Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

June 17, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

The Best “Quotes Of The Day” In 2013 – So Far

665137230233626_a-6725cc95_jSi_UQ_pm

A few months ago, I begin periodically posting “quotes of the day.”

Here are my favorites so far this year:

The Dictatorship of Data: Robert McNamara epitomizes the hyper-rational executive led astray by numbers is an excellent article in the MIT Technology Review.

Here’s an excerpt:

We-are-more-susceptible

Robots in the classroom the wrong innovation is a good article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Here’s an excerpt:

We-should-not-look-to

David Nussbaum has written a very interesting post about the power of storytelling.

Here’s an excerpt:

Jonah-Berger-likens-the

Stop Telling Your Employees What to Do is a new post at the Harvard Business Review that has a lot of applicability to the classroom.

Here’s an excerpt:

No Rich Child Left Behind is a must-read column in The New York Times.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Wall Street Journal has just reported on a survey of employers by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Here’s an excerpt:

How to Give Effective Feedback, Both Positive and Negative is useful column in today’s New York Times. Here’s an excerpt:

The Hidden Biases in Big Data is by Kate Crawford and appeared in The Harvard Business Review. Here’s a quote from it:

This quote is from Marta Kagan in 7 Lessons From the World’s Most Captivating Presenters:

Feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 1100 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Print Friendly

June 17, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Good Posts & Articles On Education Policy

Here are some relatively recent useful pieces on educational policy issues:

Common-Core Online Practice Tests Unveiled is from Education Week. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The “Next Generation” Of State Testing.

Research Overwhelmingly Counsels an End to Tracking is from the National Education Policy Center. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Ability Grouping & Tracking.

Michelle Newsum: Tracking Our Way to Wider Achievement Gaps is from Education Week. I’m adding it to the same list.

Performance Assessment Is Best is by Walt Gardner at Education Week. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Performance Assessment.

More Vetoes of Teach For America Needed is from John Wilson. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles Raising Concerns About Teach For America.

Here’s a video of Judy Blume sharing her thoughts on the Accelerated Reader program. I’m adding it to A Beginning List Of The Best Posts & Articles On Accelerated Reader.

Print Friendly

June 16, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

The Best Social Studies Sites Of 2013 – So Far

378252942842522_a-79164ac7_rJa-UQ_pm

Here’s the latest mid-year “Best” list….

You might also be interested in:

The Best Social Studies Sites Of 2012 — Part Two

The Best Social Studies Sites Of 2012 — Part One

The Best Social Studies Sites Of 2011

The Best Social Studies Websites — 2010

The Best Social Studies Websites — 2009

The Best Social Studies Websites — 2008

The Best Social Studies Websites — 2007

Here are my choices for The Best Social Studies Sites Of 2013 — So Far:

We open up each school year in our ninth-grade English classes by doing a unit on natural disasters.  The History Channel has a new site called “Perfect Storms” that not only lets you “see” famous disasters in history, but also lets you create one at an address of your choosing. Nothing like typing in the address of your school and seeing what happens through a computer projector to get students’ attention!

I’ve previously posted about Trulia’s visualizations showing information (crime, home prices) for some cities in the United States. Now, they have dramatically expanded the information they share (flooding and earthquake hazards, schools, etc.) and the number of neighborhoods they cover. In fact, it seems they do it for just about everywhere in the U.S., but perhaps I’m overstating it.

The state of U.S. immigration is a very well-done and informative interactive infographic from The Washington Post. Plus, there are links on its page to several other useful Post immigration resources.

The Poverty Line is a brand new interactive that, as the BBC says:

…calculates how much money people living at the poverty line have to spend on food each day.

It’s very interactive and visual.

The Knotted Line is a pretty cool interactive on the struggle for freedom in the United States over the years. It also provides opportunities for people to leave comments in answering questions.

TIME Magazine has an ongoing series of short TIME Explains videos on current events. Here’s a link to most of them.

If you’re ever in a position where you need to teach about Lincoln’s assassination, the new Lincoln Killing interactive from National Geographic is going to be one of your “go to” resources.

The Great Divide: Global income inequality and its cost is a project by a group called The Global Post, done in partnership with The Pulitzer Center with support from The Ford Foundation.

Here’s how they introduce the project:

Income inequality is surging, and there are few countries where it is rising faster than the United States. The distance between rich and poor is greater in America than nearly all other developed countries, making the US a leader in a trend that economists warn has dire consequences. GlobalPost sets out on a reporting journey to get at the ‘ground truth’ of inequality through the lenses of education, race, immigration, health care, government, labor and natural resources. The hope is to hold a mirror up to the US to see how it compares to countries around the world.

