Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

I’ve posted about E-Learning For Kids in the past, but I recently learned they changed the url address that will give English Language Learners free access to math, science, health, and language games and activities.

I’ve placed the new link on my website under Other Mixed Activities.

Universcale compares various microscopic entities. That description does not do justice to the site — you need to go there to check it out.

It can be a bit confusing, and much of the language will not be accessible to English Language Learners. However, the images can be used effectively by teachers of all students.

Thanks to Kelly Hines for the tip.

Mission H20 features several online games designed to teach about water conservation.

I’m adding the link to The Best Resources For Teaching & Learning About World Water Day.

Pandas from The National Zoo and the Atlanta Zoo were sent back to China today. I thought it might be a good occasion for a quick “The Best…” list of sites about pandas that are accessible to English Language Learners.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites To Learn About Pandas:

U.S. Zoos Send Pandas To China is a Wall Street Journal slideshow about today’s events.

Meet The Pandas is an interactive site from Animal Planet.

Interactive map of giant panda habitat comes from The World Wildlife Fund.

Check out the Creature Features segment on pandas from National Geographic For Kids.

National Zoo’s Panda Express is a video on the pandas’ return. It’s from CBS News.

New highways threaten giant pandas is a Breaking News lesson for ELL’s.

Students can send a Panda eCard from the National Zoo, email it to themselves or a friend, and then post the url address of their creation on a student/teacher website.

Learn about pandas at the San Diego Zoo.

Bye-Bye, Panda is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

Giant pandas head to China is a series of photos from the Sacramento Bee.

Feedback is always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free and exploring over 400 other “The Best…” lists.

United Nations Environment Program has created quite a few infographics on environmental issues around the world. They are designed well, and contain an enormous amount of information. Much of it would be accessible to Intemediate ELL’s.

I’m adding the link to The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom.

Thanks to Cool Infographics for the tip.

NBC and the National Science Foundation have created free, short videos explaining the science behind many of the winter Olympic events. The language is probably accessible to high-intermediate ELL’s, especially because they have transcripts that you can view at the same time.

I’m adding the link to The Best Sites To Learn About The Vancouver Winter Olympics.

These videos are part of NBC’s extradordinary iCue site, which has had accessible videos and games on English, government and U.S. History for quite awhile, and is on several of my “The Best…” lists because of it.

In addition, though, I also see that they have a relatively new section on Environmental Science. This new addition ensures that iCue will definitely be on my 2010 list for Best Science Sites.

Many of you may be familiar with the international ThinkQuest contest each year. Students around the world create educational websites, many of which I’ve posted about and/or added to my website.

I recently learned that there’s a ThinkQuest — New York City that acts as a more local competition. Clicking on that link will lead you to many accessible websites created by students, including:

* The New Seven Wonders Of The World

* The Buzz On Bees

* Great Wonders Of The World

I’ll be posting links to these, and other sites in the New York competition, throughout my website.

There have been a number of web tools that have “opened for business” in the past year related food nutrition and safety. I thought it might be useful to both my students and others to create a “The Best…” list related to the topic.

You can also find links to most of these sites — and more — on my website under Health.

Here are my picks — not in order of preference — for The Best Sites For Learning About Nutrition & Food Safety (and that are accessible to English Language Learners, of course):

Breaking News English has a lesson, including audio support for the text, titled Life Near Fast Food Restaurants Unhealthy.

Calorie King has a fairly accessible database on the nutritional content ofmany different kinds of food.  It would require some pre-teaching on what nutrition labels mean, though.

Fatburgr provides basic nutritional information on menus from popular fast food restaurants in a very simple and accessible interface.

The University of California-Davis has developed some wonderfully entertaining, informative, and accessible music videos about food safety issues. They’re closed-captioned, and many, if not all, are not sung very fast.

Here’s a slideshow called How Many Calories In A Thanksgiving Dinner? Not only does it show the different foods that compose a typical Thanksgiving dinner, but it also shares the calorie content of each one.

