Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

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.

December 12th is a Mexican National Holiday, and an important day for many Mexican-Americans — The Day Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe.

Many English Language Learners in the United States are from Mexico. Accessible materials on any high-interest topic helps motivate students to be more engaged in learning, plus, with The Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, students bring a whole lot of prior knowledge to make make the resources even more accessible to them.

So here’s another “The Best…” list — The Best Sites For Learning And Teaching About The Day Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe:

My top choices for materials accessible to English Language Learners are (not in order of preference):

A short article (with audio support for the text) and slideshow from Minnesota Public Radio.

An audio slideshow from a Texas newspaper that provides a good overview of the day’s history.

An article and slideshow of the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Another slideshow of images from various celebrations.

I want to add a slideshow from the Albuquerque Journal about a local celebration of that day to that collection. It has beautiful pictures and great music, though the narration is a bit stilted and probably not very accessible to English Language Learners. Happily, though, there’s only narration for a small portion of the show and most of it is music only.

As always, feedback is welcome.

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

November 19th was World Toilet Day and, though it sounds funny, it was designed to bring attention to the lack of public sanitation in many parts of the world.

This list is a little late, but these resources can be used for an engaging lesson on any day of the year! I’ve included quite an eclectic mix of sites.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning About World Toilet Day & The Issue Of Public Sanitation In The Third World:

Of course, ESL Holiday Lessons has a very accessible lesson on the day specifically geared towards English Language Learners.

Why Is World Toilet Day Necessary? has some good basic information.

Experts call for end of flushing toilets on World Toilet Day is a short article.

A Brief History Of Toilets comes from TIME Magazine.

On the lighter side:

Here’s a slideshow on strange toilet designs.

The strangest toilets from around the world is a series of images.

There’s an annual poll on the best public restrooms in the United States. You can see all the winners here.

14 of The Best Seats In The House is another series of unusual images.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to explore the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Every year lots of organizations, ranging from the United Nations to the Gallup Organization, put out various types of “Best” lists using different criteria to rank cities, states, and countries on their quality of life.

Each year I do a unit with my students where they evaluate different neighborhoods using their own criteria. This year, I thought it might also be useful for them to see the criteria that others use to evaluate communities.

So, here are my choices for The Best Lists Of “Best Places To Live”:

World’s Happiest Places

Interactive Map On The Happiest Places In The U.S.

Best Places To Live

Another Best Places To Live

Best Counties To Live In

Countries With The Best Quality Of Life

The Ten Happiest Countries In The World

America’s Best Places To Live

World’s 20 Best Places To Live

World’s Friendliest Countries

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to explore the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Here’s a quote from TIME Magazine about it:

The convention ensures children of the right to a name, a nationality, an education, the highest possible standards of health and protection from abuse and exploitation. UNICEF said these rights are based on four core principles — non-discrimination, the child’s best interests, the right to life, survival and development, and respect for the views of children.

The convention has the widest support of any human rights treaty, with ratifications legally binding 193 countries to its provisions. Only two countries — the United States and Somalia — have not ratified the convention, though have said they intend to.

I thought I’d quickly put together some resources about it that might be accessible to English Language Learners:

A Generation Later, Still Struggling is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

The World’s Children is a series of images from The Sacramento Bee.

UNICEF has a number of good multimedia resources on the anniversary, including this slideshow.

TIME Magazine has a good article that is probably accessible to Intermediate ELL’s.

ABC News has a longer piece. You could probably take excerpts from it.

Human Rights Watch has a good series of questions and answers about the Convention.

Feel free to offer additional suggestions.

It’s time for another year-end “The Best…” list. This one will be sharing my choices for the best eighteen sites to use with English Language Learner students.

Some of these sites may have been around prior to this year, but since I didn’t discover them until now, I’m including them on the list.

Please vote in the poll at the bottom of this post and pick your top five. I’m having my students participate in the voting too, so you might want to consider using it as a lesson with your own students.

Here are my choices for The Best Websites For English Language Learner Students – 2009:

Number eighteen: Town Me is a brand-new “Yelp”-like site where users can write reviews of restaurants, stores, tourist attractions, etc.  I’m adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”.  You can read more about the site at TechCrunch.

Number seventeen:  Bluewalks lets you easily create a “walking tour” with text you write and images you can grab off the web.  It’s another addition to the “authentic audience” list.

Number sixteen:  BBC Memoryshare is a “place to share and explore memories.” The site has a cool-looking timeline where you can access memories that people have written — on just about anything. In addition, and most importantly for this post, you can contribute a memory (after quickly registering at the BBC). Each memory is accessible through the timeline, through a keyword, or through an individual url address.

Number fifteen:  Google expanded their Google Translator Toolkit. It builds on their great Google Translate tool, which is on The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners — 2008 list.  I’d encourage you to read the post at The English Blog, which gives an excellent explanation of the new application.

Number fourteen: Grapevine is an audio “chatboard” that I’m adding to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English. It’s super-simple to set-up a private forum where students can listen and respond to others and don’t have to be online at the same time.  English Language Learners can communicate with other classes around the world, like in our International Sister Classes Project or just be given a simple speaking assignment to complete.  I love its simplicity and ease of use.

Number thirteen: I’ve posted in the past about how the ability to make easy screencasts — with audio– could be an excellent learning opportunity for English Language Learners (you might want to take a look at that post).  There’s now a great tool called Screentoaster that couldn’t be more simple to use, and they’ve just added both the ability to record audio and add subtitles. All you do after you log-in is click on a button, open up the window on your screen that you want to record, and it starts recording your screen.  After that’s been recorded, you can provide audio or subtitles.  And it’s free.

Number twelve:  Users can create online animations at DoInk. I especially like what sounds like a strict and pro-active policy at ensure classroom appropriate content on the site.