I’m embedding the interactive below, but there’s much, much more to the site. I’m adding it to The Best Resources About Wealth & Income Inequality.

It’s a little hard to describe From Cave Paintings to the Internet.  Here’s what Google Maps Mania has to say about it:

an amazing online project to document the history of information and media. The project has a huge scope, starting with entries from 2,500,000 BCE right up to the modern day.

The project also provides a great Google Maps based interface to explore the records geographically and thematically. The map allows the user to select from a large number of themes, from archaeology to writing and palaeography. The entries can also be explored by historical era and by regions.

Just check it out…

Reading Like A Historian is an impressive collection of almost ninety U.S. and World History lessons from The Stanford History Education Group. Here’s how they describe the lessons:

The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents designed for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities.

This curriculum teaches students how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple perspectives on historical issues. They learn to make historical claims backed by documentary evidence.

They look good to me. You have to register to gain access to them (though you can get a “quick view” of them without registering), but registering is a pretty painless process. The same organization also sponsors Beyond The Bubble, a history assessment site that I have previously posted about

Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks is a simple tool that lets you determine the median income for every census tract in the United States just by typing in an address.

Feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 1100 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Print Friendly

June 16, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2013 – So Far

847021462363853_a-79164ac7_wWC-UQ_pm

It’s that time of year again when I start posting mid-year “The Best….” lists. There are over 1,100 lists now.  You can see them all here.

As usual, in order to make this list, a site had to be:

* accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users.

* free-of-charge.

* appropriate for classroom use.

* completely browser-based with no download required.

It’s possible that a few of these sites began in 2012, but, if so, I’m including them in this list because they were “new to me” in 2013.

You might want to visit previous editions:

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2012

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2011

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2010

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2009

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2008

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2007

(You might also find The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly In 2012 — So Far useful)

I don’t rank my mid-year lists, but do place them in order of preference in my end-of-year lists.

Feel free to let me know if you think I’m leaving any tools out.

Here are my  thirty-two choices for The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2013 — not ranked in any order:

GeoGuessr is one of my favorite games on The Best Online Geography Games list.  It’s now gotten even better. You can now create your own GeoGuessr game at GeoSettr.

Mosey lets you pick a location, easily choose places in the area that you’d like to “visit,” grab images off the web, shows the places on map, and lets you add notes. You’re then give a unique url address to your creation. It’s a good tool for geography class or for planning a real field trip.

I use Pinterest daily. However, in the vast majority of schools, it is never going to make it past Internet content filters for students. eduClipper is basically a Pinterest for schools (and I confirmed today that it is not blocked at our school — if it’s not blocked by our district, it’s unlikely to be blocked by most others). It has the potential of sort of being an “all in one” tool for the classroom, serving the same purposes as sites on The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students list and on The Best Online Virtual “Corkboards” (or “Bulletin Boards”) list, as well as serving other functions.

Populr.me is an easy tool for creating websites.

Soo Meta lets you combine segments of videos, text, tweets and images into one presentation. One nice feature is that you can easily grab those items off the Web through a simple search option (though, for me, the image search wasn’t working).

RealtimeBoard is an online whiteboard that is a good tool for real-time collaboration. It’s easy to use, and lets you upload images from your computer or by its url address.

emaze is a new slideshow creation tool that looks neat and pretty darn easy. TechCrunch says it hits the “Sweet Spot Between PowerPoint And Prezi.”

121Writing site is fairly useful. Students log-on to your class site, copy and paste their assignment onto it, and teachers can provide audio feedback on it. It could save a teacher time, and provide a way to give more detailed feedback to students who need it, and can “take” it.  I learned about it from Richard Byrne’s blog, and I’d encourage you to visit his post to read more about it. His post focuses on schools using Google Drive. However, you can use it even without using Google Drive by registering at the site here.

Brainscape is a flashcard-creating site that lets you add images and allows you to record sound simply by clicking on the “Advanced Editor.” It’s easy to add both, and those features make Brainscape stand out a bit from some of the other flashcard sites out there.

MashMe TV lets you create a free video conference with up to ten people. In addition, you can all watch a video and/or draw together.

buncee lets you easily create simple multimedia creations — almost like an extended virtual postcard. You can grab media off the web and add text.

