Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Thanks For Being There is a simple and accessible web application from State Farm that lets you thank someone for “being there” for you.

It’s easy to use, and students can post the url of their creation on a student blog or website.

With the holiday season coming-up, you can send a Critter Carol — dogs singing a Christmas song, with a message you write included. Students can create on, and then post the url of their card on a website or blog.

I’m adding it to The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa.

On the same “pet” site, there’s a pretty accessible interactive that helps you decide what kind of dog is best for you. Students might enjoy trying it.

The first part of this post is my usual introduction to this series. If you’re familiar with it already, just skip down to the listing of new sites…

Here’s the latest installment in my series on The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly. As you may remember, in order to make it on this list, the web tool has to:

* be easily accessible to English Language Learners and/or non-tech savvy computer users.

* allow people to create engaging content within minutes.

* host the user’s creation on the site itself indefinitely, and allow a direct link to be able to be posted on a student or teacher’s website/blog to it (or let it be embedded). If it just provides the url address of the student creation, you can either just post the address or use Embedit.in , a free web tool that makes pretty much any url address embeddable.

* provide some language-learning opportunity (for example, students can write about their creations).

* not require any registration.

You can find previous installments of this series with the rest of my “The Best…” lists at Websites Of The Year. Several hundred sites have been highlighted in these past lists. You might also want to take a look at the first list I posted in this series — The Best Ways For Students (And Anyone Else!) To Create Online Content Easily, Quickly, and Painlessly.

You might also want to look at The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2009.

Here are the newest additions:

CREATE A GAME OF HANGMAN: With the Flash Hangman Challenge, you can easily write a phrase, email it to a friend, and it will automatically be turned into a Hangman game that can also be posted on a teacher/student website or blog. No registration is required. I’m also adding it to The Best Sites For Making Crossword Puzzles & Hangman Games.

TALK LIKE AN ELF: K-Mart has just created a “Talk Like An Elf” application. Go to the site, click on Elfspeak, and then record your message or use the text-to-speech option. Your message, which has a pitch that they must figure an elf might sound like, can then be emailed to a friend and the url can be posted on a student/teacher website or blog. You can also embed it, or send it directly to Facebook. It’s a brand new app, and, when I used it a few times, it was a bit temperamental. But I’m sure they’re working the bugs out as I write this.

DESIGN A WEIRD FLOWER: The musical group Black Eyed Peas has created a site called Planting My Ideas. You can use music, images, and words to create your own flower, which would then be posted in the site’s gallery. You can also post the link on a student or teacher’s website/blog, and have students write about it as a language development activity. It’s supposed to inspire creativity.  It’s interesting, fun, and a bit weird.

MAKE A BOOK: With Picture Book Maker, you can easily create a…picture book (including text). It can be saved online or printed out. It’s super-easy to use, plus no registration is required. The url of your creation can be posted on a student/teacher blog or website.

It’s a short list this time, but the next one I’m sure will be filled with a ton of Christmas-related activities.

In yet another bizarre example of viral marketing, Jamba Juice has created a gimmick that can be very useful to English Language Learners (see my article titled Samuel L. Jackson, My ESL Students, and Me to learn more how I use these web tools for language-development).

Jamba Juice lets you make a virtual Brown Bag Bliss Request. You choose a a face to put on a paperbag, type in a message of something you want in life, and then its text-to-speech feature has a person with that bag over their read speak the message. It can then be posted on your blog or website.

You can learn about many similarly strange apps in my series of posts on creating online content easily & quickly. You can find them on my “The Best…” lists under the Web 2.0 section.

Made For Each Other is yet another weird example of viral marketing that can be used as a fun and useful language-learning tool (you can read about how I use these applications here).

I guess it’s connected to advertising to Frito-Lay in some way (though it’s hard to tell how).

It’s too strange to explain, other than to say you connect two creatures to one another and then write a love note for one of them to give to the other. You are then given the link to that note that can be posted on a student or teacher website.

If you have a few minutes left to kill in the computer lab, and you want to give your ELL students a short and engaging writing task, this would certainly be an option.

Here’s the latest installment in my series on The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly.  As you may remember, in order to make it on this list, the web tool has to:

* be easily accessible to English Language Learners and/or non-tech savvy computer users.

