Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Selfcast lets anyone with a webcam immediately broadcast over the web for free, and anyone (without registering) can watch and also participate via live text chat. The presentation is also recorded and can be watched in the future, too.

This got me thinking about if this would be an option to consider when working with international sister classes (assuming time zones worked out). I’ve got to think about advantages and disadvantages of something like this compared to a tool like MeBeam and Tokbox, two online video conferencing sites. They both allow you to just use microphones for audio if you don’t have a webcam.

On advantage I can see for Selfcast is that less extra equipment would be needed — you would only have to have one webcam on one end, and wouldn’t need mikes for text chat. And more students could be online at the same time. Obviously, not having the ability to make audio comments would also limit, to an extent, the student interaction. But it might be worth looking at as an option.

Any thoughts?

Subyo lets you create subtitles for any YouTube video, and search for subtitled videos. It seems similar to dotSub, which Scott McLeod recently reminded about, though dotSub, I believe, doesn’t limit itself to YouTube videos. 

Of course, the fact that most School Districts block YouTube diminishes the potential educational use of these sites.  I haven’t really explored either one of these applications, and I’d be interested in hearing from people who have.

The Secret Location is a somewhat bizarre “Choose Your Own Adventure” online video. At various points in the video you are asked to make choices about what the main character should do.

There are some language development opportunities during those interactive moments. If you’re in the computer lab someday and have a few minutes to kill I suspect students would enjoy it. You might even want to use it as a prelude to students writing their own “choose your own adventure” story.

Here’s another one of my “The Best…” lists, this one focusing on online video sites for learning English.

This list is not about students creating their own videos. If you’re interested in those sites, you can check-out one of my previous lists — The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s Content).

Here I’m focusing on sites that are specifically designed for providing online videos to assist English Language Learners develop their language skills. In addition to meeting that criteria, in order to make this list a site has had to have the following elements:

* The videos had to provide engaging content, and not just a teacher talking.

* It was free-of-charge.

* It had online follow-up language development activities after watching the video.

* It had to have classroom content appropriate for the classroom.

There really aren’t many sites out there that meet all of that criteria, so this list is short. In fact, I considered narrowing it even further by excluding sites that use a lot of YouTube videos since many school districts, like ours, have content filters that not only block the YouTube site but also block all YouTube videos that are embedded in other sites. But if I had done that this list would have even been smaller. I do, however, place those nearer the bottom of the list.

Here are my picks for The Best Online Video Sites For Learning English:

Number seven is ESL Video. It allows you to easily create a quiz for just about any online video out there. Plus, it has a bunch of videos and quizzes that have already been posted.

I’m ranking Real English ESL Video Lessons at number six. Tons of videos and a variety of follow-up activities can be found here.

I like the “Movies” section of Diana’s Place For Hot Potatoes for the fifth spot. She uses snippets of popular movies for accessible cloze exercises.

Number four is the Study English page of the Australia Network has an extensive collection of videos with follow-up activities, though I do wish there was more of a variety of them.

Lingual Net is number three and has a particularly wide range of videos along with quizzes.

I particularly like the sites I’m ranking as number two and number one because they both allow teachers to create virtual classrooms so student work can be monitored. It works great with our Family Literacy Project.

Number two is English Trailers. It has many trailers from popular movies along with comprehension and cloze activities. We just added that site as one our students can use at home and they love it.

And now, my pick for the number one Best Online Video Site For Learning English is…. English For All (EFA). Its videos cover many life skills and have numerous online activities.

I’d love to include the new online video site called Yolango high on this list, but I can’t even put it on my website because it has a very small number of videos that are not appropriate for classroom use. They are considering creating a second site with content solely suitable for schools, but until they do so I can’t recommend it.

Feel free to offer feedback in the comments section. You can also find links to other sites that didn’t make this list on my website under Video.

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Yolango is a new site for English Language Learners. I think it’s very engaging — both in concept and execution. There are a large number of captioned videos, divided by levels, with a bunch of fun activities that users do with them to promote language-learning. With just a few exceptions, the videos on the site are excellent choices.

However, those few exceptions are, in my eyes at least, enough to unfortunately preclude me from putting the link on my website or recommending the site for classroom use. If they were just a little more careful in the video selection, there’s no doubt in my mind that Yolango would end-up on one of my “The Best…” lists.