Eat, Drink, and Be Wary is the name of an interactive from the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Florida.  It shows images and descriptions of various holiday foods. If you click on them, you’ll then see how much exercise you have to do in order to “work off” each food’s calories.

Food Fury is a fun game where players have to select which foods are important to eat every day and which ones should not.  It’s good for nutrition education and vocabulary acquisition.  It’s definitely accessible to English Language Learners of all levels.  The same site also has another healthy food game called Juice Jumble.

Stadium Nutrition from Aetna is an interactive exercise where you create a meal you’d eat at a baseball stadium and you’re then told its nutritional content.

Make Your Calories Count is a good tutorial from the Food and Drug Administration.  It demonstrates how to read nutrition labels on food products.  It’s probably accessible to Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

The Lunch-o-Matic game from PBS has players pick foods that help provide a healthy lunch.  It uses both text and audio.

The great Learning Edge computer-based “paper” has an audio and text article on “Men Don’t Eat Vegetables.” The Learning Edge has another one called Eat Less Meat.

Healthy Eating is a song from the British Council.

Get On The Right Track To Healthy Eating is a simple e-book with audio support.

Fantastic Food Challenge is another healthy food game — this time from Michigan State University.

The Incredible Adventures Of The Amazing Food Detective comes from Kaiser Permanente Health

Healthy Roads Media has some great web-based nutrition multimedia tools. You just have to scroll down until you reach the Nutrition section.

The Top 100 Foods To Improve Productivity is an interactive from the British newspaper The Guardian.

The Food Pyramid is a good animated movie from Brainpop, Jr., though you have to subscribe in order to view it.

Good Guide, which I’ve posted about previously, rates products on health, environmental and social performance. They’ve recently added food items to the items they review (you can read more about it at this Webware post). Their ratings are a little different from the other sites on this list, and might be worth a look.

Still Tasty tells you how long different foods will stay safe to eat and what’s the best way to store them. It’s more appropriate for Intermediate ELL’s.

Mission Nutrition is yet another healthy food game. This one is from Kids Health.

Buy Better Groceries is an interactive graphic from the Washington Post.  It lets you choose from a variety of grocery sections. Then, you choose brand names from that product category. You’re then shown the different nutritional values of your choice, and you can compare that with other options. You can then fill-up a virtual grocery cart with your “purchases” and see a total nutritional information for everything you’ve “bought.”

The My Pyramid Blast-Off Game is a fun way for students to learn about the Food Pyramid. It’s accessible to Intermediate ELL’s.

CBS News has an impressive interactive on Diet and Nutrition.

Two Foods lets you easily compare the nutritional content of…any two foods. My Foodapedia is a similar site.

Why Americans Are Fat is an infographic that explains why knowing about nutrition is critical for our students.

Fizzy’s Lunch Lab is from PBS, and is designed to help kids learn healthy food habits. Most of the text on the site is provided with audio support.

The Nutrition Cafe at the Pacific Science Center has some neat activities.

Dole’s Superkids also has a bunch of neat activities and games. You might need to click on the “low-bandwidth version,” and that seemed fine to me.

Food Champs has a lot different leveled activities related to food vocabulary and nutrition. Most, if not all, of the site is accessible to English Language Learners.

You can play the Food Pyramid Adventure game.

Guess The Calories is another online nutrition game.

Dining Decisions is yet another healthy food game.

Play “Unmuddle The Meals.”

Start Making Choices has some good interactive guides on nutrition, as does Nutrition Explorations.

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.

National Geographic has a pretty neat interactive called Rain Forest At Night. You move your mouse around a nighttime simulation of the…rain forest at night. Click on the animals you see and you get more information about them.

It’s accessible to Intermediate ELL’s.

I’ve placed the link on the Science page of my website.

Weird-looking critters always generate high-interest from students — English Language Learners and mainstream alike. Reading, writing, and talking about them are excellent language-development activities, and I’ve listed some good accessible sites on this list.

