August 9, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Magme has a ton of magazines that are readable online, including many that students would like
I’m always a bit concerned that when students are reading magazines, they’re doing less reading of the words and more looking at the pictures. Nevertheless, they have to do at least some reading, so it might be a site to look at when you have a few minutes left in the computer lab, and one that, if they have access to the Internet at home, they might want to explore on their free time.
August 5, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Atmosphere Design Lab at the Smithsonian lets you change the mixture of our atmosphere and see its effects.
The language is relatively accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and the images are good and the text is short.
I’ve placed the link on my Science page.
June 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The History Channel has a neat series of timeline puzzles related to its Life After People television series.
In the game, you have to put images from the series in the correct timeline order — what happens when — after humanity disappears from the planet. Each image also has a short and relatively accessible (to high Intermediate English Language Learners) explanation of it.
I’ll be adding it to my Science page when I get a chance.
June 9, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
7 Comments
Learning about inventors and inventions can be connected to many different subject areas, and offers lots of opportunities for English-language development. Plus, students often find it pretty engaging.
This “The Best…” list is divided into several sections.
The first focuses on sites that offer straightforward and accessible text or online videos on the history of inventions and biographies of inventors.
Next, comes interactives that students can use to learn a little more about specific inventions.
The third section includes sites that students can actively use to participate in the inventive process and develop some of their own ideas.
The final part shares some sites that are just plain fun (and educational!).
Here are my choices for The Best Sites Where Students Can Learn About Inventions:
INVENTION HISTORY:
The History of Invention comes from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and is very accessible to ELL’s.
Fact Monster also provides information on many types of inventions, though it’s not as accessible as the CBC site.
Zoom Inventions and Inventors has a lot of very accessible information.
Here’s a video about American Inventors.
The Library of Congress has a feature on Thomas Edison.
Learn about Technology in the Year 1900.
How Stuff Works has quite a few short videos on inventions.
You can learn a lot at Invention Facts And Myths.
Take a look at some Ancient Inventions.
Learn about Benjamin Franklin’s inventions. Audio support is provided for the text.
The History Channel has a number of short video clips on different inventions.
The Voice of America has a report on the history of the Internet, including audio support for the text.
Here’s a relatively accessible description of how television was invented.
You can read a very accessible biography of Leonardo da Vinci here.
Here are Top 10 Ancient Inventions You Think Are Modern and 10 More Ancient Inventions You Think Are Modern.
12 Greatest Low-Tech Inventions
The INDEX Award winners for this year have just been announced. It’s a Danish-based effort that provides large cash prizes for “designs to improve life.” You can also read more about it at this San Francisco Chronicle article. It’s really a neat idea, and a great site. If you click on any of the categories at the top of the Index page — Body, Home, Work, Play, Community — it will bring you to very short multimedia presentations on each invention, and they’re very accessible to English Language Learners.
Inventors And Their Inventions is a TIME Magazine slideshow.
Inventions: the weird and the wonderful is a new slideshow from The Guardian newspaper.
TIME Magazine has just published The 50 Worst Inventions. This is how they describe it:
From the zany to the dangerous to the just plain dumb, here is TIME’s list (in no particular order) of some of the world’s bright ideas that just didn’t work out.
“Innovations That Rocked The World” is a pretty interesting slideshow from Newsweek.
TIME Magazine has published a slideshow titled Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park: The World’s First R & D Lab.
The 50 Best Inventions of 2010 has been published by TIME Magazine.
“Science Of Everyday Life” is a neat interactive timeline of inventions, and comes from Discovery Education.
INTERACTIVES:
This interactive from Prentice-Hall focuses on a few early U.S. inventors.
This Brainpop movie on Thomas Edison (it requires a subscription, but offers a free trial) includes quizzes.
Watch these early films made by Edison.
How Edison Are You? is a pretty “non-linear” site about Thomas Edison. There’s a timeline and many images of his inventions. It’s a bit tricky to navigate, and not super-accessible to English Language Learners because of it, but this resource is a nice complement to all the other Edison sites.
See how many questions you can answer correctly in the Wright Brothers Game.
Here’s an interactive about James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine.
Print-out and complete this cloze (fill-in-the-gap) about the Wright Brothers.
Here’s a downloadable worksheet on strange inventions from ESL Printables. They have a second one, too.
Here’s a U.S. Invention Timeline.
And here’s yet another Invention Timeline.
Here’s an animation of the first printing press.
Check-out Devices Of Wonder from the Getty Museum.
Inventive Kids offers a number of informative games for students to play.
Learn about a cardboard box solar cooker that won an invention contest. Audio support is provided for the text.
Universal Leonardo has a bunch of great online interactive experiences students can have with Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and experiments.
Alexander Graham Bell: Early recordings played is a neat interactive from The Associated Press.
Read and answer the questions about Alexander Graham Bell.
Read and answer the questions about Thomas Edison.