Number eleven: Google also expanded its Google Books service. You can read about all the new additions at TechCrunch. The one that I really like is the feature that lets you embed previews of books into your own blog or website. I’m hoping to use this with students this year. We’re going to be doing some work with other classes, and I can see them writing about their books, embedding the preview, and then having other students respond not only to their writing, but to the preview of the book that they will be able to read.

Number ten:  English teacher Renee Manfroid has created many excellent activities for Beginning English Language Learners, including Colors In English. You can see all of her interactives on her main site.

Number nine: English Raven, a site begun by Jason Renshaw, has just gotten even better with a new feature called World News For Kids. Several stories with images and accessible audio are shown each week, and students can participate in an audio forum, too. All that is free. If you are an English Raven member (and it’s one of only a very few sites on The Best Educational Web Resources Worth Paying For… list — it only costs $20 per year, but also has a ton of materials that are available without paying), additional great materials are provided.

Number eight: Shahi is a dictionary that combines simple definitions with quite a few Flickr photos. The combination of the two makes it pretty accessible to English Language Learners.

Number seven: Nearly two years ago I posted about an excellent site for Beginning English Language Learners called Kindersay. Then it went off-line. It recently came back online again, so I’m including it in this year’s list.

Number six:  Many English Language Learner teachers and students are familiar with Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab. It’s provided high-quality listening exercises on the web for a longtime. It’s now gotten even better with the addition of videos. Video Snapshots for ESL/EFL Students show short video clips along with comprehension quizzes for students to take.

Number five: Pinky Dinky Doo is a new site with a bunch of resources.  I’d encourage you to read a post by Kevin Jarrett that gives a good overview of what it offers.  I’d like to highlight one area of the site that I’m adding to The Best Websites For K-12 Writing Instruction/Reinforcement. It’s called Your Story Box, and is basically a simple cloze (gap-fill) activity where users fill-in the blanks with images that are converted into words. Audio support is also provided to the text.

Number four: Speakaboos provides excellent quality “talking stories” on video with closed-captioning — often read by “celebrities.”   They say they are also going to add the ability to record stories, as well as offering other online activities.  You can watch the stories without registering, though it appears like you will have to sign-up (for free) in order to record stories.

Number three: Welcome To The Web is really quite an exceptional site that acts as a guide for students to learn how to use the Internet. Audio support is provided for the text and users can save their progress in the tutorial. It’s super-accessible.

Number two: BITS Interactive Resources is another one of those sites that was around, then disappeared, and then returned.  It has nineteen “sets” of five different excellent reading activities focusing on “signs, details, matching, gist, and gap.”  It’s also on The Best Websites For Intermediate Readers.

And now, the number one website for ELL’s this year is…a tie between two new applications.

One is Vocabsushi. It’s s a neat new — and free — vocabulary learning site. It includes assessments, audio, learning words in context, and games. The only thing it’s missing are photos and/or videos, but I guess you can’t always have everything. Joyce Valenza has written a post that describes the site in much greater detail. I’d encourage you to read that, and then try out Vocabsushi…

The other number one site is called English Central. David Deubelbeiss has posted a very thorough post about the site titled English Central – Bringing “voice” and output to learning English. I’d strongly encourage you to read it — I don’t feel any need to “reinvent the wheel.” A quick description is that it’s a free video site for English Language Learners, lets users listen to parts of the video, then lets them repeat what the characters says and compares it to the original. You get graded on how well you do. It has even more features, but you can read David’s post or check out the site directly. The other great thing about it is that the videos are all appropriate for the classroom, unlike several other ESL video sites that have come online recently.

Below you’ll see the poll. Remember, people can only vote once, and I’m asking that you vote for no more than five of them. English Central is a late-comer to the list, so even though it’s tied for first, you’ll find it last on the actual poll.

Feel free to leave a comment about other sites you think should have been included on this list.

You might also want to look at the other three hundred plus “The Best…” lists.

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We’re just beginning our Persuasive Essay unit in Intermediate English, and I thought I’d identify some relevant sites. I’ll also be converting this list into a more student-accessible post on our Intermediate English class blog.

Other “The Best…” lists that we use during this unit include:

The Best Sites To Learn About Street Gangs

The Best Sites For ELL’s To Learn About The Dangers Of Smoking

The Best Sites To Learn About Advertising

The Best Online Interactive Exercises For Writing That Are Not Related To Literary Analysis

Here are my choices for The Best Online Resources For Helping Students Learn To Write Persuasive Essays:

Here’s a Fact and Opinion game.

Try another Fact and Opinion Game.

Here are lots of fact and opinion activities.

PBS’ Arthur has a simple Facts and Opinions game.

It’s A Fact! is an online activity from Scholastic.

Making Connections is another exercise from Scholastic.

Argument is an activity from the BBC. Other activities connected to it are:

Read

Watch

Quiz

The BBC has another activity called Argue, Persuade, and Advise. Revise is a connected exercise.

Earthlings, Unite! is an interactive sample persuasive essay.

The Joystick of Learning is another interactive sample essay.

Hungry Students Can’t Study is one more sample essay, though it’s not interactive.

Here’s an accessible tutorial on writing a persuasive essay from Great Source.

Students can quickly and easily create a “map” of their persuasive essay here and post its url on a student or teacher website.

I like this persuasive essay outline generator a lot.

Persuasion Map is from Read Write Think, but it can only be printed-out, not saved.

ESL Bee has a number of sample persuasive essays written by ESL students.

“Seeing The Forest Through The Trees” is a post I wrote about teaching the Persuasive Essay that teachers might find useful.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to explore the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

It’s time for the annual update of my “The Best…” search engines list.