* allow people to create engaging content within minutes.

* host the user’s creation on the site itself indefinitely, and allow a direct link to be able to be posted on a student or teacher’s website/blog to it (or let it be embedded).  If it just provides the url address of the student creation, you can either just post the address or use Embedit.in , a free web tool that makes pretty much any url address embeddable.

* provide some language-learning opportunity.

* not require any registration.

You can find previous installments of this series with the rest of my “The Best…” lists at Websites Of The Year.  Several hundred sites have been highlighted in these past lists.  A number of them are examples of “viral marketing” by companies.  You can read how I use these tools as language-learning activities in the article Samuel Jackson, My ESL Students, And Me.

Here are the newest:

CREATE A TALKING STORYBOOK ADVENTURE: You can personalize your own talking storybook at The Tale Of Despereaux: Storybook Adventure. After you answer a few questions, the site creates a personalized virtual “pop-up” book and provides a link to it.

SEND SOMEONE A “TIP”: Career Builder has created a web tool called Anonymous Tip Giver. I’m not too thrilled with its intent — to send anonymous suggestions to better via an audio message — but it can be adapted for use as an English language learning activity.  You first choose one of several strange-looking characters to deliver your message, and then can type in your message and choose the voice in which you want it spoken. You can also decide to record your own message with an 800 telephone number if you choose. Next, you can send it to the intended recipient anonymously, add your own name and email, or just get the url of your completed message to post on a student or teacher website/blog.

SEND AN ANIMAL E-CARD: The National Zoo at the Smithsonian has a great collection of E-Cards. Not only are there a lot to choose from, but finished cards are hosted by zoo’s server and appear to stay there indefinitely.

CREATE A NEAT-LOOKING ESSAY OUTLINE: aMaps let you create a visualization of a basic essay form — state your position and provide reasons, along with examples. After completing a scaffolded outline, you’re provided with a pretty neat looking visual picture of what you’ve developed, along with the embed code. You can also email the link to a friend or teacher for posting on a blog or website, and then people can respond to what you wrote.

As always, feedback is welcome.

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

Career Builder has created a web tool called Anonymous Tip Giver. I’m not too thrilled with its intent — to send anonymous suggestions to better via an audio message — but it can be adapted for use as an English language learning activity.

You first choose one of several strange-looking characters to deliver your message, and then can type in your message and choose the voice in which you want it spoken. You can also decide to record your own message with an 800 telephone number if you choose. Next, you can send it to the intended recipient anonymously, add your own name and email, or just get the url of your completed message to post on a student or teacher website/blog.

There are plenty of sites with easier and better speaking opportunities, or sites where students can use a text-to-speech feature, on various of my “The Best…” lists.  This site is just another option if you’ve got a few minutes to “kill” in the computer lab and want to have students do something a little different.

Here’s the latest installment in my series of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly.  As you may remember, in order to make it on this list, the web tool has to:

* be easily accessible to English Language Learners and/or non-tech savvy computer users.

* allow people to create engaging content within minutes.

* host the user’s creation on the site itself indefinitely, and allow a direct link to be able to be posted on a student or teacher’s website/blog to it (or let it be embedded).

* provide some language-learning opportunity.

* not require any registration.

You can find previous installments of this series with the rest of my “The Best…” lists at Websites Of The Year.  Several hundred sites have been highlighted in these past lists.  A number of them are examples of “viral marketing” by companies.  You can read how I use these tools as language-learning activities in the article Samuel Jackson, My ESL Students, And Me.

Here are the newest:

SEND A TALKING MESSAGE FROM A CHEETAH: Type in a message, and then have Chester Cheetah use a text-to-voice feature to say what you’ve written. Next, email your message so the link can be posted on a website or blog. Better yet, try using Embedit.in so you can embed — in your webpage — any student-created work that only provides a url address.

MAKE A SNOWFLAKE: Make a snowflake, describe it, and post the link on a student/teacher blog or website.

SAY THANKS FOR SOMETHING: Thanks-O-Meter is a very easy way to both help develop “feelings” vocabulary for early Intermediate English Language Learners and provide a writing opportunity.  Without having to register — which is a nice feature in itelf — users can pick from a menu of things they are thankful for (friends, mother, etc.).  Then they can choose from another menu of how what they chose makes them feel.  Finally, an optional next step is to write a little about how you feel.