Watch this Alexander Graham Bell movie.
Try out these Wright Brothers interactives:
CREATE:
Rube Goldberg made complex machines for performing simple tasks. You can see a video of one of a Rube Goldberg machine here and create your own online version of one here.
Invent your own “gadget” at Kids.com.
Invent something at the Invention Factory.
FUN:
Take a look at 30 Of The World’s Strangest Inventions.
Play invention games at the Invention Playhouse.
You can do a lot of fun stuff at the Cyberchase Inventors’ Workshop. You have to register, but it’s quick and easy to do so.
“30 Dumb Inventions” is a slideshow from LIFE.
This one doesn’t necessarily fit in any of my four categories, but here’s a bunch of PowerPoint presentations on inventors and inventions.
Lucky Discoveries is a Newsweek slideshow that highlights “famous inventions and advances that came about by accident.”
Here are some History Channel clips I use in my classes:
27 of History’s Strangest Inventions comes from Brain Pickings.
Feel free to share additional suggestions.
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.
May 18, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
State Of Debate is another excellent learning game from the BBC. It’s accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and, as strange as it sounds, it’s basically an online video game where you have explain why you’re not wearing a “hoodie.”
Don’t worry about the description — it’s an excellent listening and reading game.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.
April 22, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week have collections of interactive graphics related to both business and non-business related current events.
Quite a few of them would be accessible to high Intermediate or Advanced English Language Learners. The links will take you directly to their interactive features.
I’ve placed the links on my website under Multimedia Resources From News Outlets.
April 20, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Spell-a-thon is a fun game for Intermediate English Language Learners where players have to first identify the words that are spelled (though the game uses the British “spelt”) correctly. Then they have to identify words that are spelled incorrectly and spell them the right way.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Spelling.
April 13, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Smart Growth Game lets players design the downtown area of a city. It’s probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.
I’ve posted about several other “city-creator” type activities. You can find them on website under Student Cities.
This game is a little different, though, since the player is judged at the end by if they’ve made decisions about making it a more “livable” city.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Student Neighborhood Maps.
April 10, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
At Car Science you can create your own car and see how it performs against the cars that others have created in terms of mileage, emissions, etc.
Language that’s accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners is used, and simple explanations of the advantages and disadvantages of different car options are shown.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Driving.
April 5, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Mindopia is the newest addition to The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and Careers.
After clicking on a career you might be interested in, you’re led to a page of simple interviews with people working in that profession, along with other resources (including salary projections).
I particularly like that the videos are divided into separate sections answering specific questions, which makes it a lot easier for English Language Learners to follow. In addition to that, you can see the transcript of the interview right below the video. Ordinarily, I don’t think video transcripts are that helpful to ELL’s who also need the visual clues being shown — it’s hard to look at both (which is why closed captioning is so much better). However, these interviews are just “talking heads,” so students really don’t need to watch the videos and, instead, can just listen to the audio as they follow along on the transcript.
The site is just beginning, so it doesn’t have a huge list of careers, but they promise to be adding more.
March 31, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Spellbee! is a spelling game where, after you register, you choose a player to compete with in a spelling contest. Each player chooses from a variety of words and challenges their opponent online to correctly spell the word that is spoken to them in the context of a sentence.
It’s a pretty neat concept and, though the text-to-speech software it uses is definitely not top-tier, it’s still a game students would enjoy playing and would be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.
It’s quite easy for players to register very quickly. There’s also a slightly more complicated registration process that students and teachers can use in order for teachers to monitor student progress.
I’m adding Spellbee! to both The Best Sites Where Students Can Work Independently & Let Teachers Check On Progress and to The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”.
I’m also placing the link on my website under Word and Video Games.
Thanks to Donna Murray for the tip. She comes-up with some real finds…
March 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
You’re Going To College is from Thinkfinity (which is on The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet list).
To quote from their description: “Students make their way through this three-stage game by demonstrating their knowledge of: funding costs and benefits, the cost of college, and potential lifetime earnings.”
I’ve added it to The Best Sites For Encouraging ELL’s To Attend College.
March 27, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Denver Post Media Center has many slideshows accessible to English Language Learners, along with interactive graphics.
I’ve placed the link on my website, along with many other similar sites, under Multimedia Resources From News Outlets.
March 24, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Post It Draw It is an online pictionary-like game. You’re given the word describing something to draw, and then others gain points by guessing it.
It has a lot of neat features. First, it actually provides a “value-added benefit” by playing online as opposed to playing it face-to-face by giving points to the first, second, and third person to guess correctly — something that would be difficult to do with an in-person game.
Secondly, it’s a multi-player game. You can create a virtual room with up to ten players. Unlike some of the other games on The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms” list, though, you can’t create immediately private games. However, students can easily create some rooms and have ten of them sign-up for each — that precludes other unknown players from participating.
It’s a good game for Intermediate English Language Learners, and I’m adding it to The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”.