You might also be interested in these lists:

The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2008

The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2007

Not “The Best…,” But “A List” Of Search Engines For Social Media

Obviously, from the title of the list you can determine that the prime criteria I use is the search engine’s accessibility to English Language Learners. I believe this kind of accessibility also makes these applications very useful for students of all ages and language proficiencies.

Many of the sites in the top half of the list also appeared in last year’s ranking, and they all have made improvements over the past year. Several new web tools have joined for the first time.

Here are my choices for The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2009:

Number eight is EyePlorer. It’s a new visual search engine that formerly focused only Wikipedia content, but is now a search engine for the entire Web. You enter a query and then see categories in a round visual display. By clicking on the categories you see excerpts from webpages, which you can “drag-and-drop” onto a clipboard. There is, however, a lot more to it that that. It’s pretty neat, and accessible to English Language Learners — once, I think, it’s explained. It can look a little complicated at first.

Number seven is Study Search, an Australian search engine specifically designed for students. Here’s how it describes itself:

“studysearch.com.au is a customised Google search engine developed for Australian Primary and Secondary school students.

studysearch.com.au uses the power of Google’s search engine combined with a growing database of educational websites. When a search is done Google checks our database and gives those sites priority in the search results. The student is still doing a full Google search but the results are tuned to display sites that are more relevant.”

It has sections for both primary and secondary school students. It doesn’t have visual screenshots, but I have to say I was impressed with the accessibility of the sites that came up in my searches.

Number six is the Carrot search engine. It returns search results divided into themes. For example, I typed in “Roman Gladiator” and, in addition to getting a list of typical results from a search engine, I saw a listed of thematic categories. These included “Ancient Rome,” “Movie Gladiator,” and “Collectible Swords.” These themes, I think, will be helpful to English Language Learners as they try to get through all the “clutter” of search engine results.

Number five is Quintura. It provides search results in a visual “cloud.” I’d characterize it as similar to the present version of Kartoo, the well-known search engine, but much less confusing.

Number four is is Boolify, a search engine designed for elementary and middle school students that is accessible to English Language Learners. I think there are others that are more accessible, but this is a good one to help teach basic search strategies.

Number three is Viewzi, a visual search engine. In other words, it shows search results in images instead of just text. This feature is obviously beneficial to English Language Learners. But Viewzi does much more than this — in fact, there are so many choices of how you want your search results displayed that it could be confusing to students, and there’s certainly not enough space to explain it all here. It’s worth a look, though, and definitely deserves a spot on this list.

Number two is Mel Zoo. After you type in your query at Mel Zoo, you see what appears to be — more or less — the typical kind of text results you’d find in other search engines. The key advantage the engine has — for both ELL’s and others — is that as you move the cursor down the text listing on the left side, the website itself is shown on the right side. This capability makes it very accessible to English Language Learners.

The Number one – rated search engine for English Language Learners is Middlespot. It’s sort of a combination Search Engine and a little bit of a social bookmarking application. After you enter your search term and click “enter,” your search results appear both as images and short text blurbs. Obviously, showing these screenshots benefit English Language Learners, and several other search engines I’ve listed here and on my website under Search Engines have this feature. The unique tool offered by Middlespot is called a “workpad.” You can drag-and-drop the webpages you want onto your workpad, give it a title, and then Middlespot will give your workpad its own url that you can post on a blog or online journal, embed, or email to someone else — all without registration.

I’ve written in The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students about how useful an application like this can be in generating higher-order thinking among students. You might want to check out those ideas, and check out Middlespot.

Here’s a new addition to this list: The Mugurdy Search Engine is a simple visual search engine that is very accessible to English Language Learners. Once you type in a query, search results are show with good size images of the actual websites. It reminds me of the old Page Bull visual search engine, which I rated highly two years ago but then went out of business.

Feedback, as always, is welcome.

You might also want to check-out the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

This “The Best…” list is a bit different from other ones.

I’ve already created a bunch of lists related to World War II, and I compiled extensive online lessons for my U.S. History class last year. So, in this “Part One” post, I will primarily be sharing links to those links and lessons.

Sometime in the future I’ll be more carefully reviewing all those lists and coming up with a much shorter one that just shares “The Best Of The Best” drawn from this larger collection.

Of course, another criteria is that the resources have to be accessible to English Language Learners.

So, with that explanation, here are my choices for The Best Online Resources For Teaching & Learning About World War II (Part One):

Before I share links to all of my related lists, I do want to include a link to a great multimedia interactive timeline for World War Two that the British newspaper The Guardian published today. Seeing it was what gave me the idea of putting together this post.

Here are links to the three lessons related to World War II that I used in class. Each lessons contains numerous resources. All the resources are accessible except for the ones connecting to Brainpop movies. You need a paid subscription to view them (you can also get a free trial):

World War Two Begins

Internment Of Japanese-Americans

The End Of World War II

Here are links to additional “The Best…” lists, all which contain multiple resources:

The Best Sites For Learning About Pearl Harbor

The Best Sites For Learning About The Holocaust

The Best Resources For Learning About The Warsaw Uprising

The Best Resources For Learning About The Atomic Bombings Of Japan

Feedback, as always, is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 350 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

If you’ve gone through the trouble of creating and maintaining a website or blog, you probably want to make sure that it’s working, and you might also want to monitor it to see if it’s reaching your intended audience.

I thought I’d put together a “The Best…” list that would provide some tools that do just that.

Of course, one key task you want to do is to back it up in case something goes wrong. You can find those tools at one of my previous lists –  The Best Ways To Back-Up Your Computer And Online Work.

Here are a few other applications that I’ve found helpful:

VERIFYING LINKS:

If you have a lot of links to other sites on your blog or website, it’s pretty de-energizing to students and others if lots of them are “dead” — no longer connecting to a site that exists.  I use two different free and automatic link verifiers.

