Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

I just wanted to remind readers that comments are always welcome.

The vast majority of time I’ll respond quickly with a direct email. If it looks like it’ll create a public conversation helpful to other readers, I’ll also include a response in the comments section of the post, too.

Though I’ll often publish comments from people publicizing their productions, I typically don’t respond to them.

People can also contact me directly through several other ways, all laid-out in the Contact Me section at the top of this blog.

The next edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival will be hosted by Alice Mercer. Any blog posts, including examples of student work, that are related to teaching or learning English are welcome. You can contribute a post by using this easy submission form. The deadline is November 30th.

ELL Classroom hosted the thirteenth edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Carnival. Jennifer Duarte and Michelle Klepper did an amazing job! ESL/EFL bloggers from around the world contributed thoughtful posts about issues related to teaching and learning English, and it’s not to be missed.

Future hosts will include Shelly Terrell at Teacher Reboot Camp: Challenging Ourselves to Engage Our Students on February 1st and Karenne Sylvester at Kalinago English: Teaching Speaking Using Technology on April 1st.

You can see all the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

I just sent out my free monthly email newsletter.

I’ve been sending it out for three years, and have about six hundred subscribers now. You can see all the past issues here, and subscribe to it here.

I’m adding the blog Özcan Dönmez writes, Marmara Elt/EFL Resources, to The Best ESL/EFL Blogs.

I’m adding Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice to The Best (& Most Thoughtful) Blogs On “Big Picture” Education Issues.

Sue Waters has just announced the winners of a contest for the best advice on student blogging in the classroom.

Announcing The Winners Of The “Share your tips–and win BIG!” Competition! is a great source of advice, and I’m adding the link to The Best Sources For Advice On Student Blogging.

ELL Classroom has just posted the thirteenth edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Carnival. Jennifer Duarte and Michelle Klepper have done an amazing job! I’d also encourage you to subscribe to their blog.

ESL/EFL bloggers from around the world have contributed thoughtful posts about issues related to teaching and learning English, and it’s not to be missed.

The next edition will be hosted by Alice Mercer. Any blog posts, including examples of student work, that are related to teaching or learning English are welcome. You can contribute a post by using this easy submission form.

Future hosts will include Shelly Terrell at Teacher Reboot Camp: Challenging Ourselves to Engage Our Students on February 1st and Karenne Sylvester at Kalinago English: Teaching Speaking Using Technology on April 1st.

You can see all the previous twelve  editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

Day/Week In A Sentence is a great reflective activity where educators share a weekly reflection in one sentence. Kevin often “mixes it up” with having people leave their sentence in an audio version, or a comic strip, etc. People also take turns hosting it.

It’s back after a summer hiatus, so consider participating this week.

Day In A Sentence is on The “Best” Blog Carnivals list.

I just sent out my free monthly email newsletter.

I’ve been sending it out for two years, and have about five hundred subscribers now. You can see all the past issues here, and subscribe to it here.

If you’re at an IB school and are teaching Theory of Knowledge, this is just a quick post to let you know I’ve just added a ton of links to our class Theory of Knowledge blog.

You might find them helpful.

Generally, I’ll just post International Baccalaureate resources on the sidebar over at my Theory of Knowledge blog (except when I share here how I’ll be modifying those lessons for English Language Learners).

However, since I know more and more teachers in IB programs are beginning to read this blog, I thought I would share a particularly useful resource here today.

One of the requirements for an IB Diploma is “C.A.S.” — Creativity, Action, and Service. All Diploma candidates are required to perform 150 hours of “community action service.” In addition to teaching Theory of Knowledge, I coordinate the CAS program for some of our IB students.

I just discovered a great blog called CAS Corner that’s written by Steven B Elder, a CAS Coordinator at a high school in Rowland Heights, California. It has everything any CAS Coordinator would every need!   I’ll add a link to it in my TOK blog.

I welcome comments on this blog — suggestions, affirmations, critiques. Recent comments are highlighted on the sidebar. I thought it would be helpful again to share my recenly slightly revised  “policy” (which is always open to feedback and revision) on comments. This same policy applies to my Engaging Parents In School blog.

I generally respond to comments very quickly by emailing the person who left the comment. I often don’t, though, respond back in the comment section itself because I think people don’t often check the option that allows them to receive follow-up comments. I want to make sure they do indeed hear back from me.