March 23, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Rain Words is a fascinating twist on a crossword puzzle. It’s hard for me to explain, but, basically, images of objects fall from the top and then the player has to move them to any number of places on the puzzle that have the correct number of places.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.
March 18, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Bab.la is a free language-learning site that also has a blog called Lexiophiles (which has an interesting ranking of the Top 100 Language Blogs).
Bab.la has a large number of relatively simple series of exercises that varies by fluency-level. You can access them with or without registering. One nice advantage of registering (which is quick and easy) is that you can very easily create quizzes of your own. Creating these kinds of quizzes, under teacher supervision, could be a nice assignment.
In addition to this kind of language-learning, the site has created a nice map of world languages. They also have a limited number of hard-copy posters of this display that they’re giving away free. You can request one here.
I’ll be adding a link to Bab.la somewhere on my website.
March 14, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
As a companion list to The Best Sites For K-12 Beginning English Language Learners, I thought I’d put together a short list of my similar choices for Intermediate English Language Learners. I’ll also be creating lists focusing on older ELL’s, too.
I thought that lists like these might make it a little easier for teachers, particularly newer ones — newer to teaching or newer to using technology in their teaching. Then, at their leisure, they can explore all the other more specialized “The Best…” lists.
Of course, links to all the sites on these lists can also be found on my website, along with thousands of others.
I’ve included nine sites here (there’s a tie for first place).
Here are my picks for The Best Sites For K-12 Intermediate English Language Learners:
Number eight is Wordmaster. It’s a great game from the BBC. In it, you’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words. And after you’ve either guessed the correct word or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.
I’ve put the Audio Slideshow Gallery at Reuters at number seven. The photos are excellent, they have very short captions, and the narration, though it isn’t an exact recitation of the text, is accessible. They do an audio slideshow each week summarizing key news events.
Number six is the California Distance Learning Project – Adult Learning Activities. This site covers many topical issues with follow-up activities, though some of its stories are also a little dated.
Sing Snap is number five. It’s a online karaoke site — great for speaking practice. It’s easy to use, free-of-charge, and, if you don’t want to record, you can just listen to others sing while the screen shows the lyrics. Using a webcam is an option, but unlike many Web 2.0 sites, you can still use it if you just have a computer microphone.
Number four is Listen and Write. A user first chooses a text he/she wants to hear read to him/her. Many of the choices are from the Voice of America, and are both high-interest and accessible. Their levels of difficulty are also indicated. Then the story is dictated to you, and you have to type it correctly. You can choose the speed of the reading and how often it’s repeated. When you type only the correct letters actually show-up on the screen, and you can ask for hints.
Number three is Into The Book. This is an absolutely incredible resource designed to help students learn reading strategies – visualize, predict, summarize, etc. For the past couple of years it had only been partially completed. Now, however, all its exercises were finished. Users are led through the process of learning each reading strategy with interactive exercises.
The Everyday Life Project is number two. It’s sponsored by the Goodwill Community Foundation in North Carolina, and it has extraordinary interactive exercises for Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners. Its activities on food, money, work, shopping and maps are excellent.
As I mentioned earlier, there’s a tie for first place.
For lower-and-mid-level Intermediate ELL’s, U.S.A Learns is number one. It’s an incredible website to help users learn English. Even though it’s primarily designed for older learners, it seems very accessible to all but the very youngest ELL’s. It’s free to use. Students can register if they want to save their work and evaluate their progress.
For higher-level Intermediates, I’d recommend BITS Interactive Resources. It has nineteen “sets” of five different excellent reading activities focusing on “signs, details, matching, gist, and gap.”
I know others might feel differently about the sites I’ve placed on this list, and their ranking. Feel free to offer feedback and make other suggestions. I’m all ears!
If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.
March 13, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
In The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills & Vocabulary, I shared a document prepared by
Carolyn Zierenberg, a talented teacher at our school. It was a simple multilingual (English/Spanish/Hmong) glossary of academic vocabulary. She had given me permission to share it on this blog and website.
The Glossary of Commonly Used English Academic Vocabulary took an incredible amount of work to complete, and now it’s been updated. Here’s the most recent version a Glossary Of Commonly Used English Academic Vocabulary — English/Spanish/Hmong.
I’ve also added it to “The Best…” list I mentioned earlier.
Of course, a list like this is only effective as a supplement and follow-up to multiple classroom activities where these words are used in a meaningful way in context.
March 11, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Peace Corps Challenge Game puts the player in the role of a Peace Corps volunteer working in a Third World Village.
You have to assist the villagers — in an appropriate way — deal with challenges they’re facing.
The language is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Toward The Twenty-First Century.
March 6, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
Sallie Mae has an Education Investment Planner which would be accessible to advanced English Language Learners. It helps you estimate and compare costs for thousands of schools.
I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Encouraging ELL’s To Attend College,
