Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

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October 30, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Only Two Days Left To Contribute To The Next ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival!

Adam Simpson is hosting the 31st ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival over at his blog, One Year In The Life Of An English Teacher.

He’s asking people to leave a comment there sharing ‘a blog post you want more people to read.’

You can also send it to him here or send it to me.

Please do it by November 1st.

Let me know if you might be interested in hosting future editions.

You can see all the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

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October 12, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Special Edition Of “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t”

(Usually, I just post a weekly version of this regular feature. However, sometimes I post an extra “Special Edition” when I have more good links than usual)

I have a huge backlog of resources that I’ve been planning to post about in this blog but, just because of time constraints, have not gotten around to doing. Instead of letting that backlog grow bigger, I regularly grab a few and list them here with a minimal description. It forces me to look through these older links, and help me organize them for my own use. I hope others will find them helpful, too. These are resources that I didn’t include in my “Best Tweets” feature because I had planned to post about them, or because I didn’t even get around to sending a tweet sharing them.

Here is a Special Edition of “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t”:

EDUBLOGS TEACHER CHALLENGES is from Edublogs. I’m adding it to The Best Sources For Advice On Student Blogging.

‘Beam Us Up, Mr. Scott!’: Why Misquotations Catch On is from The Atlantic. I’m adding it to The Best Places To Find Quotations On The Web.

Top 10 Tips For Better iPhone Photos has useful advice. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Beginning iPhone Users Like Me.

Dropbox: A Superb Classroom Tool is from PLP. I’m adding it to
The Best Resources For Maximizing The Use Of Dropbox.

Documentary seeks to explain why Albanians saved Jews in Holocaust is from CNN. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The Holocaust.

A Brief History Of Computers That Changed The World is from Make Use Of. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The History Of Technology.

12 Ways to Know if You’re in a Project-Based Learning Environment or Merely Having Kids Create Projects in Your Classroom provides helpful advice. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Cooperative Learning Ideas.

On Students’ Needs And Team Learning: A Conversation With William Glasser is an oldie but goodie.

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September 23, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Use “Nulu” To Learn Spanish

Nulu is a relatively new site for learning Spanish. You can pick a variety of news stories to have read to you, and the English translation is shown. You can also easily create flash cards for words that you want to study.

Unfortunately, it’s all text-based and has no visuals. It has potential, but I don’t feel like I can add it to The Best Sites For Learning Spanish Online.

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August 14, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
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This Week’s “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t”

I have a huge backlog of resources that I’ve been planning to post about in this blog but, just because of time constraints, have not gotten around to doing. Instead of letting that backlog grow bigger, I regularly grab a few and list them here with a minimal description. It forces me to look through these older links, and help me organize them for my own use. I hope others will find them helpful, too. These are resources that I didn’t include in my “Best Tweets” feature because I had planned to post about them, or because I didn’t even get around to sending a tweet sharing them.

Here are This Week’s “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t”:

If Math Is Basketball, Let Students Play The Game is by Dan Meyer, and is just a very thoughtful commentary on teaching and applicable to all subjects. His comments can be applied to some recent additions I’ve made to The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy In The Classroom questioning whether students have to start at lower levels of thinking in order to “build-up” to the higher ones, so I’m adding it to that list.

12 Essential Social Media Cheat Sheets is from Mashable. I’m adding it to The Best Places To Learn Web 2.0 Basics.

California Works on New English-Language Development Standards is from The Learning The Language blog at Ed Week. It includes some important information about the next generation of language testing, so I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The “Next Generation” Of State Testing.

New online tests hold promise, perils is from The Hechinger Report. I’m adding it to the same list.

The Story Behind the First Photograph Ever Posted on the Web is from The Atlantic. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The History Of Technology.

Stephanie Cook has a good Pinterest Board for iPads. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Beginning iPad Users.

Five Key TED Talks is from The New Yorker. I’m adding it to The Best Teacher Resources For “TED Talks” (& Similar Presentations).