But having their otherwise exceptional video collection marred with one entitled “Eating Better For Sex” and another one showing a beer commercial ruins it for me.   I’ll check the site again in the future to see if they revise the criteria for videos and share what I find.

Students creating online videos can be an excellent language-learning experience. Certainly, students can film their own videos, edit them, and then post their finished product online. For me, though, that’s just seemed too time-consuming and technically-complicated (however, I have convinced my school to purchase three Flip video recorders next year, so I might change my mind).

There are many online applications that allow you to create your own videos using content that’s already on the Web. For English Language Learners, these can be great opportunities for developing listening, reading and writing skills. All of these sites are very easy to use, and finished products can be developed in one class session.

I’ve decided to make a “The Best…” list highlighting these video-creation sites.

Links to these same sites can also be found on my Examples Of Student Work page.

In order to make it on this list, these online tools had to be free, accessible to English Language Learners, easy to use, use video content from sites other than YouTube (since that’s blocked by so many School Districts), and not have content available that would be inappropriate for classroom use (at least, not that I could see). This criteria really eliminated a lot of potential sites.

I haven’t necessarily listed them in order of preference, though I have saved my second-choice and my absolute favorite for the end (and believe me, they’re winners!).

Here are my picks for The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s Content):

Blink Box is a site I’ve posted about previously. The site is designed to sell DVD’s of movies and TV shows, but you can cut-and-paste scenes and add a short text message to your own creation. It’s pretty neat. However, it appears that some content is limited to only residents of the United Kingdom.

Harvest Of History helps you explore what agricultural life was in New York over 150 years ago, save video scenes from the site, and then create an online presentation comparing life with how it is today.

Who can resist making your own Star Wars clip? You can mix-and-match hundreds of scenes and add titles and audio, plus you can even add your own media.

Make a shark video from the Discovery Channel. Use sound, music and graphics to relive the movie “Jaws.”

Make a wildlife film at National Geographic. As the site says: “Make a custom nature film with animal clips, sounds, and more. Then share your masterpiece with your friends.”

Graspr is different from the other sites on this list. It’s an instructional video site. You can skip around the videos to get to the scene you want and actually write notes which can be saved and shared. It’s an intriguing site, though I’ve been having some difficulty signing-in lately and don’t know if this is indicative of larger technical issues.

You can make your own United States history movie at Digital Vaults from the National Archives. It’s super-easy, and is clearly my second-favorite site on this list.

And now, for, unquestionably the very Best Way For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s Content)… it’s Bombay TV. You can write subtitles, or actually dub with your own voice, over-the-top Bollywood movies. It’s a ton of fun, and a great language development exercise for English Language Learners. Russell Stannard, who has a site that is the gold standard for how-to Web 2.0 videos called Teacher Training Videos, has a couple that give clear instructions on how to maximize using Bombay TV.

Let me know if you have any feedback or other recommendations.

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I recently posted about Dipity, a new online timeline-maker.

Dipity has added a neat new service called Time Tube. You enter a topic — for example, World War II, and it will immediately create a timeline of videos about it. It could be a useful tool in social studies and science (maybe looking at the history of specific science discoveries?) classes.

That is, it could be a useful tool if you’re in a District that doesn’t block YouTube. All the videos appear to come from there, and I know they won’t get through our District’s filter.

I’m placing the link on my website under Student Timelines.

English Movie Trailers is a nice site that’s been around for awhile. It has a large selection of movie trailers (commercials) from recent movies, along with clozes, quizzes, and other activities connected to each one. From previous visits, I had thought it was a neat idea and that it had quite a collection, but the lay-out seemed a little tricky for my students when they tried it.

I hadn’t visited it for some time, though, and stopped by to check it out again earlier today. I still have the same concerns about the lay-out. However, it either has a great new feature or I might have just missed it the before. Now teachers can set-up virtual classrooms and monitor the work and assessments that students complete at the site. And it’s free!

In our Family Literacy Project, we provide computers and Internet service to immigrant families so they can study English. In addition to our website, they log-on to three sites where we can monitor their progress — Raz Kids, I Know That, and English For All. English Movie Trailers will be a nice fourth site they can use.  We’ll be doing a group orientation to the site for them.

In the future I’ll be posting about another site we’re adding to the list that is more appropriate for high-Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners.

I’ve place the link to English Movie Trailers on my website under Favorite Sites.

Movies and television shows can be an effective tool for teaching and learning English (or, for that matter, any academic subject) if used strategically and not as a “babysitting” device.

