Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

If the answer is yes, here’s an easy way to do it, and develop English-skills at the same time.

Thanks to TechCrunch, today I learned about about the Elmore City Dance Club.

Your students can easily create their own dance, name it, and write a description. The link can then be posted or the dance itself can be embedded. Even better, students could then demonstrate the dance in front of the class and everyone can practice it (and then write and talk about it). Now, THAT’S what I call the Language Experience Approach!

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.

It’s time for another installment of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly.

Here are some new sites I’ve found since I published my “year-end” list The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2008:

MAKE LETTERS DANCE: Fontpark allows you create neat-looking animations of letters. The pre-made fonts are in Japanese, but you can add letters from other alphabets quite easily. You’re then given a unique url for your creation.

WRITE A FORTUNE FOR A FORTUNE COOKIE: Unfortunate lets you do just that. There are other similar web applications out there, but those seemed to have example fortunes that were inappropriate for the classroom.

MAKE A GUMMY BEAR VIDEO: Here’s a fun activity for English Language Learners: First, go to the GummyNizer. Then, create a song by dragging and dropping word blocks. Next, a Gummy Bear will perform the song. Finally, you can email and post the url address of your creation.

MAKE A TALKING TOMATO: At Fodey you can create “talking” (with speech bubbles) tomatoes, flowers, owls, squirrels, etc. You then are given an embed code for your creation.

CREATE A TALKING ANIMAL: Talking Pets lets you do it.  You can choose a pet picture, or upload your own. Then, using the text-to-speech feature, you can have it say a short message, then email the link for posting on a blog or website.

If you found this list helpful, you might want to see the other hundred ones, too.

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Feed My In Box is a nifty new web application that lets you subscribe by email to any RSS feed by just entering the website url address and your email address. It’s even easier than completing an Feedburner subscription form like the one here for this blog (though, since it’s a brand new service, I can’t vouch for its reliability yet, while Feedburner seems to work perfectly).

It seems to me that one of the main advantages to Feed My Box is (assuming it is not blocked where you are) that it lets people subscribe to blogs and sites that might be blocked by content filters (for example, teachers if they want to subscribe to education blogs that might be blocked at their school) or by people in countries where the blog hosting services are blocked (like Edublogs in China).

Even though Feedburner works great, the problem is that you have to get to the site to complete the subscription form. That can be problematic if the site is blocked in the first place.  Feed My In Box solves that problem.

I recently saw this site called JigZone, and began wondering if there was any way it might be useful to English Language Learners. It allows you to upload photos and then turn them into jigsaw puzzles that you and others can then try to put together.

In the classroom I’ve had my students make their own puzzle maps of countries and continents.  I’ve also sometimes had them neatly copy portions of articles or other writings and cut them up, too.  In both cases, then other students have to put them together.  It’s a short fun activity that’s worth doing now and then.

I guess you could do the same online, though I don’t know what the value-added benefit would be over doing it with pen and paper in the classroom.  It might be a nice change-of-pace, or it might be a nice exercise to exchange with a sister class in another country if the puzzle related to the native country of each class.

What do you think?

Stumble Audio, a music (and spoken word) suggestion service equivalent to Stumbleupon’s website tool, has a surprising rich collection of Kids/Family music that could be helpful in teaching English Language Learners.

I don’t think it’s quite useful enough to be added to The Best Places To Get Blog, Website, , Book, Movie, & Music Recommendations, but it’s definitely worth a visit.

I learned from Mashable that ProProfs just redid their site, and I have to say I’m quite impressed.

I’ve just added it to my The Best Ways To Create Online Tests.

I was also considering creating a “The Best Ways To Create Online Flashcards” list, but, after looking over all the sites I know of and comparing them to ProProfs, I think ProProfs is definitely the place to go for flashcards, too.  So I don’t think I’ll be making that “The Best…” list for awhile, at least.

However, I still have hopes that a flashcard site will incorporate being able to record audio someday.  I’ll probably take the time to make that list when I find one with that capability.

TimeRime is a new web tool for creating online timelines. It’s fairly easy to use, and is one of the few out there that let you grab images off the web.

However, it’s just not quite as accessible to English Language Learners as the three other timeline sites I highlighted in The Best Tools For Making Online Timelines. It’s close, but not quite there.

I have, though, put a link to it on my website, along with a ton of others, under Student Timelines.

How many online timeline-making applications does the world actually need?

