Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Some of you receiving posts by RSS Reader got the wrong link to the PowerPoint Presentation I described in my last post.

In order to access the PowerPoint you have to go to Center For Adult English Language Acquisition and then click on the link to the presentation.

Sorry

Sarah Young from the Center For Applied Linguistics has developed a fascinating PowerPoint presentation A Brief History of Adult ESL Instruction. In order to access the PowerPoint you have to go to Center For Adult English Language Acquisition and then click on the link to the presentation.

I was particularly struck by slides number 38 and 53. The first one highlights recommendations in 1919 for time allotments during classes (very little for direct phonics instruction; teaching reading by using high-interest content). The second one is a great 1918 list of “Suggestions To Teachers” (Hide your chair when you enter the room and walk about among your pupils; Don’t be a slave to the textbook).

I know there are quite a few online tools out there that allow you to check what time it is in different time zones — I just haven’t paid much attention to them. Now, however, with school starting in less than a month, I’m beginning to think about the possibility of connecting up some of our international sister classes up to one another in real-time using some of the tools on my The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration list.

Of course, in order to make that happen, we’d need to figure what time it is in all our different time zones.

I just read about the World Time Engine in Startup Meme, which seems to provide this kind of information pretty easily.

Does anyone know of any better time zone calculators out there?

Teaching Tolerance, which is on my The Best Teacher Resource Sites For Social Justice Issues list, just announced that in September they will begin distributing, free-of-charge to teachers, a new documentary film and teaching kit. It’s called Viva la Causa! and will focus on the grape boycott led by the United Farm Workers Union in the late 1960’s.

It’s not yet listed on their website, so you can’t order it now. But you can sign-up for their email newsletter or just check back in next month.

Teaching Tolerance always develops excellent materials, and I’ve also always found them accessible to English Language Learners. And you can’t beat the price!

In teaching about the history of immigrants in California, I obviously include some lessons on the UFW.

You can also found links about Cesar Chavez and the UFW on my website under Our Changing Nation.

Thanks to the excellent blog Alt Search Engines, I’ve learned about about a neat new site called Green Planet Search.

It’s a search engine for environmental websites, plus the site and its host is solar-powered. It’s very attractively designed, and, even though they’re just starting, I’ve been able to find a number of sites that are new to me on it and that are accessible to English Language Learners.

I’m so impressed with it that I’m adding it to my surprisingly (at least to me) popular The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom.

I’ll be posting in the future about new sites I find through Green Planet Search.

National Public Radio just aired, and published, what seems to be one of the better overviews I’ve seen of education positions by the two Presidential candidates.

McCain, Obama Offer Dueling Education Plans offers some good details, including listing their education advisers.

Thanks to Reading Today for the link.

If you’d like many more sites like those in my The Best Sites To Teach and Learn About the Olympics, David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 has created a public Olympics Page definitely worth a visit.

If you’d like access to even more sites, and a ton of other resources, you’ll need to join EFL Classroom 2.0 and go to the “Resources” section.

I’d strongly encourage you to join. It’s free, simple, and I’ve listed EFL Classroom as one of The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers.

I’m adding another link to The Best Blogs For Sharing Resources/Links list.

It’s not a blog, but it’s website that is updated several times each week. Ressources Pour Le College is an extraordinary collection of sites helpful to English Language Learners. If you go to that link, you’ll see a section labeled “New Sites.” You can find new great links there daily.

Learning The Language, the excellent Edweek blog written by Mary Ann Zehr, just wrote about an intriguing bill that has just been introduced in Congress.

I’d encourage you to go to her blog and read Sen. Clinton and Rep. Honda Introduce Language Bill.

Among many other elements, the bill offers tax credits to businesses offering English literacy training, and provides tax credits to teachers of English Language Learners and a deduction for certification.

Thanks to Mark Wagner’s blog, Educational Technology and Life, I learned about one of Edublogs’ “secret” projects, Edublogs.tv. James Farmer at Edublogs says the video-hosting and sharing service has been in “stealth” mode, but will be publicly announced next week (he gave me permission to mention it here).

It looks great, and seems better than TeacherTube.

James says here’s a 50MB upload limit at the moment but it will be increasing to 100MB soon.

Just one more reason that Edublogs is the place to be!

I’ve added three blogs to my The Best Blogs For Sharing Resources/Links list.

They are:

* Nik Peachey’s Learning Technology Teacher Development Blog For ELT

* Richard Byrne’s Free Technology For Teachers

* Jeffrey Hill’s The English Blog.

I’d encourage you to visit their blogs, as well as the others on the list.

I just learned about a nice resource offered  by PBS’ Online News Hour called China Prepares For 2008 Olympics, and I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Teach and Learn About the Olympics.

It has several good features, including some interactives and lesson plans.

Thanks to the excellent Librarians’ Internet Index for the tip.

While you’re at the New Hour site, you might want to explore their News For Students section, too.

First, I want to begin by saying that, obviously, the best place to get good recommendations for any of these categories are people you know and whose judgment you respect.