One is the Any Browser Link Checker. It works easily and quickly to verify links on a page once you type-in the web address of the page you want it to check. Sometimes, though, it can’t handle a page if you have a ton of links on one, like I do on some of the pages on my website.

If you run into the same problem, then Dead Links is the tool to use. That always works, though sometimes you’ll get a fair number of “false negatives” — it’ll say a link is dead if it takes awhile to load when it really is still active.  You just have to double-check them.

BEING NOTIFIED IF YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE IS DOWN:

Two free tools work well for monitoring your sites and then notifying you if they go down for some reason.

One is Observu and the other is Ding It’s Up. Observu will tell you when it’s down. Ding It’s Up will tell you when it’s down, but it also has the nice feature of letting you know when it’s up again, too. Are My Sites Up? is a similar service, as is Montastic.

KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR SITE STATISTICS:

There are obviously lots of different tools to keep track of your site’s statistics to see who is visiting your site, and how that compares with others. There are two in particular I like.

There’s the obvious one — Google Analytics. Sue Waters’ post on The Basics Of Using Google Analytics is the place to go to learn what all that data means.

Another tool you can use to obtain data about your site, and doesn’t require any installation of code onto your site, is called Dataopedia. A post at Read Write Web describes some of its useful features.

Also, check-out the Blog Grader for data.

CHECKING TO SEE WHAT YOUR READERS SEE:

One never knows what your blog posts look like in an RSS Reader or to email subscribers, or how your website or blog looks in different browsers….unless you check.

Read Sue Waters’ post on What Do Your Readers Really SEE? to get more suggestions on this topic, including information on a site which will give you screenshots of how your blog or website will look in a zillion different browsers.

OTHER USEFUL TOOLS

Website Grader will give you a lot of helpful information about your site. All you have to do is type in your address and it will immediately give you a report with recommendations on how to make it more accessible.

Spyder Mate, Examine URL and Link Voodoo will also provide you with free overall reports on your site with similar information.

These final tools don’t quite fit into this list, but they are related.

Copy Gator, Copyscape, Fair Share and Copyright Spot all are free and easy ways to monitor if your blog content is being copied by someone else who is then billing it as their own. Nik Peachey has written a good post about them.

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.

The idea of “Personal Learning Networks,” a group of colleagues with whom you can gain and give support and professional advice, is certainly not a new idea. These kinds of connections have long been used by people in all kinds of professions, including among educators.

Now, however, the Web offers incredible opportunities to expand these PLN’s. Just today I realized that, though I have written about ways ELS/EFL/ELL teachers can develop these global connections in various “The Best…” lists, I’ve never collected them into one — until today.

I hope you’ll provide additional suggestions in the comments section of this post.

Here are my choices for The Best Ways ESLL/EFL/ELL Teachers Can Develop Personal Learning Networks:

My first recommendation is that you read what Sue Waters has written about PLN’s. Sue isn’t an ESL/EFL/ELL teacher, but she provides an essential step-by-step guide for how any educator can get started.

One of my favorites is EFL Classroom 2.0. Begun by David Deubelbeiss, it’s an extraordinary collection of every imaginable ESL/EFL resource, and helps connect teachers from all over the world.

Learning With Computers is an exceptional group of ESL/EFL teachers from around the world that was begun by Gladys Baya. It’s part of Webheads In Action, which has helped start several similar collaborations. Learning With Computers has a very helpful Wiki and an equally helpful, and active, listserv. Another great Webheads group and listserv is called evonline.

Two more listservs worth joining are The Computer-Assisted Language Learning listserv from TESL and the National Institute For Literacy’s Technology Discussion List.

EFL Teaching Recipes is an extremely accessible site where ESL/EFL teachers can share their lessons, including video and images. It’s just beginning, and I’m sure it’ll be filled-up with with ideas quickly. Go over and contribute some, as well as read the excellent ones that are already there!

Burcu Akyol has put together an excellent list of ESL/EFL teachers you can follow on Twitter and Shelly Terrell has done the same.

TEFL.net is a worldwide forum with discussion boards, jobs listings, and a ton of other resources.

If you have a blog, you might want to consider connecting with “Bloggers in ELT, freelancers.” It’s a group begun by Karenne Sylvester, and you can read all about it here.

Of course, TESOL, the association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, is a huge international organization with lots of resources. It is also one of two resources on this list that costs to join, but it does offer reduced rates depending on your situation.

The other organization in this post that costs to join is IATEFL, the International Association of Teachers of English As A Foreign Language. TESOL seem similar to me, though TESOL seems more based in the Americas while IATFL in Europe, but that might not be an accurate description of the differences. Please correct me if I’m wrong. IATEFL does have a good listserv for K-12 teachers teachers that is free to join — it’s called Young Learners.

You might also find The Best ESL/EFL Blogs list useful.

Again, feel free to offer feedback and suggestions.

This is a little different from my usual “The Best…” lists.

Inspired by the twentieth anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall this week, I’ve begun to think about developing some lessons related to walls — physical, mental, and emotional — and how they’re used by us and others to stay separate. I’m thinking it’s also an opportunity to help students learn about metaphors and similes.

This list is different, though, because usually I don’t post a list like this until I have some specific ideas on how to use the resources in a lesson.

I’m not there year, and, instead, am sharing these resources and asking for ideas on how best to use them. Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Absent a lesson plan, here are my choices for the The Best Sites To Learn About Walls That Separate Us (and are accessible to English Language Learners):

Raising Walls is an intriguing feature from The Wall Street Journal highlighting famous….walls in history and around the world.  The interactive graphic is supplemented by a slideshow, video, and article focused on walls being built around slums in Rio de Janeiro.

Great Walls In History is a slideshow from Newsweek magazine.