Back to knowledge: The Ironic Path of Teaching Thinking is by Dr. Yoram Harpaz. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On Teaching & Learning Critical Thinking In The Classroom.

Three Steps for Improving Teacher Questions is from Edutopia. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles About Asking Good Questions.

Study: For-profit college degrees don’t help grads earn more is from The Washington Post. It includes some important information, so I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Showing Students Why They Should Continue Their Academic Career.

The Tallest Building in the World is an interactive from The Wall Street Journal. I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About The World’s Tallest Buildings.

Celebrate Summer: 10 Ways to Teach the Season is from The New York Times Learning Network. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The Summer.

Here are some other regular features I post in this blog:

“The Best…” series (which now number over 900)

Best Tweets of The Month

The most popular posts on this blog each month

My monthly choices for the best posts on this blog each month

Each month I do an “Interview Of The Month” with a leader in education

Periodically, I post “A Look Back” highlighting older posts that I think are particularly useful

The ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival

Resources that share various “most popular” lists useful to teachers

Interviews with ESL/EFL teachers in “hot spots” around the world.

Articles I’ve written for other publications.

Photo Galleries Of The Week

Research Studies Of The Week

Regular “round-ups” of good posts and articles about school reform

This Week In Web 2.0

Around the Web In ESL/EFL/ELL

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July 31, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
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For Email Subscribers Only

Feedbltiz is generally pretty reliable for sending out all my posts in a daily summary to email subscribers. However, yesterday they just didn’t include all the posts that were published.

So, if you’re an email subscriber, you might want to come directly to the blog to check out what you missed.

This problem didn’t affect people who read the blog through other means.

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July 1, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Guest Post: “You are not the problem, I’m not the problem, the problem is the problem”

Guest Post by John Thompson

Source: shareasimage.com via Larry on Pinterest

Erica Green of the Baltimore Sun reports in “City School Evaluations Show Problems in Instruction” that Baltimore’s holistic reviews of instructional effectiveness found that schools have a long way to go in preparing for the much higher standards required by Common Core.  When districts use primitive test-driven accountability, it is no surprise that those numbers are manipulated until they show that schools are creating miracles.  Nobody should be surprised either, when in a couple of years scores on Common Core assessments are dramatically lower.

Neither should it be surprising that Baltimore’s high-quality evaluations determined that 40% of teachers were “not effective” in instruction. The latest evaluation is consistent with a growing body of qualitative research by Robert Pianta and others which estimates that as few as 25% of teachers provide “a level of instructional or emotional support consistent with learning gains.” Worse, only 15% of students consistently receive the most effective instruction over multiple years.  One study showed that “in 5thgrade classrooms, positive, individual interactions occurred in only 1% of observed intervals across the school day.”

Some of the previous studies were conducted in Baltimore.  For instance, the Baltimore Education Research Consortium’s (BERC) “Informing Policy and Practice to Benefit Baltimore’s Children” concluded that most elementary teachers in 23 schools provided “affective warmth,” sensitivity to students’ interests and points of view, and proper ‘behavioral expectations.”  But, “instructional support was severely lacking in most of the classrooms.”

But, how could we not find major problems in Baltimore’s classroom instruction when, as the latest evaluation showed, “more than half of the principals at schools already evaluated were found to be ‘not effective’ in cultivating an environment that encourages effective instruction?”  Regarding the city’s secondary schools, it is not surprising in an age of numbers-driven accountability that teachers were pressured to ”increase the graduation rate and that if seniors did not complete the projects assigned, teachers should change the assignments so students can pass.”

As the tougher Common Core assessments approach, we can anticipate more findings such as, in 100% of the classrooms that were studied, “basic recall or comprehension questions, such as ‘What did we just do?’ or ‘What are our multiplication facts?’ were frequent. Questioning requiring higher-order thinking … was far less frequent.”  We should take those criticisms to heart and vow to do better. (We should thus commit to using more of the learning tools found at Websites of the Day …)

At the same time, we must put this data into a historical context.  I taught in the lowest performing high school in Oklahoma.  In my opinion, our dysfunctional school had more good teachers than the suburban school I attended forty years ago.  The difference is that the job of teachers has changed, while the rest of the system has not.  When I was a student, the goal was for teachers to be “good” at their jobs.  Now, the goal is being “effective” at our jobs.  I suspect that Baltimore also has more good teachers than it did in the 1960s, even though it has relatively few teachers who are effective enough to overcome the effects of generational poverty.