Secondly, I want to clarify that in this list I’m not going to cover any of the many websites that allow you to see what your “friends” are suggesting, either.

Instead, this “The Best…” list will highlight ways to get recommendations that are (or at least I think they are) based on some kind of computer generated formula. And, in some of them, they might be considered more like a search engine.

I’ve used these applications to identify new resources to assist in my teaching, and I’ve also had students (primarily reluctant-readers from my ninth-grade mainstream class) use one or two of them to find books in which they might be interested.

I’m sure I’m missing some good tools out there, so please feel free to leave suggestions in the Comments section.

Here are my choices for The Best Places To Get Blog, Website, Book, Movie, & Music Recommendations (again, through some kind of computer generated system):

BLOGS & WEBSITES:

Two obvious places are the “related feeds” section in Bloglines, which lists other blogs that are supposed related to the one you’re reading at that time; and Google Reader’s “recommendations.”

I also like In Suggest. It lets you provide a website you like, and then shows you a bunch more it thinks you’ll like. More interestingly, you can do the same with your del.iciou.us bookmarks (you can also use images).

BOOKS, MOVIES, & MUSIC:

Here, one obvious tool is Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item..” section that lists the books, movies, and music that other people purchased who also bought the item you’re looking at.

Live Plasma uses a neat Flash Interface that uses Amazon’s data base to highlight movie and music recommendations.

Zoomi doesn’t quite fit into this recommendation category, but it’s pretty close. It’s another much more visual representation of Amazon’s catalogue that shows books in a virtual bookshelf. You can then access Amazon’s recommendations. I’ve found that some of my reluctant readers are more engaged in looking for books using this tool than Amazon’s usual rather bland interface.

Scholastic has recently started the Teacher Book Wizard. It’s a data base of over 50,000 books that’s searchable by keyword, title or author. You can also type in the title of book and indicate if you are looking for similar books at the same, lower, or higher level. I typed in the keyword “immigration” and was able to find quite a few that I know my students would consider “high-interest” ones. I certainly got a better selection that I did when I typed the same word at Amazon’s site. I think this might end up being quite useful to teachers of English Language Learners.

LookyBook allows you to “flip” through all of the pages of a growing number of recent picture books. You can also choose ones to keep on your own virtual “bookshelf.” For example, when I was looking for stories to use as part of a unit on fables with my English Language Learner students, I was able to search for books using the keyword “fable.” I was then able to find quite a few — some which my students were able to read online, and one that I purchased. Being able to see the whole book is a big advantage over, for example, the preview function available on Amazon’s website.

Soundflavor is an intriguing and new music website. It’s basically a source of online music not unlike several others I’ve already posted about and placed on my website under Movies & Music For ESL.However, it does have one unique feature — you can search for music by subject (nature, war, peace, work, money, etc.). It looks like the results are a little uneven, but even so this kind of capability could be very helpful to an ESL/EFL teacher who’s being hard-pressed to find a song connected to a theme he/she is teaching in class.

Netflix’s “Enjoyed By Members Who Enjoyed” and “More Like This” features are also useful sources of recommendations.

Again, this list might not “go together” as smoothly as some of my others, but there does seem to be at least a little bit of a common thread that might make it useful to teachers.

Links to all of these sites can also be found on my Teacher’s Page.

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

A blog called Lexiophiles has published a list of what they believe are the Top 100 Language Blogs. It’s definitely worth checking-out — I’m looking forward to visiting many of them. It seems like a lot of work went into developing the list.

They ranked this blog number five. They’re also inviting people to vote for their favorite here.

I’ve been involved in naturalization and citizenship work for nearly twenty-five years, and I’m embarrassed to say that until I received an email today from CLINIC, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, I didn’t know that September 17th was Citizenship Day in the United States.

Here’s what CLINIC says about it:

“Citizenship Day, which occurs this year on September 17^th, is an important holiday to mark on our calendars, especially for the Church and immigration service providers working with newcomers. The day provides an opportunity to celebrate the work we do, the value of citizenship, and the contributions of immigrants to our communities. Citizenship Day was established by President Harry Truman in 1952. It replaced “I am an American Day,” which had been celebrated since 1940 on the third Sunday in May. September 17 was chosen for Citizenship Day because it was the day on which the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787. The purpose of this holiday is to celebrate the privileges, rights, and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship, and to honor both native-born and naturalized citizens.”

CLINIC goes on to write, ” In a speech celebrating the very first Citizenship Day, President Truman exhorted all citizens to educate themselves about our government, stay informed of the “great problems of the day,” and exercise the right to vote. He said, “The success of free government depends upon the willingness of the citizen to participate in it, to contribute to it, and to sacrifice for it.”

Teachers might want to start thinking about using Citizenship Day as a teaching opportunity, as well as its possible use to leverage resources and public attention to citizenship issues.

I was pretty careful about how I titled this latest “The Best…” list. These sites are good to “introduce” environmental issues in the classroom, but generally don’t provide information on systemic, political, and corporate issues related to environmental damage.