Here are two sites on the Great Wall of China:   One is a site from the University of Washington called the Great Wall that has text accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners and some nice photos.   I really like this other site.  It’s from an organization called The China Guide, and it’s a cool Virtual Tour of The Great Wall.  It gives a 360 degree tour and you can click on “hot spots” to move throughout the wall.

Two nice sites on the Berlin Wall are a series of photos from The Denver Post and an interactive from The Guardian.

The Wall’s Rise and Fall is an interactive from the Wall Street Journal. The Berlin Wall, 20 years gone is a series of images from the Big Picture. Both are about the Berlin Wall.

Of course, the United States is building a huge border fence between the U.S. and Mexico. The New York Times has a map showing it. Here’s an interactive interviewing people who live near it. Earlier this year, the U.S. built a fence in the middle of ‘Friendship Park,” which is near San Diego and a place where friends and relatives from both countries would gather. You can watch a slideshow about what happened and also hear and read an NPR report on the event.

The Washington Post has an interactive about Israel’s plan to build a fence on the West Bank to separate Israel from the Palestinians.

Here are a series of images of Hadrian’s Wall, which was built in Great Britain long ago by the Roman Empire.

Walls of Incompetence is a series of photos of modern-day walls.

Baghdad: City of Walls, Pt.1: Scars of war is from the British newspaper The Guardian and highlights giant walls that have been built to separate Shia and Sunni neighborhoods.

Again, lesson ideas are welcome, along with suggestions of additional resources.

If you found this post useful, you might want to explore the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

The first part of this post is my usual introduction to this series. If you’re familiar with it already, just skip down to the listing of new sites…

Here’s the latest installment in my series on The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly. As you may remember, in order to make it on this list, the web tool has to:

* be easily accessible to English Language Learners and/or non-tech savvy computer users.

* allow people to create engaging content within minutes.

* host the user’s creation on the site itself indefinitely, and allow a direct link to be able to be posted on a student or teacher’s website/blog to it (or let it be embedded). If it just provides the url address of the student creation, you can either just post the address or use Embedit.in , a free web tool that makes pretty much any url address embeddable.

* provide some language-learning opportunity (for example, students can write about their creations).

* not require any registration.

You can find previous installments of this series with the rest of my “The Best…” lists at Websites Of The Year. Several hundred sites have been highlighted in these past lists. You might also want to take a look at the first list I posted in this series — The Best Ways For Students (And Anyone Else!) To Create Online Content Easily, Quickly, and Painlessly.

You might also want to look at The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2009.

Here are the newest additions:

CREATE A GAME OF HANGMAN: With the Flash Hangman Challenge, you can easily write a phrase, email it to a friend, and it will automatically be turned into a Hangman game that can also be posted on a teacher/student website or blog. No registration is required. I’m also adding it to The Best Sites For Making Crossword Puzzles & Hangman Games.

TALK LIKE AN ELF: K-Mart has just created a “Talk Like An Elf” application. Go to the site, click on Elfspeak, and then record your message or use the text-to-speech option. Your message, which has a pitch that they must figure an elf might sound like, can then be emailed to a friend and the url can be posted on a student/teacher website or blog. You can also embed it, or send it directly to Facebook. It’s a brand new app, and, when I used it a few times, it was a bit temperamental. But I’m sure they’re working the bugs out as I write this.

DESIGN A WEIRD FLOWER: The musical group Black Eyed Peas has created a site called Planting My Ideas. You can use music, images, and words to create your own flower, which would then be posted in the site’s gallery. You can also post the link on a student or teacher’s website/blog, and have students write about it as a language development activity. It’s supposed to inspire creativity.  It’s interesting, fun, and a bit weird.

MAKE A BOOK: With Picture Book Maker, you can easily create a…picture book (including text). It can be saved online or printed out. It’s super-easy to use, plus no registration is required. The url of your creation can be posted on a student/teacher blog or website.

It’s a short list this time, but the next one I’m sure will be filled with a ton of Christmas-related activities.

Screencasts are audio-narrated “tours” of what you see on your computer screen (they don’t have to narrated, but it works much better if they are). Screencasts that I have seen are primarily used to show how to use various computer applications. They are wonderful teaching tools, especially for technological dummies like myself.

They can also be used as good speaking opportunities for English Language Learners.

I’ve written a lot about how I use online video games with ELL’s. One thing I’d like to do is have students play video games using “walkthroughs” (instructions and hints about how best to “win”) and create instructional screencast ”walkthroughs” that would teach other students how to play the game.

Of course, students could also just leave a stationary picture on the screen and talk about it.

In order to make it on this list, the application needed to be accessible to ELL’s and not require any downloading of software, since downloads are problematic for many schools.

Here are my picks for The Best Tools For Making Screencasts:

As regular readers know, my favorite is Screentoaster. It couldn’t be more simple to use, and they’ve recently added both the ability to record audio and add subtitles. All you do after you log-in is click on a button, open up the window on your screen that you want to record, and it starts recording your screen.  After that’s been recorded, you can provide audio or subtitles.  And it’s free. I’ve also placed it on The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

DemoGirl also has a screencast on how to use that application, but it might not include its newest features.

Screencast-O-Matic is also nice, but a bit more complicated than Screentoaster.

Two newer apps that look good are Screenr and Screenjelly.

The great site Teacher Training videos has a screencast on how to use Screenjelly.

And, though I’m limiting this list to apps that require no software download, I do feel I have to at least mention Jing, which is a very popular free tool available by download. Teacher Training Videos also has a screencast explaining how to use Jing.

If you think I’m missing any tools, or if you have other ideas on how they can be used effectively with students, feel free to leave a comment.

You might also be interested in the other nearly 350 “The Best…” lists.

And you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free, too.

I thought readers might find it useful for me to list in one post some useful (at least in mind ) pieces I’ve written about my own teaching practice over the past year. It was certainly a helpful exercise for me to review them.