Presenter is a new free online tool for creating online presentations, animations and — at least in my mind — most importantly, infographics. Most of the options on Presenter all look impressive but, for my technologically incompetent tastes, are just slightly more complicated than I would like (though I’m sure they all would be fine for most readers of this blog). I, though, particularly like their infographic tool.  Once you register and sign-on, you have the option to click on the Presenter tool or a tool to create websites. The Presenter tool is free, and the website one costs money. After you click on Presenter, you’re offered different features within it, including infographics. They only offer a few templates now, but I’m sure more will become available soon.

Imgembed is a “crowdsourced” collection of what’s now up to one million images that are free to use as long as you credit the photographer (it automatically appears with the embed code). You can also pay if you don’t want to have a header with an attribution. And you can contribute your own photos, too.

Sketchlot lets students…sketch and draw online. Teachers sign-up and can create a class roster letting students log-in, and drawings are embeddable.

I Wish You To lets you easily draw and create your own Ecards, which you can post, embed, and/or send to someone — and no registration is required.

Draft is a new free collaborative word processor that looks pretty useful. You can read a lengthy post about it at TechCrunch.

Quizdini is a simple and free tool for creating multiple-choice or “drag-and-drop” quizzes. There is no way right now to monitor student results, but they are working developing such a system.

Map Tales is a pretty cool application that lets you create “map-based stories.” Students can easily use them to document historical eras, literary journey, even their own immigration saga. It’s very easy to use.

Pinwords lets you create visually attractive quotations and is especially nice because it’s web-based and lets you grab images off the web to use.

Quozio is another super-easy way to create visually attractive quotations.

Image Quiz lets you easily grab images off the web (or upload your own) and create quizzes with them. No registration is required to create or take them, and there are quite a few already there.

Dio is a new interactive tool from Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life (which, apart from hearing from people with physical disabilities that it was very helpful to them, I have yet to figure out its usefulness). Dio, on the other hand, allows you to create what is basically a public or private network that has a lot of interactivity. There is no shortage of social network sites that teachers can set up for their students to use (see Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Social Network Sites), but Dio seems to have a lot more engaging features.

Wideo is a new tool for making online animations.  I wouldn’t say it’s as intuitive to use as some others on The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations list, but it does seem decent.

Russel Tarr has created lots of great online learning tools, and I’ve blogged about many of them. His latest is called Brainy Box, and it lets you easily create a 3-D animated cube with any content you want to include in it. Students will love it.

Quizpoo lets you create, without requiring registration, “this or that” quizzes. I had never actually heard of that “genre” of tests before, but you can see plenty of examples on their site. I could see students having a lot of fun making these kinds of tests. For example, as we study Latin America in my ELL Geography class, they could make one on “Mexico or Brazil” with the first “question” being “Brasilia” and the answer choices being “Mexico” or “Brazil.” The following “questions” could include “Pele” and “Baja California.” Students in my English class could make grammar ones like “Plural or Singular,” etc.

UTellStory is sort of a streamlined VoiceThread that I think is easier for both teachers and students to use.  You can make slideshows with your own images or grab ones off the web and easily add a audio you record, as well as text, to it. You can make them private or public, and they’re embeddable. You can also let your slideshows be re-used and mixed by others.

Phrase.it lets you easily add speech bubbles with your text to photos. You can upload your own, or choose a random image from the site. You’re then given a link to your creation.

HapYak lets you annotate any YouTube or Vimeo video with text (including url addresses) or freestyle drawing. The Adventures With Technology blog has an interesting lesson plan using HapYak with second language learners.

Make It Share It is new, and it seems to me that there isn’t an easier site out there to make simple animations. And it provides an embed code for your creation!

Photolist is a new tool that seems like a very easy way to make a slideshow (that’s also embeddable) and that lets you also add expanded captions.

Reflap is a free tool for online video chats. You can have up to five people on the same chat.

Every Stock Photo is an impressive search engine for images and, what’s particularly nice about it, is that it provides the embed code with the necessary attribution for any image you pick.

Feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 1,100 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Print Friendly

June 16, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
10 Comments

A Response To Questions About Sugata Mitra

A few days ago, I posted Questions About Sugata Mitra & His “Holes In The Wall.”

Here’s a guest post Rory Gallagher wrote in response. Feel free to continue the conversation in the comments section.

Rory Gallagher’s “bio”: Teacher of French and Japanese at a UK secondary school (13-18). Interested in complexity theory, self-organised learning, equal intelligence and, well, the whole learning process. An ignorant (but curious) schoolmaster… I had the pleasure of meeting and talking to Sugata Mitra when he came to give a talk at my school in October 2012, and have stayed in contact with him since to exchange ideas, to update him on my experiments with SOLEs in the classroom, and to share with him my research on complexity thinking.

