Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

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.

I’ve found that students of all ages are interested in robots. Given that interest, I thought it would be a good idea to bring together a number of resources about them that are accessible to English Language Learners. They make for high interest reading material, and provide good images to write about, too. The videos provide good listening practice.

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

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture has a nice series of photos of Robots.

The Big Picture also has another series of similar images called More Robots.

The Tech Museum has a nice group of robot-related activities.

LIFE has a slideshow on Japanese Robotics.

LIFE also has a slideshow of famous robots from television and the movies.

Robots, Robots Everywhere is an online CBS News video on Japanese robots.

Here’s another CBS News video — this one on soccer games between robotic dogs.

Robots can help when disaster strikes, according to this video news report.

The Robot Hall of Fame has a slideshow.

ABC News has a slideshow on robots replacing human teachers in the classroom.

CNN has several interesting videos, including ones on:

A Home Robot

A Robotics Competition

The First Robotics Championship

Robotic Suits To Help The Disabled

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.

All Systems Go is a “drag-and-drop” interactive designed to teach “inside” parts of the body (digestive system, brain, heart, etc.).

It’s a good second step after ELL students have learned the “outside” body parts (hands, arms, etc.).

I’ve placed the link on my website under Body.

National Geographic has an interactive Prehistoric Timeline with images and language that is accessible to high Intermediate English Language Learners.

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

Next Saturday is the twentieth anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake, which struck the San Francisco Bay Area. I lived in Santa Rosa at the time, which is about fifty miles north of San Francisco. I was standing outside talking with a group of people, and remember feeling that I was getting dizzy and going to faint when, in fact, it was the earthquake.

Since we’re studying Natural Disasters in our ninth-grade English classes now, I thought I’d collect a few useful resources about the quake and create a quick “The Best…” list. I’m sure I’ll be adding to it as the week goes on.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources To Learn About The Loma Prieta Earthquake:

The Sacramento Bee has an excellent slideshow of images from the event.

The San Francisco Chronicle also has a slideshow.

The San Jose Mercury News has a ton of resources on the anniversary.

CBS has another slideshow.

Here’s another television station’s special page on the quake, including several videos.

The local ABC station also has a lot of resources on the event, including videos and slideshows.

Here’s a slideshow on the impact the quake had on the small city of Santa Cruz, which was very close to its epicenter.

The Exploratorium has two good videos of the quake.

The New York Times also has a slideshow about the event.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a series of videos on the quake. Unfortunately, they’re all hosted on YouTube, and I haven’t had a chance to move them to Edublogs TV so they can be shown at school.

CBS has an interactive explaining earthquakes in general.

You might also be interested in:

The Best Websites For Learning About Natural Disasters

The Best Websites To Learn About California

The Best Sites To Learn About San Francisco

The Best Sites To Learn About The Earthquake In Italy

The Best Sites To Learn About The Tongan Volcano & Earthquake

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.

Learning the names of the seasons is one of the first vocabulary terms that Beginning English Language Learners typically learn. Images from the fall are always great ones to use to help teach about the season, and I thought I’d share a few links to some great ones.

Fall images are also great opportunities for learning descriptive words, and geography, and, as an eCard site I share in this lists shows, can be used for writing practice, too.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites For Images Of Fall Foliage (& For Teaching About The Season):

Autumn Scenes is a great series of photos from The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture.

Hidden Stashes of Fall Foliage is a slideshow from The New York Times.

Fall Leaves 2009 is a series of pictures from The Sacramento Bee. The Bee also has an interactive map of fall colors in Northern California.

The Harford Courant has a slideshow of New England colors in the fall.

Yankee Foliage has an excellent eCard feature where users can pick an image, write about it and send it to a friend. For ELL’s, the url address of the card and image can be posted on a student/teacher website or blog.

Here’s a relatively simple explanation for why the colors of leaves change.

The Sun Sentinel newspaper has a slideshow contrasting fall colors in the Eastern and Western parts of the United States.

The Orange County Register has a similar slideshow. They also have one titled Autumn In New England.

In addition to images specifically of the fall, here are some good links to activities designed for ELL’s to learn about all the seasons:

The Leaves On The Trees is a song from The British Council.

Seasons is an interactive from Harcourt.

Puddles is a talking story from Reading Is Fundamental.