SEND A LATE HOLIDAY GREETING THAT TALKS: Storyblender is an intriguing video-creation (and mixing) site that is invitation-only right now, but might have some potential for English Language Learners down the line when it goes public.  Right now, though, it does offer — to everyone — a free and easy tool to create a Holiday Letter. No registration is required. Just click on the preceding link and follow the clearly laid-out process. Steps including recording a video and uploading a photo, but you can just skip them and still end-up with a decent electronic holiday greeting that can be linked to or embedded. You can also record a holiday message with a computer microphone, which is particularly useful for ELL’s.

MAKE YOURSELF LOOK LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA: This one doesn’t quite meet my criteria, since you have to upload your photo (or someone else’s), but it’s fun.  At Obamicon Me, you can easily convert your photo into the style of the well-known campaign poster and add a descriptive word. You can then get its url and, again, use Embeditin to post it on a teacher or student site.

BECOME A STAR OF A HOLIDAY MOVIE: This, too, is a little late, and requires a photo upload.  At My Movie Moment pick a famous holiday movie, upload your picture, and then you become the star. You’re then given the url of your movie.

As always, feedback is welcome.

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

I’ve posted quite a few times about various web tools that allow students to type in words or sentences and then have the computer “verbalize” them. You can find the best of these sites at The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners — 2008. They’re excellent applications for English Language Learners to help develop pronunciation skills.

Now, here’s the weirdest text-to-speech site ever — Talk To The Plant.

Heinz Ketchup is sponsoring this site that is supposed to determine if talking to a tomato plant will make it grow larger.

On the site you see a picture of two plants (one is a “control” plant).  You type in a “message of love” to the non-control one  and both you and that plant hear it spoken.  You can see for yourself if these “messages of love” have made a difference.

Of course, it could also be a rather unusual way to either introduce or reinforce some of the methodologies of scientific experimentation.

By calling a toll-free number, you can sing a Christmas duet with Elvis Presley and send it as an eCard.

I’m adding it to The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa.

Thanks to Danita Russell for the tip.

Thanks to the Scientific Shamrock blog, here are two more Christmas E-Cards I’m adding to The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa.

One is the Merry Message from Better Homes and Gardens. Have Santa Claus deliver an audio message either by recording your own voice or by using the text-to-speech feature. Students can then post the link to their message on a blog or website.

The Gingerbread Man With Everything lets you create your own virtual…gingerbread man and send or post the link.

With Your Coca Cola Christmas Decoration you can virtually decorate your house, school, or any other building in the world.

You enter the address of the structure you want to decorate and then a satellite image comes on the screen. Next, you choose various Christmas lights in different forms (reindeer, etc.) or design your own on it. Email your creation to yourself or a friend, post the link on a teacher/student blog or website, and then describe it as a language-learning activity. The address itself of the building is not shown in the link — only the decorated building.

It does seem to take a few hours for an email containing the link to reach your mailbox, but other than that slight delay it seems to work pretty easily.

I’m adding this site to The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa.

In another example of the ability to use viral marketing in English-language development, English Language Learners can go to the Nokia Musical Mighty site.

There, they can “plug-in” the kind of music they like, then upload their image or choose one on the site, and then, finally, using the text-to-speech feature, they develop their own lyrics to the song that will then be sung by a computer-generated voice. The link to the final result can be emailed or embedded.

Lowes lets you create your own yard. Users develop and maintain their virtual backyard, and can add all sorts of stuff to it (coincidentally, Lowes sells all this “stuff.”).

It’s nice interactive that provides a number of opportunities to English Language Learners for vocabulary development. You can save your creation, but you don’t get a unique url address that you can post. Instead, you have to input your email address to access it. Of course, it would be pretty easy just to have students make one up and post the link to the Yard Creator along with the pseudo email address so others can access it. Students could then write about their yard, too.

You can read here about how I use viral marketing applications like this one to help teach English Language Learners.

I’ll be placing the link somewhere on my Examples of Student Work page.

Here’s the latest in my series of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly. You might want to review Part One to get some background on this series of posts.