Secondly, policy analysts who criticize teachers for not teaching in an engaging and holistic manner, are like the guy who killed his parents and asked for the court’s mercy because he was an orphan.  Since NCLB, teachers have been coerced into teaching to the primitive bubble-in test, and now we are criticized for the inevitable results of that pressure.   In fact, an illustration of this cycle of blame and shame can be found in the BERC’s policy brief which noted, “Deficiencies in the dimensions of instructional and emotional support were especially pronounced during the winter in third grade classrooms, likely linked to observed preparation for the Maryland Schools Assessment (MSA).”  It then recommended, apparently without self-conscious irony, that “Teachers and principals need to be persuaded that students critical thinking skills are crucial for their performance on the MSA.”    It said that test prep should be offered in a “conceptually rich, emotionally warm and interactive manner.”

Baltimore’s qualitative evaluations could be a step towards honestly acknowledging problems.  The next step should be a stipulation that there is plenty of blame to go around.  Then, we could reject the blame and shame game known as data-driven “accountability,” and accept the truism, “you are not the problem, I’m not the problem, the problem is the problem.”

The teacher quality moment gambled everything on the hypothesis that superstar teachers can do it all. If the supply of highly effective teachers were quadrupled (from 25%), the legacy of generational poverty would supposedly be overcome.  Teacher quality advocates are justified in protesting that too few students have the personalized emotional support that they need, but their own figures demonstrate that teachers alone will not be able to satisfy those needs.  Their data provides a powerful case for following the advice of John Merrow and others, and making teaching into a “team sport.”

I would even make an additional suggestion. Our goal should be schools that are effective enough that being a good teacher is enough to be an effective one.  I would seek schools where being a principal who was good at assessing discipline was enough to give the teachers and the support professionals a fighting chance to create an orderly school.  It would be hard to create such schools, however, without recreating central offices so that the job of administrators is being good at administration, and changing the job of policy-makers into being good at supporting practitioners, as opposed to imposing utopian theories on schools.

John Thompson taught for 18 years in the inner city.  He blogs regularly at This Week in Education, Anthony Cody’s Living in Dialogue, the Huffington Post and Schools Matter.  He is completing a book, Getting Schooled, on his experiences in the Oklahoma City Public School System. 

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July 1, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Next ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival Is August 1st!

David Deubelbeiss is hosting the next ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival — the 30th edition — on August 1st!

Here’s how he’s describing it:

The theme for this blog carnival is The Best Posts For Helping New Teachers. September is a start for many new teachers and we hope your blog submissions will help many new or even well honed teachers with ideas.

Submit the blog post URL on his Contact form including a note about it if you wish. The deadline for entries in by July 31st.

Sharon Turner posted the 29th edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival yesterday.

Let me know if you might be interested in hosting future editions.

You can see all the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

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June 23, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

“How Do You Spend Your Day?”

Every year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does a survey on how Americans spend their time. And, in most recent years, The New York Times and/or The Wall Street Journal does some kind of cool interactive infographic using the results.

You can see their previous creations from previous years at:

The Best Infographics Of 2011

The Best Infographics — 2010

The Best Interactive Infographics — 2009

This year is no exception.

The Wall Street Journal has just published a new “How Do You Spend Your Day?” interactive for 2011. In it, they ask you to “Enter the amount of time you spend on each activity on a typical day to see how you compare with the 2011 average.”

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June 6, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

“What If?” Slideshows From My English Language Learner Students

In my previous post, The Best Resources For Teaching “What If?” History Lessons, I shared my experiences in having students create “What If?” slideshows about United States History and what a positive experience it was for my IB Theory of Knowledge class (I also shared important links from other teachers who do similar projects).