Patterns In The Sky is an accessible science interactive that deals with more of the science issues related to seasonal changes.

Shades of fall is a series of photos from the Sacramento Bee.

Autumn Settles In is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

As always, feedback and suggestions are 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.

The Canadian Museum of Nature has several of what they call Gallery Interactives — very accessible online activities and games designed to teach about….nature.

I’ve placed the link on my Science page.

“Powering A Nation” is an impressive online multimedia feature on various aspects of energy use and production.

It’s particularly accessible to English Language Learners because it’s closed-captioned.

Hubble telescope’s latest images is a series of photos published by the Sacramento Bee.

The Wall Street Journal published a similar slideshow.

I’m adding them to The Best Sites To Learn About The Hubble Telescope.

The BBC has just 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.

Various parts of this site are going to make it on a number of “The Best…” lists this year.

Darwin’s Footsteps is a very simple and interactive game about Charles Darwin and his discoveries. It’s accessible to Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’m adding it to the Science page on my website.

Chemistry Lab Escape is an online video game of the “Escape the Room” genre. Here’s its Walkthrough.

In a weird sort of way, English Language Learners will develop some science vocabulary in playing the game.

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

Online carbon calculators help users determine the amount of carbon emissions they (or their household) is responsible for introducing into the environment. This kind of interactive exercise can be a good language-development opportunity, as well as one for expanding content knowledge in either science or social studies.

There are quite a few of them out there, and I’ve included some on my previous The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom.

With the increase in their availability, I thought I would create a quick “The Best…” list sharing links to ones I think are the best and most accessible to English Language Learners.

I’m not going to describe each one because all the calculators on this list are fairly similar. However, I will differentiate between the first two, which are probably accessible to Beginning or Early Intermediate English Language Learners, and the last five, which are best for Intermediate and Advanced ELL’s. The primary difference between the two groups are the number of questions and amount/complexity of the text. Also, most of the ones in the second group provide more precise figures since they incorporate data from the area where you live, too.

Here are my picks for The Best Online Carbon Calculators:

FOR BEGINNING & EARLY INTERMEDIATE ELL’S:

Zero Footprint Kids Calculator

Ecologic Bigfoot Calculator

FOR INTERMEDIATE & ADVANCED ELL’S

Cool Climate

The Nature Conservancy: What’s My Carbon Footprint?

Low Impact Living Calculator

Personal Footprint Calculator

Consumer Consequences

One Did It

You can find links to these and other calculators on the Science page of my website.

Also, there’s a somewhat related simple Water Footprint Calculator that might be worth trying-out.

The Bonneville Environmental Foundation has very engaging carbon and water calculators to determine your environmental impact. In addition, their suggestions for how to reduce them are equally well-done.

Feel free to offer additional suggestions.

If you found this post useful, you might want to check out my other “The Best…” lists.

In addition, you can also subscribe to this blog for free.

Math and Science Literacy For English Language Learners is the focus of the most recent issue of “Accellerate:The quarterly newsletter of the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition.”

You can subscribe for free to the NCELA listserv here.

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.

I’m adding the site to The Best Sites Where Students Can Learn About Inventions.

Living Longer in America is an interactive from MSNBC which shows you how long you are likely to live — depending on which area of the country you call home.

In addition, it has a timeline where you can learn how life expectancy has increased over the years and for what reasons.

The site is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and I’ve placed the link on my United States History page.

The League of Scientists offers a number of science-related games whose difficulty level can be adjusted. In addition, you can start your own games and have up-to-eight people compete in “your” race. It’s not as simple as it is in other game sites to create games that only include your classmates, but if you set it up that the people you want to compete against all sign-in at the same time, it seems to me that you should be able to make that happen. Also, unlike in some of the sites, you have to log-in before you play (registration is simple, though).

Even with some of those drawbacks, I’m still adding The League of Scientists to The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”.

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.

I’m adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”.

Thanks to anacik for the tip.

The Bonneville Environmental Foundation has very engaging carbon and water calculators to determine your environmental impact. In addition, their suggestions for how to reduce them are equally well-done.

I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Teaching & Learning About World Water Day, and I will be including it in an upcoming “The Best…” list on carbon calculators.

Graph Jam is an extremely easy tool to for making simple online graphs.  I’ve added it to The Best Tools To Make Simple Graphs Online.

Thanks to Steve Dembo for the tip.