There are some posts that could have been included here, but, instead, I’ve decided to add them to a future post titled “The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2009.”

I have not included any additional description where the titles are self-explanatory.

Here are my choices for The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2009:

“Data-Driven” Versus “Data-Informed” talks about my principal’s perspective on the use of data and my own response to lower standardized test scores in one of my classes.

What Do Pit Bulls & Cockroaches Have To Do With Learning & Teaching? shares my thoughts on what I view as my “teaching metaphor.”

Why I Support The Cellphone Ban At Our School

Results From Student Evaluation Of My Class And Me

Results From Student Evaluation Of My Class And Me (Part Two)

Have You Ever Taught A Class That Got “Out Of Control”?

“I’ll Work If You Give Me Candy” shares my response to a student who said that to me.

Writing Letters To Students

Results From My Year-Long U.S. History Tech Experiment is where I shared the assessment results and my reflections from teaching two U.S. History classes — one entirely in the computer lab and one in my classroom with my typical curriculum.

The Best Part Of The President’s Speech & How I’ll Use It shares how I use a different type of goal-setting lesson regularly with students  in class.

In “Seeing The Forest Through The Trees” I write about my amazing ability to not see things that are so obvious.

I wonder about the Hopes and Dreams that my students share in a beginning-of-the-year exercise in The Hopes And Dreams Of My Students.

Reading Logs — Part Two (or “How Students Can Grow Their Brains”) shares some lessons I was planning to use with students to help them see that they could literally make their brains “stronger.” “Now I Know My Brain Is Growing When I Read Every Night” describes what happened when I tried them in the classroom. “This Is Your Brain On Learning” shares a follow-up lesson I did. “I Know My Brain Is Growing…” Slideshow Of Student Work displays work that came out of the lesson.

Helping Students Develop Self-Control shares another lesson in the same vein as the one on the brain.

“I Like This Lesson Because It Make Me Have a Longer Temper” (Part One) shares the actual lesson on I did on self-control.

“I Was Disappointed With What Happened Yesterday…” talks about some class management issues.

“I Made My Agreement With Mr. Ferlazzo And Kept It…” talks about about the importance of making individual “deals” with students.

Getting Our Students & Their Families Thinking About College

“Lean-In” is about a short lesson to help students become more attentive.

A Few Simple Ways To Introduce Reluctant Colleagues To Technology

The Best Piece Of Classroom Management Advice I’ve Ever Read

Helping Students Visualize Success

Feedback , as always, 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.

As I did in last year’sThe “Best” Articles About Education — 2008 and in the previous year’s The “Best” Articles About Education — 2007, I’ve put quotes around the word “Best” in the title of this list since I’m sure there are many, many articles about education I have not read and posted about this year. I’m particularly interested in hearing people’s suggestions for additions to this list.   This list, as the title says,  focuses on education policy issues.  I’ll have another one coming-up titled “The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2009.”  I’ll also be writing “The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2009.”

Unlike in previous year’s, though, I could not bring myself to rank them in order of preference — they all were just too good.

Where the titles of the articles or blog posts are self-explanatory, I haven’t included any additional description.

Here are my choices for The “Best” Articles (And Blog Posts) About Education — 2009:

Diane Ravitch wrote an excellent post titled What’s Wrong With Merit Pay.

Crazy Talk is the title of a great piece Doug Noon wrote for Change.Org a few months ago. It offers an excellent critique of Secretary Duncan’s plans.

Slate Magazine published what I think is an exceptionally insightful critique of KIPP Schools written by Sara Mosle.  It’s called The Educational Experiment We Really Need: What the Knowledge Is Power Program has yet to prove.

Claus von Zastrow has wrote great blog post titled Taking the Easy Way Out. He talks about the recent tendency of journalists (who really should know better) to claim there are easy answers to some of the challenges facing our schools.

The Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning’s blog shared the results of two pretty interesting surveys. In one, 500 recent drop outs were asked about the reasons they decided to drop out of school. The other survey collected data from over 23,000 3-5 minute visits around the country.

How can we close the achievement gap? You can read the answer to that question from my favorite writer on education reform issues, Richard Rothstein.

Does Slow and Steady Win the Race? A Conversation with Top Researcher Russ Whitehurst offers an exceptionally well-balanced perspective on school reform — one that’s well-worth reading.

Anthony Cody wrote an excellent post titled National Standards A Wild Goose Chase.

Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success is a study released by The Great Lakes Center For Education Research and Practice. It details “out-of-school” factors that affect learning success.

A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education is an excellent article by a former textbook editor. It tells, in horrifying detail, how publishers develop the textbooks our school districts buy.

Alice Mercer wrote an absolutely great post at our group blog, In Practice. It’s titled “Why Not Cure Poverty Instead?” and is outgrowth of a conversation about Ruby Payne.

The National Journal ran a piece  on paying students for increased test scores.  I was pleased to see a number of thoughtful responses criticizing the idea, and disappointed to see what people said in support.  I was particularly pleased with the response by Bob Peterson (from one of my favorite magazines, Rethinking Schools).

Extreme School Makeover: Creating the Conditions for Success is a blog post by Claus von Zastrow that is one of the best, and most reasonable, descriptions of what it might take to “turnaround” a troubled school.  He highlights the key elements of a successful strategy and makes it clear that there is no one single answer that will provide a solution — no matter what some “expert” school reformers might think.

David Cohen, a teacher from Palo Alto whom I know through the Teacher Leaders Network, co-wrote a great op ed piece in the  Sacramento Bee. It’s called “Test scores poor tool for teacher evaluation.”

Earlier in the year, there was quite a bit of commentary in the educational blogosphere about a not particularly helpful or insightful op-ed piece in the New York TImes by Nicholas Kristof.  In it, he touts the mythical figure that:

A Los Angeles study suggested that four consecutive years of having a teacher from the top 25 percent of the pool would erase the black-white testing gap.