In the second part of this post, I share some sites that — believe it or not — let students also easily create their own weird-looking animals. First designing, then describing (along with talking and listening) them also provide good language-learning opportunities.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites For Learning About Weird-Looking Creatures And For Making Your Own!):

LEARNING ABOUT THEM:

19 Insanely Weird Animals is a slideshow from LIFE Magazine.

The weirdest animals on Planet Earth comes from the British paper The Telegraph.

MSN has some of the World’s weirdest animals and Weird Animals That You Can Travel to See.

Weird New Animals From Antarctica’s Deep Seas is from National Geographic.

Nick Baker’s Weird Creatures is a show on the Smithsonian Channel, and you can see many clips on their site.

The Web Ecoist has several good resources, including:

The 9 Strangest Animals on Earth

Nine Outstanding Expanding Animals!

15 of the World’s Strangest Animals

20 Scary Animals

The Weird Animal Express is a student-created site.

Strange, odd and beautiful creatures is from a Florida newspaper.

CREATING YOUR OWN:

With Animal Mix-Up you can create a bizarre creature, email the link and post it. English Language Learners can not only use it as an opportunity to describe their creation, but the design process itself provides an excellent opportunity for vocabulary development. There are a lot of choices for creature modifications, and their accompanied with visual and text descriptions.

Build Your WIldself is from the New York Zoos and Aquarium. Instead of explaining it here, I’m just going to suggest you read a post from Kevin Jarrett which explains it in detail.

The Switch Zoo is another similar site. However, you can only print-out creation, not save it online.

Feedback is always welcome.

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

You might also want to explore the 400 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

A Guide to the Cosmos, in Words and Images Dazzling and True is the title of a slideshow from the New York Times showing some fabulous images of space.

I’m adding it to The Best Images Taken In Space.

Powering The Earth is a neat interactive infographic that shows different regions, their populations, and their carbon emissions between 1980 and 2007.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change.

It’s time again for another list to join these previous year-end lists:

The Best Math Sites For English Language Learners — 2007

The Best Science Websites For Students & Teachers — 2007

The Best Science & Math Websites — 2008

The criteria is the same as it has been in previous years. They have to be:

* Free

* Engaging and accessible to English Language Learners

* Provide English-language development opportunities as wells as science or math content

I’m not listing them in any order of preference, except for at the very end of this post.  There, I’ll highlight the number one site for both Science and Math this year — it’s the same for both.

Here are my choices for The Best Science & Math Sites — 2009:

SCIENCE:

Planet Quest is a pretty amazing multimedia timeline of space exploration that begins at 500 B.C. In addition, it provides audio support for the text.

The INDEX Award winners for this year were announced in August. 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.

Share Your Ideas is a neat feature on the California Academy of Science website. Users can easily leave their ideas on how to help the environment, which then appear on sort of a bulletin-board like page. You can read more about the site here.

The Discovery Channel has come-up with just about the most creative way imaginable to help students remember the names of the planets in our solar system. It’s called the Solar Symphony Game. I really can’t explain it — you have to check it out for yourself. It also has relatively accessible nuggets of information about each planet, too.

NASA At Home & City is a terrific interactive where NASA shows the practical implications of how space travel has affected out lives.  It’s very well done, and audio support is provided for the text. It’s quite accessible to English Language Learners.

The BBC has put together a nice summary of NASA”s Fifty Years In Space. It’s mainly a collection of short video clips highlighting key moments.

Before and After Humans is an intriguing interactive with images from MSNBC that forecasts various paths human evolution might take in the next few million years.  The vocabulary is going to be challenging — even for advanced Intermediate English Language Learners — but the images and potential paths are going to be intriguing enough, I think, for students to “fight through” for understanding.

MATH:

Max’s Math Adventures is from Scholastic, and offers a variety of relatively simple math games. The key feature, though, that makes it so useful to English Language Learners is that audio support is provided for much of the text.

Learning Clip provides a ton of free interactive math activities. First, students listen to a brief cartoon video explaining the concept (the British accent might make things difficult for some students). Then, users play games reinforcing the idea. You have to first register for the site. It’s worth a visit. They do have a notice, however, saying that some of their exercises will only be available for paid subscribers after January 16th, 2010. I hope most of them are still accessible for free.

