during this school year, but in the fall I’m thinking about creating a blog (using Edublogs) where I will be leaving questions for students to respond to in the comments section. I’m also considering having students create their own blogs where they can display their work and leave comments, but I just haven’t had the time yet to consider how much additional work that would create for me.
All these links can also be found on my website.

You can see the over fifty other “The Best…” lists here.

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Here’s yet one more “The Best…” list — this time focusing on web tools that let teachers and students create their own online learning games.

If you find this list helpful, you might want to also review The Best Online Learning Games — 2007 (a couple of the sites on that list are repeated here), The Best Online Video Games For Learning Language & Content Knowledge, and The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too.

When I talk about “learning games,” I also mean sites where students can easily create online video games that might not have an overt learning purpose. However, they can be excellent opportunities for English Language Learners to develop their English — by following the instructions on the screen, by writing directions for their game, and by writing and talking about their reactions to playing games made by their peers.

In addition, of course, there are sites that let you create games with an overt learning purpose — for example, to review content that has been covered in a class. Teachers can certainly create these activities and post them. However, I’ve always found it much more effective to have students create their own learning games — both online and in the classroom.

Since these sites fall into these two distinct categories, it’s difficult for me to rank them as I’ve done in the majority of my lists. Instead, I’ll just list them in no order of preference.

In order to make it on this list, these online tools need to be:

… accessible to English Language Learners.

… free.

… good tools to create a variety engaging content. It needs to let the user use a number of formats to create their games.

To start-off, I’ll share my picks for sites that let you create more “overt” learning games:

Class Tools is an excellent resource. Teachers and students can create lots of learning activities using formats from popular 1980’s arcade games.

Philologus is also on my list. It’s very similar to Class Tools. However, it uses more recent television games shows as templates for teacher and student created exercises.

Purpose Games is similar to the previous two, though I have to say the games you can create aren’t quite as much fun with this site. Nevertheless, it rates a spot on this list.

There are many other very good sites for creating “overt” online learning games. However, I’m not including them on this list just because I don’t think they offer a large enough variety of different game templates. It would probably be more accurate to describe a number of them as “test-making” sites, and I’ll be making another “The Best…” list of them sometime in the future.

Now, I’d like to list sites that let you create online video games that don’t necessarily have an overt learning purpose. However they offer excellent language-development opportunities, especially for English Language Learners, in the ways I described earlier in this post.

These types of sites include:

There’s a site called Sploder which allows students to develop their own simple games easily and then Sploder hosts their creation. Students have to write instructions on how to play the game for players to read. They can then play each other’s games, and then write comments about what they liked about it (the instructions and comments are hosted by Sploder).

Kickplay allows students to create an online game, write a description about how it’s played, and leave comments on other people’s games. One neat feature it has allows you to pick your own images and sounds.

GameBrix has a couple of levels of game design available. The first level, which uses templates already made and which users can just personalize, would be accessible to Early Intermediate English Language Learners. As in the other two I’ve mentioned, creators write game instructions and can leave comments on other games.

I think the second level of game design might be too complicated for English Language Learners. I certainly didn’t understand it, but you also have to remember that “Pong” might have been the last video game I played. However, I also have been pretty surprised with, when it comes to games, the high level of English comprehension my students seem to have. There would certainly be a lot of English language acquisition involved in order to successfully create a game in this second level.

Links to all these sites can also be found on my webpages.

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