Animasher is a very neat new tool to make online animations. It has two excellent features that stand-out (apart from it being easy to use) — you can grab images off the web to use in your animation, and you can use a microphone to add audio to it as well.

I think it has a whole lot of potential. However, I can’t add it to The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations — at least not yet. Even though I didn’t see any content that is not appropriate for the classroom, they don’t have a system in place yet to ensure that continues.

I do know that Martin Jacobson, one of the site’s creators, is trying to figure out how to make it usable by classroom teachers. Because it seems so easy to use, and it has the ability to provide audio narration, I hope he can make that happen.

Google Insights is a new tool that allows you to map how often, and from where, people use specific search terms.

TechCrunch has a useful post about it.

When I checked to see users from which countries most searched for the term “ESL,” the top three were South Korea, Cambodia, and Mongolia. When I checked on the term “EFL,” the top three were Oman, South Korea, and Poland. And when I checked “English,” the top three were Cambodia, Mongolia, and Pakistan.

I could see this site having some opportunities to create conversation in the classroom. For example, I think it could initiate an interesting conversation with Hmong students to find that the term “Hmong” was searched for most, by far, in Laos, where some Hmong still live and from where my students’ families fled. Then, when I searched for “General Vang Pao,” the most well-known leader of the Hmong here in the United States and one of several people arrested here in Sacramento last year for allegedly planning a coup in Laos, practically all the searches came from within the United States.

I have to think a little bit more about how this new tool can be used. Other ideas?

I only write posts here about a portion of the new links I add to my website.

There’s a new free web tool called Page Tiki that you can use to learn about all the new links I add. In fact, you can use it to be kept up-to-date on all websites that you are interested in but don’t have an RSS feed or any other way to keep you updated on new content.

You can read more details about how it works (it seems pretty simple) at the post on the Make Use Of blog.

Here’s a fun activity for English Language Learners: First, go to the GummyNizer. Then, create a song by dragging and dropping word blocks. Next, a Gummy Bear will perform the song. Finally, you can email and post the url address of your creation.

And if you’re looking for more activities like this, you can go to The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2008.

Of course you do — who wouldn’t. At Fodey you can create “talking” (with speech bubbles) tomatoes, flowers, owls, squirrels, etc. You then are given an embed code for your creation.

Since I couldn’t figure out another place to put it on my site, you’ll find it under Student Signs.

English Language Learners can get some writing practice in, and have some fun at the same time…

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?

Making timelines can be a useful learning activity for all students, including English Language Learners. I actually think students working in small groups to create a big timeline poster is a better overall learning experience. However, I can see the development of online timelines could be a good project in some situations — for example, in sharing information with others around the world in our International Sisters Classes Project.

There are many online timeline tools out there. But I’ve only found very few — three, in fact — that are easily accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech-savvy students and teachers, free, and allow users to grab images off the web to add to their final product.

All three seem very similar. At least, I haven’t found much difference between them, but perhaps I’m missing something.

My picks for The Best Tools For Making Online Timelines are:

CircaVie

Xtimeline

Dipity

You can find links to these three applications, as well as to the other timeline tools that didn’t make this list, on my website under Student Timelines.

If you found this list helpful, you might want to see the other over-ninety ones, too.

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If I had learned about Talking Pets three days ago, I would have included it on my year-end The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2008.

You can choose a pet picture, or upload your own. Then, using the text-to-speech feature, you can have it say a short message, then email the link for posting on a blog or website.

It’s a good activity for English Language Learners to hear what they write.

Thanks to Mashable for the tip.

Though none of these new sites made my year-end list, The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2008, there are still some intriguing and useful web applications here.

Sites that make this series of lists either have obvious language-learning opportunities or, if they’re not obvious, at the very least students can use them to create something they can post online and then describe.

Here are my latest picks:

CREATE YOUR OWN MIDDLEMAN: This is apparently connected to a television show that I’ve never heard of, but it lets you design and email your own avatar.

MAKE A LINO-PRINT: Here again I have to plead my ignorance — I had never heard of lino-printing before. But you can make one here online. The site focuses on creating one for a contest that’s only open to students in the UK, but after you’re finished you’re given the option of emailing the link to a friend, too.

WRITE YOUR OWN SCIENCE FICTION COMIC BOOK STORY: Create your own story of the future and imagine what life will be like forty years from now.

SEND A BOUQUET OF FLOWERS: They’re Beautiful will let you pick flowers, and write a message to go along with it. You can then post the link online.