You might also want to check all my other “The Best…” lists. In fact, this one is somewhat of a milestone — it’s the fiftieth one I’ve done.

Here are some additional sites where English Language Learners, and others, can create engaging online content easily and quickly — without any registration needed:

CREATE YOUR OWN WORLD WAR II PROPAGANDA FILM: You can use the Propaganda Film Maker to combine images and audio to try convincing the public to support World War II. It’s a good site to us as part of a history lesson.

DESIGN A TALKING POSTCARD FROM A VACATION SPOT: Using this viral marketing campaign, you can take advantage of something called the Bluegreen Vacation Time Machine to pick a geographical location, use the text-to-speech feature, and email a url address talking about your make-believe trip. It’s a good language-development activity, as well as serving to reinforce some geographical info.

BE A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Choose your candidate and pretend that you are him or her. You can record your message with a computer microphone or call a toll-free number (or they can call you). Then email your impersonation to a friend or teacher and post the url.

CREATE THE END TO AN “APPRENTICE” EPISODE: You can watch a short version of the ridiculous television show The Apprentice and then make your own ending. Then email your creation to a friend or teacher and post its url address on a blog or online journal. This seems to work well with Firefox, but it may have some problems with Internet Explorer.

SEND SOME BEAUTIFUL CHINESE E-CARDS: The National Palace Museum in Taiwan has some great Asian artwork you can easily write about and then send to a friend or teacher for posting.

SEND AN E-CARD FOR MOTHER’S DAY: With Mother’s Day coming up in a few weeks, students could send some nice ones from Fun Punch, Up To Ten, Kidlink, and/or Toons Canada. You can post the url address of all the cards you create.

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I forgot to include one other site in my three-part series “The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily, Quickly, & Painlessly.”

This last one is a viral marketing ad from an athletic shoe manufacturer.  You write a message, and a founder of the “free-running” sport runs over the letters of your message.  You can then email the link to a teacher or friend.

You can find it at K Swiss Free Running.  It was a little buggy when I tried it, so you probably want to be patient until it completely loads.

I’ll be placing the link somewhere on my Examples of Student Work page.

Get Munked is the latest weird example of viral marketing that might be useful to English Language Learners (see my TechLearning article from last year about viral marketing in the ESL classroom).

As a marketing gimmick for the new Chipmunks movie, you can record your voice or use a text-to-speech feature to have one of the singing Chipmunks speak your words.  You can then email its url for posting on a website or blog.

I suspect it won’t do much to help English Language Learners with their pronunciation to hear a Chipmunk version of what they say or write,  but it might be a fun little activity to do at the end of a Friday class.  And anything that promotes speaking or writing in English is certainly an asset.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student E-Cards.  It’s not really an E-Card, but a strange-sounding chipmunk didn’t deserve its own section on my website.

In yet one more weird example of viral marketing (see Samuel L. Jackson, My ESL Students, And Me),  student can create a very strange-looking computer mouse at Tricked-Out Mouse.

As bizarre as it sounds, there are actually quite a few vocabulary-building opportunities here for Beginning English Language Learners as they can put tank treads, different colors, and a zillion other items on their virtual mouse.

They can email their creation to themselves or a teacher, and then post the url and describe it on an online journal or blog.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student E-Cards.

I was watching one of the football playoff games on TV today and saw a UPS ad that showed a guy drawing on a whiteboard.  The ad invited viewers to go to an online UPS Whiteboard.

In another example of viral marketing, users can write a message, email it to a friend, and have the UPS guy write it on a whiteboard.  Whoop-de-doo!  It sounds weird, but it’s apparently a big sensation.

If you’ve got a few minutes of deadtime at the end of a computer lab session, you could have English Language Learners use it and then post the url of their message on a blog or online journal.

You can read more how I use viral marketing gimmicks (most are a lot better than this one) as language development tools in this article I wrote for TechLearning.

I’ve placed the UPS link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student E-Cards.

Yes, it’s time for another strange example of viral marketing.  You can send a Sea France Christmas Card.

This virtual card includes not only a Christmas song, but you can also write a message that will appear on the side of a virtual cruise ship.

English Language Learners might have a little fun with this, as well as getting some writing practice.

I’ve placed it on my Examples of Student Work page under Student E-Cards.