I thought it might be useful to prepare a “The Best…” list sharing resources that teachers might find useful related to using video in the ESL/EFL classroom. I’ve appreciated the suggestions that readers have offered and, even if they didn’t make my list, I’ve shared the titles that they have recommended near the end of this post.

Before I list specific movies or shows, I’ll begin by sharing some ideas, and sites, where you can get more recommendations on how to use video in the classroom.

I’ve hardly ever shown a video clip for more than ten minutes during one class period. There are many ways to use them, but I’ve primarily done so in two ways. One is just to show a clip connected to the theme we might be studying at the time, and then have students write what happened chronologically.

The other is a technique called “Back To The Screen” that I adapted from Zero Prep: Ready To Go Activities For The Language Classroom by Laurel Pollard and Natalie Hess. I pick a clip from a movie (the highway chase scene from one of the Matrix movies, for example. I then divide the class into pairs with one group facing the TV and the other with their back to it. Then, after turning off the sound, I begin playing the movie. The person who can see the screen tells the other person what is happening. Then, after awhile, I switch the groups around. Afterwards, the pairs need to write a chronological sequence of what happened, which we share in class. Finally, everyone watches the clip, with sound, together. Students really enjoy this activity.

Two excellent sites that offer countless other ideas about how to use videos in teaching and learning English are Ressources pour le College and The English Learner Movie Guide. The resources they offer are just too numerous to list here. In addition to teaching activities, you can get suggestions for which movies might work best for specific purposes.

Now I’ll list what I believe to be The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (by the way, links usually are connected to Amazon). I’m doing this ranking a bit differently from my past lists. All the ones I list I think are comparable in terms of usefulness in the classroom. However, there are two that I think are stand-outs. I’ll save them for the end.

Here are my picks:

I like Brum , a little talking car that has all sorts of adventures. Younger and older students find it entertaining.

Animated Tales Of The World from HBO is an excellent series of folktales from throughout the world. I’ve used them to teach geography, history, and writing.

The Pink Panther series of movies have been great, specifically the parts where Peter Sellers fights his man-servant Cato. These hilarious slapstick scenes are wonderful times to teach vocabulary related to home. However, I offer this recommendation with some hesitancy, since some could view it as perpetuating stereotypes and find it offensive. I’d be interested in hearing opinions on this issue. Certainly, none of my students, who are mostly Asian, have felt that way. I’ve engaged students in this kind of discussion everytime I’ve shown the movies.

Father Of The Bride with Steve Martin (and its sequel) provides some hilarious and teachable scenes about family, food, and home.

David Deubelbeiss, from EFL Classroom 2.0, and I agree that the movie Big is a great one. In fact, David is going to upload a bunch of classroom activities related to the movie on his site. (Since I originally posted this list, David has shared more ideas and resources here.)

The Bear provides a lot of opportunities to discuss serious topics. It doesn’t have a whole lot of dialogue, so it’s very accessible to Beginning English Language Learners.

Globe Trekker has a ton of excellent travel videos. I’ve used them in all of my English, Geography, and History classes, and they’re very accessible.

I’m ranking two collections of TV shows as the Top Two videos for teaching and learning ESL/EFL.

Number two is America’s Funniest Home Videos. It has so many editions — family, pets, sports, animals — that you can find something to teach just about anything. They’re already divided into short clips. My only caveat, though, is that a few of them seem cruel and/or disgusting to me. So I screen them before I use a clip in class.

My absolute favorite show to use is Mr. Bean — The Whole Bean. Mr. Bean is very accessible to even Beginning English Language Learners, and he is involved in so many situations that you can find a clip that will support whatever unit you’re teaching. And he’s so funny!

Readers made a number of other suggestions. I didn’t include some of them in my list just because I haven’t seen the shows.

Sebastian recommends Seinfield and Joey, specifically the episode called Joey and the ESL. I definitely want to see that — how often is an ESL class shown in a TV situation comedy?

EFL Geek recommends several movies, including An Inconvenient Truth, Almost Famous, and Stand By Me. For TV, he likes Lost, Corner Gas, Prison Break and Smallville. I did a quick and informal poll of my students, and they agreed that Smallville helped them with their English a lot.

This doesn’t exactly fit into the title of this list, but this summer I’m going to try using Connect With English, a video series that’s designed to help students learn English and be engaging. It seems to be one of the better ones of its type out there. I’ll report back during the summer how it goes.