There are three posts about Kristof’s column that I think are particularly thoughtful that I want to include here:

In Search Of The Top 25 Percent Teacher from Public School Insights

The Miracle Teacher, Revisited by Diane Ravitch at Bridging The Differences

We Need Schools That ‘Train’ Our Judgment by Deborah Meier, also at Bridging The Differences.

Larry Cuban wrote Fixing Urban Schools: Sprinters or Marathoners?. It’s about superintendents, and I shared it with our new one here.

State’s exit exams deserve a failing grade is an op ed piece by the late education researcher/author Gerald Bracey that appeared in the Sacramento Bee.

Education researcher David Berliner wrote an excellent guest post in The Answer Sheet, a Washington Post education blog. It’s called Why Rising Test Scores May Not Mean Increased Learning.

Blinded by Reform is an exceptionally well-balanced and reasonable critique of some of the questionable strategies Education Secretary Duncan and the Obama administration is pushing on schools. It’s written by Mike Rose, who is on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the author of “Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us.”

Do You Want To “Build Influence”? is not specifically about education policy, but does provide some ideas for those who want to change it.

The late education researcher Gerald Bracey published his last “Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education.”

And, lastly, I’m going to include the piece I wrote at Public School Insights titled Parent Involvement or Parent Engagement? It’s an excerpt from my recent book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools.”

I’m also adding a short post I wrote about federal funding for literacy programs titled “I just thought it would end differently this time.”

Suggestions and feedback, as always, are welcome.

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Millions of Muslims make the annual pilgrimage, called the Hajj,  to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.  Because the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar based on the motion of the moon, the time of the Hajj is different time each year in terms of the Gregorian calendar.

This year it begins on November 25th.  You can see future dates here.

I thought it would helpful to create a “The Best…” list about the Hajj.

As usual, I’m only listing sites that are accessible to English Language Learners.

You might also find The Best Websites To Learn About Various Religions & English helpful.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites To Learn And Teach About The Hajj ( not in order of preference):

The UK newspaper The Guardian has an excellent interactive about the Hajj.

Channel 4 in the UK also has a good site on the Hajj, including a “virtual Hajj.”

The Hajj and Eid al-Adha is a series of excellent photos and accessible captions from The Boston Globe’s Big Picture.

The Hajj Goes High-Tech is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

CBBC Newsround has a simple explanation.

The Washington Post has a short article and slideshow.

Breaking News English has an online lesson on the Hajj for English Language Learners.

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.

This is a new annual “The Best…” list. In the past, I’ve posted:

The Best Internet sites for English Language Learners 2007

The Best Web 2.0 Applications for ESL/EFL Learners — 2007

The Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners — 2008

This year, though, I’m going to be posting two separate lists specifically related to English Language Learners. The first is this one, which shares my choices for the best resources made available this year for teaching ELL’s. In a month or so, I’ll be posting a second list that will share sites specifically for students.

That second list will be ranked, and will include a readers’ poll. This one is not ranked, and I have not included a way to vote.

However, if you feel like voting, the polls are still open in two other lists:

The Best Online Learning Games — 2009

The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2009

Here are my picks for The Best Sites For Teachers of English Language Learners — 2009 (not in order of preference):

Complete United States History Curriculum Available Online: As regular readers know, during the last school year I taught two U.S. History classes to English Language Learners — one in a regular classroom and the other in the computer lab. You can read more about the results of this research experiment at Results From My Year-Long U.S. History Tech Experiment.  I used a blog during the computer lab class. You can access the United States History Class blog and see an entire year’s of lessons designed for student self-access. You can also see links to the students blogs used during the course. The lessons include quite a bit of original material I developed for use in both of the classes, and they are available for download (during the year students would open up the documents and cut-and-paste the exercises into their own blogs).  You’re obviously welcome to use the resources there with your students. I just ask that you not publish or reprint any of my original materials for use other than by your students.

The “Wizard English Grid”: Jason Renshaw was generous enough to share on his blog about a nifty tool he’s come-up with called The Wizard English Grid.That link will take you to the direct PDF download. You’ll see it’s a simple sheet laid out in a grid. You might be thinking, “Big deal!”  Don’t stop there, though. Go to Jason’s blog post Wizard English Grids for “Finding Out” to learn how he uses it. After reading it, I immediately printed out the Wizard English Grid for use in my own English Language Learner classroom.  Jason also continues to write about more ways he uses the grid and keeps all of his “Wizard” ideas in one place on his blog.

Help For Lesson Planning: Tools For ESL Lesson Planning: A Book of Techniques, Lesson Plans, Activities and Resources For Teaching ESL is the name of a free downloadable book in PDF form. It was compiled by the ESL and Citizenship Programs of the Los Angeles Unified School District. It looks pretty good.

Listening Activities: David Deubelbeiss has posted a very good document for ESL/EFL teachers sharing ideas for listening activities to do in the classroom.

Teaching Recipes: EFL Teaching Recipes is a brand new site that immediately joins The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers.  It’s an extremely accessible site where ESL/EFL teachers can share their lessons, including video and images.  It’s just beginning, and I’m sure it’ll be filled-up with with ideas quickly. Go over and contribute some, as well as read the excellent ones that are already there!  Of course, it’s not unexpected that EFL Teaching Recipes would be so good after you learn who’s behind it — David Deubelbeiss, who’s blog is on The Best ESL/EFL Blogs list and who began and continues to guide EFL Classroom 2.0, which is on a ton of “The Best…” lists.

Teaching About The Environment: The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a free 133 page downloadable curriculum that connects English language-learning with environmental issues.  It’s called Teach English, Teach About The Environment, and looks pretty good to me.