In that post, I mentioned that I was arranging for my IB students to come one day to my History class with ELL’s and help them to create similar slideshows. Well, we did that yesterday, and it went extremely well. You can see all seventeen of their slideshows in the comments section at our U.S. History class blog here. And here are two example:

It only took a couple of class periods, and was an excellent opportunity for students to practice reason and logic, as well as creating opportunities for them to make “multiple touches” on material we had covered previously. In fact, it went so well that several of my colleagues and I are now planning to use this project a number of times in our ninth-grade English classes next year (in our unit on Nelson Mandela, for example, students might choose to do one on what would have happened if Mandela had died in prison, or if the white South Africans had not ever released him).

You might also be interested in seeing Photos Of Our “What If?” Project Day.

In addition to adding this post to the “What If?” best list I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I’m adding it to The Best Posts On Helping Students Teach Their Classmates.

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June 4, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Tank Man of Tiananmen”

Today, twenty-three years ago, the Tank Man of Tiananmen made history by his efforts to stop tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square in China to crush student protests.

Here is a video of what occurred:

Here are some photos:

Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen is from The New York Times.

Tiananmen Square, Then and Now is from The Atlantic.

I’m adding these resources to The Best Sites For Learning About Protests In History.

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June 4, 2012
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Sites For Learning About Google Translate & Other Forms Of Machine Translation

Google Translate is the most popular site and app in the world for translation, and I thought it would be useful — both for readers and for my Theory of Knowledge students — to bring together some resources to learn how it works.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites For Learning About Google Translate:

How Google Translate works is from The Independent.

How Google Translate Works Its Magic is from Read Write Web.

Worlds Unknown: The Regions Ignored by Google Translate is from The Atlantic.

I have written a lot in my blog and in my book on teaching English Language Learners on how I use inductive learning in the classroom. Teaching “inductively” generally means providing students with a number of examples from which they can create a pattern and form a concept or rule. Teaching “deductively” is first providing the rule or concept and then having students practice applying it. This two-and-one-half minute video below explains that this is how Google Translate learns, too. It’s definitely worth watching.

Introducing Translate for Animals (beta): Bridging the gap between animals and humans was a funny April Fool’s Day prank Google pulled one year.

The Cold War Origins Of Google Translate is from the BBC and is pretty interesting.

I list my preferences for online translators in The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners, along with sharing research from The New York Times on which ones do a better job. I list Google as the best. Ethan Shen has done a research project comparing Google Translate, Babelfish and Bing Translator. Here are his conclusions:

The final data reveals that while Google Translate is widely preferred when translating long passages, Microsoft Bing Translator and Yahoo Babelfish often produce better translations for phrases below 140 characters.

The New York Times  published a chart titled “Putting Google to the Test in Translation.” In it, they compare several pieces of text using Google Translate, Yahoo’s Babel Fish, and Microsoft’s Bing translation system.  Google seemed to come out on top.

Doc Translator says it “Instantly translates and preserves the layout of Office documents using the Google Translate.”It could be a useful tool for times like when my ESL students wrote informational fliers for their neighborhoods when the H1N1 flu first hit. They can put their energy into writing a document in English, make it into a nice flier, use Doc Translator to translate it (and maybe tidy it up a bit), and then upload it to the web.

Google Translate Adds Example Sentences To Put Words Into Context is from TechCrunch.

Microsoft’s Chief Research Officer gave a pretty amazing demonstration of computer translation advancement. In this video (I’ve used TubeChop to embed the most interesting part, so you will have to click through to see it. Or you can watch the entire video here). He speaks English and, just seconds later, what he says is translated into Mandarin in his own voice.

You can read more about this advance, including a history of machine translation, at his post.

Lost in Translation? Try a Google App is from The New York Times.

“Never Forget a Useful Phrase Again – Introducing Phrasebook for Google Translate”

Let me know if you have other suggestions.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 900 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

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