CyberChase from PBS has a great online talking calculator. It’s a perfect way for English Language Learners to do their math and, through listening skills, developing their language abilities.

THE NUMBER ONE SITE FOR BOTH SCIENCE & MATH:

The BBC has recently announced a new website in their exceptional “Bitesize” series. This one is called KS3 Bitesize. It includes activities for Math, English and Science.  What makes it truly exceptional — at least for English Language Learners — is that all the neat exercises listed as an “Activity” on the site not only are very engaging and informative, but have subtitles which make them more accessible to English Language Learners.

You might want to look at the other over 350 “The Best….” lists, including many related to Science and Math.

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

Here are new additions to The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change:

The Guardian just published an infographic titled A changing pattern – world climate anomalies.

Copenhagen Climate Conference Begins is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

Impact of climate change is a series of video reports from the BBC.

The Key Effects Of Climate Change is an accessible infographic from the BBC.

The Financial Times has an interactive graphic titled “Carbon emissions past and projected.”

The Guardian has A complete guide to the Copenhagen climate change summit.

Climate Change and Global Warming for Children is a very accessible animation.

Copenhagen climate change conference 2009: we look at the problems our changing planet is facing is a slideshow from The Telegraph.

What Is Global Warming? comes from the CBBC Newsround.

Shake, Rattle and Slide is an exceptional interactive from the University of Illinois Extension focused on volcanoes, earthquakes and glaciers. It provides audio support for the text, and is very accessible to English Language Learners. There are number of neat online activities on the site,

I’m adding it to The Best Websites For Learning About Natural Disasters.

Thanks to REMC Ramblings for the tip.

World leaders will meet in Copenhagen next week for the U.N. Climate Change Conference. I thought it would be helpful to put together a list of related online resources that are accessible to English Language Learners.

I also have a number of links on The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom, and won’t be duplicating them here. So you might want to check-out that list, too. You might also be interested in The Best Online Carbon Calculators.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change (not in any order of preference):

Countdown To Copenhagen is a Wall Street Journal interactive timeline displaying major events related to climate change over the past forty years.

Advancing Emissions is another interactive from the Wall Street Journal charting changes in greenhouse gas emissions over the past forty years.

Breathing Earth is an intriguing visual representation of the effect each country has on climate change.  You move the cursor to a nation on a world map, and then see the number of CO2 emissions that country makes each minute.  It also shows total population, and the birth and death rate of each country. With guidance, English Language Learners could certainly use this website to make some comparisons between countries and draw conclusions from the data.

Tides Of Change is a series of closed-captioned NASA videos related to climate change. NASA also has a site entirely devoted to climate change issues, including many interactives.

A Climate Map from the British newspaper The Guardian shows the impact rising temperatures will have on the world. It’s a little “busy-looking” but would be accessible with some teacher interpretation.

Here’s an infographic showing which countries have lived up to the Kyoto agreement on the environment and which have not.

The Guardian has another interactive titled How climate change will affect food resources.

Copenhagen Challenge is an online game on climate change. It provides audio support for the text, but seemed complicated to me. However, I’m continually surprised at how well my English Language Learner students can figure out how to play and win online games.

The Planet is accessible to advanced ELL’s, and provides a good overview of different environmental challenges facing our planet, including climate change.

The New York Times has an interactive graphic called Sea Ice in Retreat. It focuses on what is going on in the Arctic.

BBC Climate Change: Bloom is an animated, and accessible feature that lets the user view and choose many different actions that can be taken individually to reduce global climate change. It won a Webby Award this year.

National Public Radio has a series of reports on the effects of global warming around the world.

The Denver Post has an exceptional series of photos called Melting Ice: Glaciers and Ice Shelves. It very vividly shows the change in size of various glaciers because of global warming.

What Is Global Warming is a simple and accessible interactive graphic explaining…global warming.

Enhanced ‘greenhouse effect’ causes global warming is an interactive from USA Today.