Another reason I often don’t copy my reply to the comments section is sheer laziness.

I will, however, respond publicly if it appears to me that other readers might find the response helpful.

Though I generally approve comments from the owners of sites who want my readers and me to check-out their websites, I typically will not respond to them.

My posts on the In Practice blog are a different matter. Those posts are usually designed to initiate a public conversation about the topic of the post, and comments from readers and my responses are published in that blog’s comment section.

All comments are moderated, which means that I have to approve them prior to publication. I will approve all comments except those that are spam, are not related to the topic of the post, or are not offered in the spirit of open dialogue and are, instead, designed to attack or just muddy the issue being discussed. The first happens a lot, the second not as much, and the last one very seldom (in fact, only once in two-and-a-half years).   I encourage all alternative points of view  offered in a civil tone and desiring a genuine conversation.

ELL Classroom will soon be hosting the Thirteenth Edition of the bi-monthly ELL/ESL/EFL Blog Carnival.  There have been quite a few submissions of blog posts related to teaching and learning English, but you still have a few days before the September 3oth deadline to contribute one.  You can use this easy submission form.

So far, previous hosts have included David Deubelbeiss, founder of EFL Classroom 2.0; Mary Ann Zehr from Education Week’s Learning The Language blog; Candace Wlliams; Alice Mercer and this blog.

The fourteenth edition will be published on December 1st. Leave a comment if you’d be interested in hosting that edition or any future one.  Repeate hosts are also welcome!

The next ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival will be hosted by the ELL Classroom , and the deadline for submissions will be September 30th, with October 1st the publication date. You can contribute posts by using this easy submission form.

Any posts related to teaching or learning English are welcome, including examples of student work.

Candace Wlliams posted the Twelfth Edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival earlier this month.  She called it “Summer Break Time” and definitely did some great creative things with it. Check-out what bloggers from throughout the world contributed!

Let me know if you’d like to host future editions.

You can see all the previous twelve  editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

Both Richard Byrne and MagistraM have recently posted about their “must-read” blogs.

That got me thinking…

I do have several related specific lists, like:

The Best blogs for sharing resource links

The Best Places To Find Good Education Blogs

The “Best” Blog Carnivals

The Best ESL/EFL Blogs

The Best (& Most Thoughtful) Blogs On “Big Picture” Education Issues

The Best “Practical” Ed Tech Blogs

I’ve also listed the best blogs offering resources for International Baccalaureate “Theory of Knowledge” classes.

But I’ve never actually made a list of what I consider to be the very best ones — blogs that I immediately look at when I see a new post on my RSS Reader.

My criteria to be included in this list are:

* The blog consistently provides me with information or advice that I can use in my classroom, or

* The blog consistently provides intellectual stimulation that energizes me, or

* The blog consistently provides me with information that I can use in my efforts to make institutional school change, or

* The blog consistently makes me laugh.

* The final criteria is that the writer has to also post consistently.

Given that criteria, here are The Twenty Blogs I Read First (not in order of preference, just in alphabetical order):

EFL Classroom 2.0 — Teacher Talk by David Deubelbeiss is always insightful in his writing about working in the ESL/EFL classroom.

English Raven by Jason Renshaw offers great practical advice for teaching in the English Language Learner classroom.

Flowing Data is great for sharing the best infographics (visual representations of data or information) around.

Free Technology For Teachers should, of course, be on everybody’s list. Richard Byrne does a tremendous job finding and sharing resources.

Go 2 Web 20 (I’m talking about the blog, not the associated website) identifies real gems in the world of start-up Web 2.0 applications.

Google Maps Mania scours the Web for the most creative and useful “mashups” that use Google Maps effectively (and sometimes humorously).

Information Aesthetics is another great source of infographics.

Interesting Pile blog compiles the best, most useful, and often funniest “lists” that can be found on the Web. I probably send more “tweets” about items I find here than from any other source.

Langwitches is on many of my “The Best…” lists, and is a great source for links and practical advice.

Learning The Language by Mary Ann Zehr is THE place for keeping up on the latest policy and research issues related to English Language Learners in the U.S.