Classroom Starters: A  nice short PDF called “Fifty Stimulating Classroom Starters” shares ideas specifically for ESL/EFL classes. It was put together by Jack Bailey and Marit ter Mate-Martinsen.

News Lessons: Sean Banville is the creator of several excellent websites for English Language Learners and their teachers. Most of them are on various “The Best…” lists, including Famous People Lessons.com (which is on The Best Resources For Researching & Writing Biographies), ESL Holiday Lessons.com (lessons from that site are on many of my holiday lists), and Breaking New English (which is on The Best news/current events websites for English Language Learners).Sean has begun another site called News English Lessons. He describes it this way: “FREE Handouts, Listening & Quizzes in Simple English – Read About the Latest News and Learn English – It’s Easy.” It appears to me that it has current news materials that are even more accessible to English Language Learners than on his Breaking News site.

Two hours before I was going to post this list, Sean let me know that he has just started yet another excellent site called Listen A Minute. It has short audio pieces with supporting materials and online quizzes. It looks like another great resource.

Ideas For Student Activities: Pilgrims is a UK-based EFL/ESL teacher-training organization that — among other things — publishes one of my favorite online journals, “Humanising Language Teaching.”   Their main site, where you can access past (as well as current) issues, is on The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers list. Ozge Karaoglu, whose blog is on The Best ESL/EFL Blogs list, attended a Pilgrims training and wrote two great posts sharing lots of ideas she learned about student activities.  You probably already know many of them, but there certainly were some new ones to me.

Blogging Advice For ESL/EFL Teachers: Karenne Sylvester put together an incredible collection of ESL/EFL bloggers responding to the question What advice would you give to another TEFL teacher interested in becoming a blogger? Thirty-one teachers of English Language Learners responded. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this post.  For what it’s worth, you can read my contribution here.

ESL/EFL Teachers On Twitter: Burcu Akyol has put together an excellent list of ESL/EFL teachers you can follow on Twitter and Shelly Terrell has done the same.

ESL/EFL Blogs: I posted my choices for The Best ESL/EFL Blogs.

Teaching English With Music: I did an interview about this topic with a music education site that people might find helpful.

Writing Activities: David Deubelbeiss has written a nice post sharing quite a few good writing activities to use in class.

Finding New Websites: I’ve written many times about the great site Ressources Pour Le College. It has a ton of great resources for English Language Learners. Michelle Henry, who has been the primary person responsible for locating and organizing all of these resources, is no longer updating that site. Instead, she has created a new site that should be bookmarked by all ESL/EFL teachers.

Getting A Laugh: If you teach English, and if you have a sense of humor, you must go to David Deubelbeiss’ post Funniest videos about teaching / learning English and watch the videos.

You might also be particularly interested in two other lists I posted this year:

The Best Sites For K-12 Beginning English Language Learners

The Best Sites For K-12 Intermediate English Language Learners

Feel free to contribute additional suggestions in the comments section.

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

You might also want to explore over 300 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

I don’t consider myself too much of a “worry-wart,” but I figure I’ve spent a lot of time into developing my website, many materials stored in my computer,  and my various blogs and, even though I have a lot of confidence in the webhosts and my computer hardware, anything can happen.  And given that possibility, it doesn’t hurt to “play it safe.”

I particularly like these services that provide automatic back-up for all my work.  I don’t have to even think about it, and just receive daily, or even more often, reports from them confirming that my materials have been backed-up. I’m sure that there are others, though, so please leave your suggestions in the comments section of this post.

One is Mozy, which backs-up everything on my computer. And I’ve barely used half of the capacity you get for a free account. And it costs peanuts to upgrade, if necessary.

For my blogs, I use Blog Backupr.

For Twitter, I use Google Reader to subscribe to the RSS feed of my Twitter account.   Surprisingly, though, I haven’t been too impressed with the ability to search my “tweets” though Google Reader’s search function.

There’s also another different kind of back-up site called BackupURL.

BackupURL lets you enter a website address and then it immediate creates a backup copy of the site with it’s own url address. All the links remain live, and when I tried it with my website I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually copied all the pages of my site and not just the one page address I had entered.

It’s different from the other online back-up programs in that they will create a copy of a site that you can access and then “re-launch” if you lose all your data, and you have to register for them. Those also automatically update new addition.

BackupUrl sort of “takes a picture in time” and makes it immediately accessible. If you want to update it, you have to enter the site address again and get a new url address for that updated site.

It could definitely come in handy for me since very infrequently my website (with 9,000 categorized links accessible to English Language Learners) might go off-line temporarily. Having a back-url will be useful because students could just use that instead.

Feedback, of course, is always 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.

As the Boston Globe’s Big Picture says:

“October 17th marked the celebration of Diwali among Hindus and other groups around the world. Diwali is also known as the “Festival of Lights” (the name translates as “row of lamps” in Sanskrit). The festival marks the homecoming of Hindu God Rama to Ayodhya after a 14-year exile in the forest following his victory over Ravana, and signifies the victory of good over evil, of light over darkness. Celebrants observe Diwali with fireworks, colorful lanterns, lamps, garlands, sweet treats and worship. Collected here are a handful of photographs of Diwali this year.”

This “The Best…” list joins many others I’ve posted focusing on days and celebrations important to various world religions.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites For Learning About Diwali:

Diwali 2009 is a series of photos from The Big Picture.

India’s Festival of Lights is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

Diwali, The Pan-Indian Festival of Lights is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

The CBBC Newsround has a short explanation of Diwali, and another description written by a child about what he actually does during its five days.

ESL Holiday Lessons has some nice resources on Diwali.

Judie Haynes has a good page for ELL’s comparing different light festivals that take place around the world, including Diwali.

As always, suggestions are 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.