Professor Sugata Mitra certainly seems to raise more questions than he answers, but that is, I believe, the essence of his philosophy. He challenges us to take ownership of, and to justify, our own beliefs on education and pedagogy. His child-like curiosity is infectious, and at many moments as he recounts his experiences one genuinely gets the impression that he is “winging it”.

His ideas and and the publicity he has received, starting with his contribution to the film “Slumdog millionaire”, and continuing with his TED talks and the TED prize this year, have sparked a great deal of debate and criticism. TED talks themselves have been criticised for giving a public forum (and thereby credence and gravitas) to ideas that have not been academically verified. Whilst Mitra has published his findings and he is encouraging others to do the same (there is a growing movement of teachers experimenting with Self-Organised Learning Environments), much of the evidence so far is anecdotal.

Interestingly much of the criticism of Mitra on the web seems to refer back to this article by Donald Clark. Clark himself is referring to an article by Payal Arora  which is far less critical of Mitra or his ideas. Arora makes the difference between the idea and the initiative, and suggests that many Hole in the Wall projects failed because of the lack of community help to run them.

Another criticism is that Mitra is “anti-teacher” and his use of Arthur C Clarke’s quotation – “Any teacher that can be replaced by a robot, should be” –  can certainly be interpreted in many ways. Mitra’s (actually Negroponte’s) oft-quoted question “Is knowing obsolete?” is highly provocative, but it is indicative of the wider interest that Mitra’s ideas are generating that the British council and WISE – Qatar Foundation were recently seriously debating whether the teaching profession as we have known it will become obsolete.

Questions to further provoke and engage.

  1. Why does Mitra provoke such a negative reaction among some people? Are his ideas dangerous?
  2. What do the findings that Mitra has published actually demonstrate? Is there only anecdotal evidence?
  3. Can education really be a self-organising environment where learning is an emergent phenomenon? Is it already in certain cases?
  4. What is the role of the teacher in the future of education? Will it change fundamentally?
  5. Will we be discussing Sugata Mitra in 10 years time?
Print Friendly

June 16, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

More On Different Cultures

Here are some new additions to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures:

13 Things That Americans Do That The Rest Of The World Just Finds Bizarre is from Business Insider.

Languages of love: 10 unusual terms of endearment is from The BBC.

The OECD Better Life Index “allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 topics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life.”

Print Friendly

June 15, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

What I’m Writing This Summer….

Last week, I published a guest piece over at Education Week sharing what I was planning on reading this summer, and thought I’d publish a short post here sharing what my writing projects are over the same period of time.

Books:

I’m beginning to write the third volume in my “trilogy” on student motivation (book one was Helping Students Motivate Themselves and book two was Self-Driven Learning). Unlike those previous volumes, however, I’m trying to be sane and not write it all in one summer. So I’ll be working on it now, but don’t anticipate its completion until next summer.

Education Week is publishing an eBook of some of posts from my teacher advice column there, and I’ll be adding some new material. I think they’re anticipating publishing it within the next couple of months. All author royalties are going to The National Writing Project.

Articles:

I’m writing one for the International Reading Association, and my friend and colleague, Katie Hull, and I are writing a piece on teaching writing to English Language Learners for ASCD Educational Leadership.

Presentations:

I’ll be one of the keynoters at the K-12 Online Conference for their “Leading Learning” strand, so have to prepare that presentation.

Blogs:

Of course, I’ll continue to be posting here, and will be publishing quite a few mid-year “The Best…” lists. In addition, I’ll be active at my Engaging Parents In School blog and will be publishing a variety of thematic summary posts at my Education Week Teacher advice blog (as well as organizing questions and answers to appear in the next school year there). It’s likely, though not certain, that I’ll be back again publishing at The New York Times Learning Network, but I’ll nevertheless be doing some prep work in case that continues.

All that, combined with family trips, lots of basketball-playing, lesson prep for next year, and countless naps, should make for a busy summer…

What are you doing to rejuvenate yourself over the summer break?

Print Friendly

June 15, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

My Most Popular Posts In 2013 — So Far

canvas

I’ll be posting various 2013 “so far” lists over the summer, and thought I’d start with my most popular posts of the year — so far (based on 600,000 visits to my blog in the first six months of this year). You can see previous popular post lists here.

You might also be interested in seeing a similar list at my Education Week Teacher advice blog.