Feel free to offer reactions and other suggestions in the comments sections.

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Omnisio is an intriguing site that allows you very easily edit videos that are on YouTube, Google Video or Blip TV and create your own version of them. What’s more interesting to me, though, is its comment system. Once you create your video, people can write comments directly on the video itself and at whatever point the writers want it seen.

Graspr is another video site I’ve posted about that has a vaguely similar commenting system, but Omnisio’s appears far more advanced.

For classes with English Language Learners in schools that don’t block those three video sites (and I suspect they are few and far between) it might be worth experimenting with Omnisio. Students could create their own videos and, more importantly, comment on the others created by their peers.

I learned about Omnisio from TechCrunch.

Al Jazeera, the Arabic TV network, has just run a series on the Hmong in Laos. It’s accessible online (in English), and I thought that people who are teaching ESL to Hmong refugees might find it a good teaching/learning tool. I learned about it from David Deubel at EFL Classroom 2.0.

The series has a very long url address, and I’ve also added it as a link on my website. It’s titled “Hmong In Laos” and is the last link in the Hmong section.

Healthy Roads Media has great health information available online — in multiple languages.

I’ve had a link to their online videos on my English for Beginners page under Health for quite awhile. They’re well-designed, and closed-captioned. Their English versions are great for English Language Learners.

They’ve recently added quite a few new resources, so it’s worth visiting if you haven’t done so already.

Vicki Davis has highlighted some excellent video clips she uses in her classroom.  They are definitely worth checking-out.

The History Channel has a site on the History of Mexico that includes several short videos accessible to English Language Learners.

The clips include ones on the Maya and Aztecs, as well as more modern history.

The site also has a fair amount of text that’s probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link in two places.  It’s on my Geography page under Latin America.  It’s also on my World History page under The Middle Ages.

Real English Videos is part of a larger site called Real English.  You can subscribe to a number of other features, but the videos are free.

They’re an excellent collection, and have been developed specifically for Beginning and Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my English For Beginners page under Videos.

Flashback Movies are very short animated movies about historical events from a company called Flash Ones.   Each well-done movie is followed by a brief text explanation of the event. They have a small collection now, which they expect to increase.

Right now the movies are accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.  I’ve made several suggestions to the creators of the site about how they could make them even more accessible, and they say they’re considering them.

These movies have the potential of being very helpful — sort of a free series of Brainpop Movies.

I’ve placed the link on my World History page under Sites That Cover Many Periods of World History.

Mashable posted today about a neat new site called Blink Box.  It’s another example of viral marketing, and I’ve written before how I use these advertisements with English Language Learners.

Blink Box is basically focused on selling DVD’s to people.  Once you register (it takes a minute) you can choose from numerous different movie clips.  You easily edit a clip of less than one minute, and then write a short message.  You then email the url and post it on a website or blog.  Here’s one I developed in about thirty seconds. 

The marketing part of it comes at the end of your “blink box” when you can click and purchase the movie if you want.

This is a quick, easy and fun opportunity for English Language Learners to practice their listening and writing skills to edit a video clip and connect it logically to a short text they write.

I’ll be posting this link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Movies.

Our School District subscribes to United Streaming, though I have to admit I still haven’t quite figured out how to use it effectively.

I recently discovered a useful post from Blog IT about using United Streaming with ESL students, and thought others might be interested in reading it.

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

Graspr is the latest site where users can upload “how-to” or “instructional” videos to do just about anything.  I’ve posted about several of these sites twice in the past few months.

One of the features, though, that makes Graspr a little different from the others is the ability for the viewer to write online notes about what they see — while they’re watching.

I help my students learn reading strategies (asking questions, making connections, etc.) so they can become better…readers.

We also talk in class about how we can become better listeners by using these same kind of strategies while in conversations and while watching movies.

This site is an interesting, and challenging, way for English Language Learners to try this out.

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

I don’t know about you, but I’m continually amazed at what web developers come up with.   I know just enough about technology to sound like I know what I’m talking about, but little enough to really not have a clue.  So these new web applications seem closer to magic to me than technology.

The latest site I’ve learned about is called Asterpix.  It allows you to take any video posted on the Internet and easily create “hotspots” in it that allow viewers to click on it and get more information.   Here’s an example.

English Language Learners can use it to “annotate” videos they make or watch.  Both teachers and students can use it to create an added dimension to video quizzes they make using ESL Video.

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