National Geographic has an excellent map of Global Warming Effects around the world. The map, images, and language is very simple, and accessible to Early Intermediate English Language Learners. It’s part of a larger feature called The Greenhouse Effect.

The Discovery Channel has a Global Warming Interactive.  It’s pretty “jazzy” looking, with lots of point and click features showing the effects of global warming. It’s probably accessible to high Intermediate and advanced English Language Learners.

The Global Warming Facts and Our Future from the National Academy of Sciences is a very engaging and extensive site, and includes audio support for the text. The vocabulary may be pretty challenging for Intermediate English Language Learners, but it’s worth the attempt.

What Causes Global Warming? is simple series of pictures demonstrating various activities that contribute to global warming.  When you put your cursor on each picture, a short explanation appears.

The Washington Post has a Global Emissions Interactive that shows the amount of carbon emissions from each country has changed over the years.

The Guardian just published an infographic titled A changing pattern – world climate anomalies.

Copenhagen Climate Conference Begins is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

Impact of climate change is a series of video reports from the BBC.

The Key Effects Of Climate Change is an accessible infographic from the BBC.

The Financial Times has an interactive graphic titled “Carbon emissions past and projected.”

The Guardian has A complete guide to the Copenhagen climate change summit.

Climate Change and Global Warming for Children is a very accessible animation.

Copenhagen climate change conference 2009: we look at the problems our changing planet is facing is a slideshow from The Telegraph.

What Is Global Warming? comes from the CBBC Newsround.

The New York Times has an interactive graphic titled Copenhagen: Emissions, Treaties and Impacts.

The Carbon Economy is an infographic video. That link is from YouTube. It’s from the Economist, and is available from its website (which shouldn’t be blocked by filters), but it doesn’t appear to be working right now.

Copenhagen: Voices from the edge of climate change is an interactive from The Guardian that has audio reports from people around the world directly affected by climate change today. The Guardian also has a similar video.

Powering The Earth is a neat interactive infographic that shows different regions, their populations, and their carbon emissions between 1980 and 2007.

Feedback and 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.

Since today marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and since some of my English Language Learners students are taking science classes, I thought I’d put together a quick list of accessible resources about Darwin.

Here are my choices for The Best Online Resources To Learn About Charles Darwin (and are accessible to English Language Learners);

150 years since “The Origin of Species” published is the title of an interactive from Agence France Presse.

The life and times of Charles Darwin is an audio slideshow from the British newspaper The Guardian.

Darwin’s Brave New World looks like a fabulous resource from The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Darwin’s Footsteps is an online game where you follow his travels around the world.

Here’s a neat game about Darwin’s theories.

Happy 200th Darwin Day! is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

ESL Holiday Lessons has a lesson on Darwin.

Evolution of Life is a series of videos on Darwin and evolution.

The New York Times has an audio slideshow about the Galapagos Islands.

Living Galapagos is an audio slideshow about the islands today.

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.

NASA just opened a website yesterday called Be A Martian. Here’s how the BBC describes it in an article titled How to explore Mars and have fun:

A Nasa website called “Be A Martian” allows users to play games while at the same time sorting through hundreds of thousands of images of the Red Planet.

The site includes some neat-sound games that look like they might be accessible to English Language Learners.  Unfortunately, though, it looks like the site is being overwhelmed with visitors and I couldn’t get past the home page before I got a page load error.

I assume they’ll get that issue cleared up later today, and I’ll be looking forward to exploring it further.

Whack Attack is a game from the BBC that tests knowledge on Math, English or Science. It’s probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

The questions are good, though the game is a little weird. You’re given three answer choices. Each answer is color-coded, and in order to choose an answer, you have to “whack” the correctly-colored figure that keeps popping up.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.

Planet Quest is a pretty amazing multimedia timeline of space exploration that begins at 500 B.C. In addition, it provides audio support for the text. I learned about it from Richard Byrne.

I’m tentatively adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Planets & Space. The reason I’m only doing so “tentatively” is because even though it’s a wonderful site, the vocabulary is a bit advanced — perhaps too advanced for many English Language Learners.