Public School Insights by Claus von Zastrow posts excellent reports on what’s happening in schools around the country, and provides essential critical reflection on what is being done, or should be done, in the name of “school reform.”

Sue Waters, who is probably the most popular person in the education blogosphere, writes two blogs and they’re both on my list — one is now called Sue Waters’ Blog and the other is The Edublogger.

Oddee is another source of fun and useful lists.

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog has fabulous image collections documenting important current events.

Reflections On Teaching is the blog written by Alice Mercer, my Sacramento colleague, technical wizard, critical thinking, and all-around wonderful person.

I’ve often written about how much I like The Tempered Radical, written by Bill Ferriter. He gets me thinking all the time!

This Week In Education by Alexander Russo helpfully finds informative school and school-reform related posts and articles so we don’t have to, plus he adds his own inimitable commentary.

Kevin Jarrett’s Welcome To NCS-Tech may be the “Dean” of all education resource bloggers, and continues to churn-out posts about helpful resources.

I’m liking The Answer Sheet, a new Washington Post blog about education written by Valerie Strauss, but it’s too new for me to officially place it on this list. But it’s worth checking-out.

It was not easy narrowing it down to twenty, and I obviously subscribe to, and read, a lot more. I haven’t included some just because they don’t write posts very regularly. I think these twenty, and all the others in my previous lists, deserve to be in people’s RSS Reader.

As always, feedback is welcome.

(Oops! After I posted this I realized I had forgotten to include TechCrunch on this list. It’s the “gold standard” for coverage of any new advances in the tech world. I guess I should change the title of this post to “The Twenty-One Blogs I Read First…”)

As regular readers know, I’ve just begun teaching a class for our school’s International Baccalaureate program called “Theory Of Knowledge.”

In the Theory of Knowledge class, students basically learn to not take anything they’re being taught in school or hearing elsewhere at face value, and that the world is not black and white. So I encourage them to question what they’re learning in all their other classes

It fits in with one of my favorite quotes from Saul Alinsky, who is considered the “father” of modern-day community organizing, and who started the organization where I spent most of my nineteen-year community organizing career:

“I detest and fear dogma…The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right..”

I’m looking forward to modifying the lessons I use in this class so I can use them with my English Language Learner students.

I’ve just begun a blog for this class, and it’s called….. Theory of Knowledge. I’ll be using it a little differently from my other class blogs. This one will be more of a place where I’ll be accumulating resource links on the sidebar that I’ll be having students access for study or for use in my actual classroom with an LCD projector. I won’t have many actual blog posts laying out assignments.  So, you might want to subscribe to that blog but, more importantly, you might want to “manually” check it regularly for new sidebar content.

There aren’t an enormous number of resources there right now, but it will be increasing rapidly.

Feel free to explore my other class blogs, too:

United States History

Ninth-Grade English

Intermediate English

International Sister Classes Student Showcase

Five Borrowed Tips for Helping Students Become Better Bloggers is another great post by Gail Desler.

I’m adding it to The Best Sources For Advice On Student Blogging.

Our Intermediate English classes will be sharing a class blog with various assignments, though eventually each student may get their own individual one.

I thought readers might be interested in seeing the first few assignments.

As I’ve mentioned before, our mainstream ninth-grade English classes uses a brilliant curriculum designed by Pebble Creek Labs.

Many of our ninth-grade students also take a class in basic computing, and their computer teacher has agreed to have our students work on English projects for one-day each week. It’s great — it’s like having an extra class period each week.

I thought readers might be interested in seeing what kinds of projects they’ll be doing during their computer time. Our first unit is on Natural Disasters, and you can see the assignments at our ninth-grade English Class blog.

When I get around to it, I’ll shift the blog content to the Edublogs Campus site we’re setting-up, but for now this one will do.

As regular readers know, I’ve recently begun a second blog called Engaging Parents In School. It’s designed to support my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools, which will be published next month.

I thought I’d share the titles and links to a few recent posts at that blog:

Boston Schools Begin Parent Program

AFL-CIO And Parents

California School Superintendent On Parent Involvement

Parent Engagement In Maryland

“How Parents Can Best Help Middle-Schoolers”

Gail Desler has written an excellent post titled Five Tips for Helping Students Become Better Bloggers.

I’m adding it to The Best Sources For Advice On Student Blogging.