Here are My Most Popular Posts In 2013 — So Far (note that some of them have been posted in previous years, but I update them and they continue to retain their popularity):

1. The Best Sites For Online Photo-Editing & Photo Effects

2. The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy In The Classroom

3. The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL

4. The Best Online Virtual “Corkboards” (or “Bulletin Boards”)

5. The link leading to all my 1100 “The Best…” lists

6. The Best Teacher Resources For “Foldables”

7. The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English (by the way, I’ve just reviewed and updated this list)

8. The Best Sites For Learning Spanish Online

9. The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures

10. The Best Sites For Grammar Practice

11. The Best Comic Strips For Students & Teachers In 2012 — So Far

12. The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2012 — So Far

13. The Best Applications For Creating Free Email Newsletters

14. The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories

15. The Best Websites For English Language Learner Students In 2012 — So Far

16. The Best Sites For Teaching About Latitude & Longitude

17. The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills & Vocabulary

18. The Best Tools For Making Online Timelines (I’ve just updated this list, too)

19. The Best Alternatives To Google Reader Now That It’s Being Shut Down

20. The Best Sites For Creating Personalized “Newspapers” Online (I updated this list today, too)

21. The Best Websites For Creating Online Learning Games

Print Friendly

June 15, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL

I’ve started a somewhat  regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention:

Year-End Review: A Recap of Our CCSS for ELLs Posts is from the blog, Common Core and ELLs. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Common Core Standards & English Language Learners.

Scott Thornbury is ending his A-Z of ELT blog, and has a nice recap of its highlights.

Using Images is a feature from the British Council. Here is how they describe it:

Using images is a complete set of resources for low-level and high-level students which combine photos and audio to help get your students activating their higher level thinking skills, as well as improve their exam-level listening and speaking skills. Each pack contains teacher’s notes, student worksheets, audio and images.

I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Use Photos In Lessons.

Stories waiting to be told is a post from the Close Up blog that also offers some excellent ideas on how to use photos with ELLs. I’m adding that post to the same “Best” list.

“We are New York” is a blog post about a series of introductory videos to that city and its services (that are specifically designed for ELLs), though it seems to me it could be useful to ELLs in other communities, too. They come with many teacher resources, too. Here’s one of them:

Print Friendly

June 14, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
7 Comments

Questions About Sugata Mitra & His “Holes In The Wall”

(Also see A Response To Questions About Sugata Mitra)

Professor Sugata Mitra is famous for his “holes in the wall” experiments where he placed computers in impoverished Indian communities and students “self-organized” their instruction.

Now, with a substantial grant from TED Talks, he’s planning an ambitious expansion of his program.

You certainly can’t beat his story, and I’m sure that some children have benefited from his work. I’ve got to say, though, I’ve had questions about his approach for awhile, and it goes back to my nineteen year community organizing career (prior to becoming a teacher ten years ago).

When I was organizing, I periodically would hear or read about people’s romanticized view of community organizing — about how everything just needs to “bubble-up” from “the people.”

Well, that’s not what organizing is really about. Yes, the issues and relationships are based in local communities. However, we organizers are not “potted plants” (a great phrase, unfortunately borrowed from Oliver North’s attorney during the Iran/Contra hearings many years ago). We’re paid (by our members and their institutions) to think about strategy and tactics, and have the time to do it while our members are dealing with the myriad challenges of their own lives.

We then take the concerns they have told us and develop ideas for tactics and strategies which we share with them. Then — and this is the key — they react to our ideas, change them, modify them, and make them into their own.

That’s how change and growth typically happens.

From what I read, Professor Mitra raises important questions about how teaching is often done ineffectively in our traditional institutions, and key questions about the role of the teacher. It just seems a little too simplistic to me:

We need teachers to do different things. The teacher has to ask the question, and tell the children what they have learned. She comes in at the two ends, a cap at the end and a starter at the beginning.

I also find it interesting that, in that same interview, he says his approach only works with 8-12 year olds — not younger or older children, and not with adults.

A search for critiques of his work are easy to find online, though I have no way of judging their validiy. There are many that question the accuracy of his reports on the effectiveness of his experiments.

I’m concerned that when people make broad claims for success, and then are not successful, often “the baby gets tossed with the bathwater” — that many of the valid questions about how schools function now that Professor Mitra makes will be dismissed if, and when, he doesn’t deliver his promised results.

And there is reason to be concerned. I’ve posted in the past about studies that show pretty clearly that Professor Mitra’s kind of “unassisted discovery learning” is typically ineffective.

What do you think? Am I being overly-critical? Am I misrepresenting Professor Mitra’s work? What might I be missing?

(You also might be interested in Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the Wall by Audrey Watters)

For your information, here’s Professor Mitra’s recent TED Talk:

Print Friendly