If you found this list helpful, you might want to see the other over-ninety ones, too.

This is the second of several year-end “The Best…” lists I’m writing. The first one was The Best Online Learning Games — 2008. As with that Learning Games list, I’m experimenting with a reader’s poll at the bottom of this post. The Learning Games poll closes on November 1st. The poll for this list will close a month later on December 1st.

This list brings together what I think are this year’s twenty-six best ways to create online content easily and quickly. These web tools are excellent ways for English Language Learners, and others who might not be very tech-savvy, to have a good experience working with technology.

In order to make it on this list, web tools must be:

* accessible to English Language Learners.

* available at no-cost.

* able to be used to easily create engaging online content within minutes.

* willing to host user-created work indefinitely on the website itself.

* appropriate for classroom use.

* accessible without requiring registration.

You can read here how I have students easily display their work online.

A very small number of the applications that have made it on this list are viral marketing tools. You can read this article about how I use these in the classroom.

Unlike the vast majority of my “The Best..” lists, I have not ranked these twenty-six tools in order of preference. I’ll leave that to teachers, students, and other readers of this blog to vote in the poll and determine which ones are the best. It was just too difficult for me to rank them in any kind of order. The poll lists the sites in the same order as this post. I’ll also be encouraging my students to participate in the poll, and hope that other teachers will do the same in their schools.

I’d like people voting in the poll to select no more than ten of the twenty-five tools on the list. Please note that voters will only be able to participate in the poll one time, and (at least theoretically) will be prevented from voting more than once.

If you’re reading this post in an RSS Reader, you’ll have to come directly to my blog in order to vote. For some reason, the poll isn’t included feeds from this blog.

(Editor’s Note: On a different matter, subscribers to this blog who use Google Reader and Bloglines to get updated RSS feeds, and who subscribed prior to January, 2008, might have recently stopped receiving new posts. If that has happened to you, you can re-subscribe using this newer Feedburner feed. This issue only relates to people who subscribed prior to January — anyone who has subscribed since then is already using the Feedburner feed and shouldn’t be having any problems.)

Here are my choices (again, not in any order) for The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly:

My Great World is a newer site that lets you choose a place on a world map and access images from that location. The key feature of the site, though, is that you can then (without registering) choose an image, write a fairly lengthy message, and mail them both as an E-Card. The url address of the card can then be posted on an online journal or blog. It’s an easy online application that can be used by English Language Learners for a multitude of lessons, particularly geography.

Wordle lets you either copy and paste or upload text. It then produces a word cloud that give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently. You choose from different formats about how you want your word cloud displayed, and then have them displayed on the website with its own url address.

Tag Cloud. is similar to Wordle. The advantages Tag Cloud has over Wordle include it makes it easier to upload a file, and you can also have it analyze a url address. The disadvantages seem to be that it provides an embed code but not a unique url address for your creation, and it only provides one option for a a display — one of the great things about Wordle is that you have several options and it’s shown in color.

BBC’s Blast Poetry Tool “lets you put together your visual interpretation on a poem using images, video and sound effects that have been provided by the BBC and other Blast users.”

Flash Paint is an online art application. I have some other very good ones on my website under Student Paintings. However, what makes Flash Paint stand-out is that there is a place for the “painter” to write about their creation and you then can save the painting and the writing to the gallery. You’re given a url for both that can be posted on an online journal or blog.

OneSens is an extraordinary web application for English Language Learners. You write a sentence, pick a picture that goes with it, and then the words are mixed-up on top of the picture. There’s a built-in email feature, so you can just email the link to a teacher or friend and post it on a blog or online journal. Then others can try to put the words back in order.

Phreetings lets you search for an image (it appears to use Flickr, but I can’t be sure), drag and drop it on a virtual card, and then write something below it (it looks like you can write a lot there). You’re then given the url to copy and paste. During our study of natural disasters, for example, I can see my students finding an image labeled “Katrina” and writing a short report on what they’ve learned so far about the hurricane.

Picbite is a site where you can easily grab an image off the Web and insert a speech bubble of your choosing. You’re then provided with the url address and embed code.

Captioner also allows you to type in the url of any photo on the web, create some talk “bubbles” to position within the photo, type text into the bubble, and then you’re given a url for the photo with your bubble in it.

Flash Earth lets you quickly find a satellite image of a location and then gives you the url address of that image. English Language Learners and other students can then post the address on a blog or online journal and describe it.