I wasn’t able to find one excellent site that would provide those types resources and be accessible to English Language Learners. However, sites like Breaking News English and the Voice Of America Special English or other links on my The Best News/Current Events Websites For English Language Learners — 2007 that have numerous accessible news stories about current events related to the environment. These stories can be used to raise questions about the roles of First World consumption, the profit motive, and the influence of campaign contributions on political decisions.

I haven’t ranked sites here in order of preference — I think they’re all engaging and accessible to English Language Learners. I have, though, grouped them into four primary categories:

* Ones that provide “calculators” that help users determine their personal “carbon footprints.”

* Ones that provide information on what people can personally do to reduce the damage they cause to the environment, but don’t necessarily ask a series of questions so users can determine their “carbon footprint.”

* Online games that primarily relate to people’s personal actions on how they can affect the environment.

* “Big picture” sites that offer some broader perspective on the environmental crises the world faces, though they don’t necessarily provide an in-depth analysis of “why?”.

Ordinarily, I give a little more of a description for each site than I have in this list. I’m a little pressed for time this summer, though, so, outside of grouping these sites by categories, I’ll leave it to you to discover more details about them on your own.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into the Classroom:

CARBON FOOTPRINT CALCULATORS:

Zero Footprint Kids Calculator and Ecologic Games are the most simple and accessible to Beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners. Consumer Consequences and Ecological Footprint Calculator are excellent and best for Intermediate and Advanced ELL’s.

PERSONALLY REDUCE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT:

Planet Green Game; ESL Environmental Education; Eeko World; and The Green Guide all give accessible information about how to personally change your actions to have a positive effect on the environment.

ENVIRONMENTAL GAMES:

Tox Mystery; Environmental Intelligence Unit; ElectroCity; the Carbon Lifestyle Game; and My Abodo are all good, engaging games on the environmental consequences of one’s actions.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL BIG PICTURE:

Climate Change from the BBC News Around; Planet In Peril from the Cable News Network; the Global Warming Map from National Geographic; Environmental Mysteries from North Carolina PBS; the Brainpop: Our Fragile Environment online movies; Can You Keep The Earth In Balance? from National Geographic; Six Degrees Can Change The World, also from National Geographic; and Breathing Earth begin to provide some broader framework for the environmental mess we find ourselves in.

(I’m adding Green Planet Search to this list)

(I’m also adding the Human Footprint Interactive here)

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.

Vaestro Voice Channel is an interesting site that allows you to have, for instance, your own class “voice channel” where students can easily record messages. 

TVO Wikispaces has a good explanation and some examples on its site, along with a bunch of other good language-learning resources.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Audio Messages.

I’ve recently learned about some excellent interactive Google Apps Tutorials. Thanks to Derek’s Blog for the tip.

I wouldn’t say they are particularly accessible to English Language Learners, but they certainly are for teachers like myself who are not especially tech savvy.

I’ve placed the link on my Teacher’s Page.

Today I’d like to highlight a section on my Teacher’s Page called Grants.

You’ll find several good links for educators seeking funds for special projects.  These sites include Grants Alert, Grant Wrangler, and Education Funding Watch.

There are other links, too, and I’ll be adding more in the future.

We teach a thematic unit on Natural Disasters in our ninth-grade English curriculum. These classes include both native-English speakers and advanced English Language Learners. Since it’s the first unit we teach in the fall semester, I thought it would be good to use that topic for another “The Best…” list.

In order to make it on this list, the sites have to be accessible to English Language Learners and also provide engaging content.

You can find these links, along with many others, on my website under Natural Disasters.

Here are my picks for The Best Websites For Learning About Natural Disasters (not in any order of preference):

Curriculum Bits has a series of excellent animations that provide audio support for the text. They have ones on Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes.

National Geographic’s Forces Of Nature has excellent interactives and images related to the film of the same name.

Channel One Natural Disasters has interactives, animations, and quizzes about all sorts of natural disasters.

The organization 2Learn has excellent sites on two of the most recent major natural disasters that have hit the world — the Chinese earthquake and the Burma Cyclone.

National Geographic has a second good section on Natural Disasters including videos, slideshows, and interactives.

There are two online games that students can play and help prevent disasters. One is Disaster Watch, and a more complicated one is Stop Disasters.

Brainpop has several excellent closed-captions movies about various natural disasters. You have to pay for a subscription (and it’s well worth the price), but you can also get a free trial.

Of course, here in California we’re particularly concerned about earthquakes. The San Francisco Chronicle has a fantastic resource on the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

The CBBC Newsround has a very accessible guide to Hurricane Katrina. National Geographic also has some excellent resources on what happened in New Orleans. You can see powerful images at In Katrina’s Wake.

This next site might not be on most people’s list, but it’s high up for anyone who lives and/or works here in Sacramento. Now that New Orleans has been flooded, and supposedly had its levees reinforced and strengthened, Sacramento has become the American city that is most likely to be hit by a major flood. If you’d like to see what that might look like, go the video animations our local PBS affiliate has developed. There might be a delay in new posts here if this event ever occurs.

As usual, feedback is welcome.

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