Holly Epstein Ojalvo at The New York Times Learning Network shared this video on Twitter today. Watch it for enjoyment, or show it to a class of English Language Learners so they can recount in sequence what they saw:

Choruzz lets you — without needing to register — search for music videos and create a playlist of them. You’re then given a unique url address for your list that you can share.

It’s very easy to use, and it meets my “Raffi” test — in other words, plenty of songs are accessible that you can use with English Language Learners.

I’m adding it to Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Music Sites.

Music Shake lets you create….musical tracks quite easily, which you can then embed or post a link to it. You can do those things for free. However, you have to pay if you want to download your music for use in a video or other presentation. In fact, they just created an education arm where schools could purchase licenses for all their students to do just that.

I think it’s fine to just have students, especially English Language Learners, use it to quickly create music and then describe it and have students comment their classmate’s creations.

I’m adding it to The Best Online Sites For Creating Music.

You can learn about Music Shake at TechCrunch.

Here’s the latest end-of-the-year “The Best…” list.

You might also be interested in:

The Best Art & Music Sites Of 2011 — So Far

The Best Art & Music Sites — 2010

The Best Art & Music Sites — 2009

Here are my choices for The Best Art & Music Sites Of 2011:

ART SITES:

Number seven:

AWW lets you draw with others or on your own, and does let you save the creation on the web. It doesn’t have a chatboard, however. You can read more about it at Richard Byrne’s blog.

Number six:

AloofDoof is a useful drawing web app with a weird name. After registration, you can either upload an image, choose an image that someone has already uploaded, or start with a blank canvas — then draw away.

Number five:

ArtFinder is a new web tool that lets you discover new art and build your own virtual collections. You can take a survey identifying pieces of art you like and it will help you discover more like them.

Number four:

Disapainted may be just about the easiest tools out there to make simple “stickman” animations. Registration takes less than twenty seconds, and you are given a link to your creation. ELL’s can make an animation and then share — in writing and/or verbally — a story about it.

Number three:

Draw It Live lets you create virtual “rooms” where you can collaborate with people of your choices to draw. It also includes a chat window. You can save the image to your desktop, but it doesn’t appear to let you save it on the web.

Number two:

The Google Art Project puts some of the most important art museums, and their collections, online with amazing features, including being able to create your own art collection. I’ve embedded a very short video from the site that shows what it can do — I can’t do justice to it just with words.

Number one:

Artpad is a great simple application that lets you paint and draw, and then save your creation (not to mention letting you replay your creative process). It’s been on The Best Art Websites For Learning English list. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been functioning for the past year or two. I should rephrase that — you have been able to draw and paint with it for that time, but it hasn’t been able to save your creation. However, I recently checked it, and it all seems to be working again, and paintings are saved — each one is given a unique url address. With luck, it will continue to work….

MUSIC SITES:

Number Four:

LyricsNMusic is a nice site that lets you easily search for lyrics and you can a very clean and accessible copy. It also finds music videos of the song. What I particularly like about it, though, is that is shows the lyrics at the top and the video at the bottom, so you can play the music and show the lyrics without students getting distracted by the video. Other sites show the lyrics right next to the video.

Number three:

Instalyrics is a new site that shows you the lyrics to any song very, very quickly, along with a music video that goes along with it.

Number two:

American Sabor is a neat new site from The Smithsonian that’s designed to celebrate Latino music heritage. It has tons of multimedia features and a nice interactive.

Number one:

Lyrics Gaps lets you choose a song and the language you want it sung in and then gives you the option of seeing/hearing it in different modes — karaoke, beginner, intermediate, expert. Apart from karaoke mode, you’re then shown a YouTube video of the singer, along with the lyrics on the side including blanks (fill-in-the-gap). I especially like the beginner mode, which provides several options to chose to complete the sentences. The higher levels don’t give any hints.

Feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 800 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Today is a day of my making “collection” sites, and this one is related to art. Though I have a whole bunch of art related “The Best….” lists, I just have a few that are specifically related to students creating art.

So, here is A Collection Of “The Best…” Lists For Sites Where ELL’s Can Create Art:

The Best Art Websites For Learning English

The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations

The Best Ways To Make Comic Strips Online

The Best New Sites Students Should Use With Supervision

Hope you find this post useful!

Disapainted may be just about the easiest tools out there to make simple “stickman” animations. Registration takes less than twenty seconds, and you are given a link to your creation.