This Language Of Flavor viral marketing site is a perfect-fit for English Language Learners. Users first write a word, or a series of words in a sentence. Then they mix the letters up, while also writing the correct words elsewhere. Then, the link is emailed for posting on a website or blog where other users can try to figure out these word and sentence “scrambles.” When they give up, or they want to check if they’ve got it, they just have to click to get the answer.

Using this Vacation Time Machine viral marketing campaign, you can 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.

Gabsight is an application that does require a microphone. It’s actually a tool designed to send a video email, but you can use it for audio-only, too. Just record, then copy and paste the link for posting in the body of an email or on a online journal or blog.

Anyone can Sing with Juanes. Upload your photo, and choose one on the site, play the song, and sing along via telephone or computer microphone. Email your performance to a friend and post the url on a website or blog.

Qlipboard lets you grab the url of an image off the Web, leave a voice commentary (it has a few other features, too), and you get an embed code and a url. Others can leave comments, too.

The KakoMessenger Singing Telegram lets you write a short song that is then sung by your choice of cheezy lounge singers. You can email it to a friend or teacher, and then post the url address on a website. Not only is it fun, but it’s good for English Language Learners because the words are displayed when they are sung.

Nokia has a Picture Poetry tool that lets you write a short wish and then the application will find appropriate images that go with the words. You can then email your creation to a friend or teacher for posting on a website or blog.

You can upload your own photo or choose from a variety on PhotoFace. Then, you can “age” it, make the person heavier or lighter, and make a number of other edits. You can then post the link.

You can use the Propaganda Film Maker to combine images and audio to try convincing the public to support World War II.

At Talking Cards you get to choose from a variety of designs and characters and, using their text-to-speech option, have it speak whatever you want. You can use the “free” option for the cards, and the site just says your message will include some advertising. However, the ones that I’ve tried just includes advertising for the the Talking Cards site itself.

Viscosity lets you create an amazing piece of art. You can do far more things with it than I had ever thought. I’d encourage you to view this short screencast from DemoGirl to learn how to take advantage of all it has to offer.

Choose among thousands of U.S. History images from Picture History, write about it, and then send it as an E-Card to a teacher or to yourself. The link can then be posted on a blog or online journal.

Wildlife Filmmaker at National Geographic lest you make an online video. As the site says: “Make a custom nature film with animal clips, sounds, and more. Then share your masterpiece with your friends.”

Pictaps lets you draw a person and then turns your drawing to a bunch of dancing people having a good time. I’ve had students use it and then describe in writing what their person looks like and what’s going on in the animation.

Dress-up a Dark Ages Character from the Middle Ages (Viking, nun, knight, peasant, etc.) with all the accessories.

Help The Honey Bees not only provides accessible info on disappearing bees who are needed for pollination, but it also lets you create your own cute little bee that can give a message of your choosing.

Below you’ll see the poll. Remember, people can only vote once.

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

You might also want to explore nearly 100 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

Ana Maria Menezes, my colleague in our International Sister Classes Project and in Learning With Computers, wrote a post today about Jog The Web (by they way, I’d encourage readers to check-out her blog — she shares a lot of good experiments she tries with Web 2.0 tools).

Jog The Web is a good tool that lets you easily create “tours” of webpages, and lets others leave comments on them. This kind of application is excellent for a variety of language-learning activities (Ana Maria has some ideas), including online scavenger hunts.

It’s very similar to Daft Doggy. However, Daft Doggy is getting ready to unveil a radical revision of its site, which will be much more attractive and incorporate audio comments. In addition, Flowgram, another tool with some pretty amazing abilities, will be open to the public in September.

In other words, Jog the Web is a very good tool for now, but within a month or two I think you’ll see it eclipsed by these two other sites, unless it, too, can upgrade its abilities.

I’ve been reading about Slinkset in a number of tech blogs over the past couple of weeks. It sounded very intriguing to me from the first time I’ve heard it, but I’ve been grappling about how and if it could be useful in the school context with English Language Learners.

It’s called a “social news site.” In a matter of seconds, anyone can create their own site where members can join and post links, and comment on the links that others have posted on. It would be difficult to imagine an easier set-up process. You can also create a “walled garden” with only approved members.

One idea I’ve come-up with is that students could post their favorite links from my website, explaining why they like it, and have other students comment on them.

Any other ideas?