ELL’s can make an animation and then share — in writing and/or verbally — a story about it.

I’m adding it to The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations.

Here are the newest additions to The Best Art Websites For Learning English:

Draw It Live lets you create virtual “rooms” where you can collaborate with people of your choices to draw. It also includes a chat window. You can save the image to your desktop, but it doesn’t appear to let you save it on the web. Thanks to The Center For Applied Second Language Studies for the tip.

AWW lets you draw with others or on your own, and does let you save the creation on the web. It doesn’t have a chatboard, however. You can read more about it at Richard Byrne’s blog.

I’m also adding both to The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration.

David Deubelbeiss has developed another great resource for ESL/EFL teachers — tons of music videos with lyric sheets, including clozes.

I’m adding them to The Best Music Websites For Learning English.

You still need to get an invitation to use Songboard, but it seems to have a pretty clean interface to show music videos with highlighted words as they are sung. It doesn’t have a way to record your singing, and you have to sign in using Facebook (though you can get access to a number of them without signing-in), but it still might be worth checking-out.

I’ve added it to The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners.

I usually just do a year-end list of The Best Art & Music Sites and many other topics, but it gets a little crazy having to review all of my zillion posts at once. So, to make it easier for me — and perhaps, to make it a little more useful to readers — I’m going to start publishing mid-year lists, too. These won’t be ranked, unlike my year-end “The Best…” lists, and just because a site appears on a mid-year list doesn’t guarantee it will be included in an end-of-the-year one. But, at least, I won’t have to review all my year’s posts in December…

You might also be interested in:

The Best Art & Music Sites — 2010

The Best Art & Music Sites — 2009

Here are my choices for The Best Art & Music Sites Of 2011 — So Far:

ART:

Artpad is a great simple application that lets you paint and draw, and then save your creation (not to mention letting you replay your creative process). It’s been on The Best Art Websites For Learning English list. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been functioning for the past year or two. I should rephrase that — you have been able to draw and paint with it for that time, but it hasn’t been able to save your creation. However, I recently checked it, and it all seems to be working again, and paintings are saved — each one is given a unique url address. With luck, it will continue to work….

ArtFinder is a new web tool that lets you discover new art and build your own virtual collections. You can take a survey identifying pieces of art you like and it will help you discover more like them.

AloofDoof is a useful drawing web app with a weird name. After registration, you can either upload an image, choose an image that someone has already uploaded, or start with a blank canvas — then draw away.

The Google Art Project puts some of the most important art museums, and their collections, online with amazing features, including being able to create your own art collection. I’ve embedded a very short video from the site that shows what it can do — I can’t do justice to it just with words. I’m adding it to The Best Ways For Students To Create Their Own Online Art Collections.

MUSIC:

There probably aren’t many people out there not familiar with Google’s famous Les Paul “Doodle” that let you compose music, record it, and then gave you a link to your composition. It was pretty darn neat (though, I also have to say, pretty distracting to students in the computer lab ) Even though Google has pulled it from its home page, you can still access it here. With luck, Google will keep it alive for a long time. If you want inspiration, you can check out 7 Les Paul Google Doodle Tunes From Mashable Readers.

American Sabor is a neat new site from The Smithsonian that’s designed to celebrate Latino music heritage. It has tons of multimedia features and a nice interactive.

Lyrics Gaps lets you choose a song and the language you want it sung in and then gives you the option of seeing/hearing it in different modes — karaoke, beginner, intermediate, expert. Apart from karaoke mode, you’re then shown a YouTube video of the singer, along with the lyrics on the side including blanks (fill-in-the-gap). I especially like the beginner mode, which provides several options to chose to complete the sentences. The higher levels don’t give any hints.

Instalyrics is a new site that shows you the lyrics to any song very, very quickly, along with a music video that goes along with it.

John Lewis Harmony lets you either choose your favorite song, or create your own with your keyboard, and watch different parts of a virtual house light-up to its beat. If you choose to create your own song, you’re given a link to share. No registration is required. English Language Learners could have fun by creating their own tune and then writing words that go along with it. Or they students could post their creations on a blog, and other students could comment on what they like about them.

LyricsNMusic is a nice site that lets you easily search for lyrics and you can a very clean and accessible copy. It also finds music videos of the song. What I particularly like about it, though, is that is shows the lyrics at the top and the video at the bottom, so you can play the music and show the lyrics without students getting distracted by the video. Other sites show the lyrics right next to the video.

Feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 700 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.