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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day..." - 5 new articles
- This Week’s “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t”
- Hot Spot Interview — Report From Brazil
- The Best Science Sites Of 2013 – So Far
- Looking For Assets, Not Deficits
- Newsela Provides “Leveled” News Articles & Quizzes
- More Recent Articles
- Search Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
- Prior Mailing Archive
This Week’s “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t”I have a huge backlog of resources that I’ve been planning to post about in this blog but, just because of time constraints, have not gotten around to doing. Instead of letting that backlog grow bigger, I regularly grab a few and list them here with a minimal description. It forces me to look through these older links, and help me organize them for my own use. I hope others will find them helpful, too. These are resources that I didn’t include in my “Best Tweets” feature because I had planned to post about them, or because I didn’t even get around to sending a tweet sharing them. Here are This Week’s “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t”: I’m adding this video to A Beginning List Of The Best Geography Sites For Learning About Asia & The Middle East:
This is Shanghai from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo. I’m adding this next interactive to The Best Resources For World Biodiversity Day (& Endangered Species Day): 
Nine Things Educators Need to Know About the Brain is from Daily Good. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On “Brain-Based Learning” — Help Me Find More. Grit: The Other 21st Century Skills is by Jackie Gerstein. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit.” If I Were a Black Kid… is by Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic. ‘Soda Mouth’ Can Look A Lot Like ‘Meth Mouth’ is from NPR. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Nutrition & Food Safety. Beyond the Book: Infographics of Students’ Reading History is from Edutopia. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Creating Infographics. I’m adding this infographic to The Best Resources About President’s Day:     
Hot Spot Interview — Report From BrazilTwo years ago, I began a new regular interview series. There are always lots of “hot spots” around the world — places where there are natural disasters, political upheavals, etc. And English teachers can be found in most of those places. If you are an EFL/ESL teacher in one of those areas, please let me know. Today, I’m lucky enough to interview Carla Arena (you can follow her on Twitter, too) from Brazil. As most readers know, huge protests have been happening there. What led you to become an English teacher, and where and to whom do you teach? I became an English teacher due to an irresistible call when I was taking a Teacher Development Course at the Binational Center in Brasilia that I work for nowadays, Casa Thomas Jefferson. At that time, I was taking this teacher course at that time just to keep up with English and because I loved the language. I was a public servant then and had no idea my life would be turned upside down on the day I taught my first English class for beginner adults as part of my course practicum. It was simply love at first sight. Adrenaline rushed through my body, and I realized at that point what I was meant for, what my drive was. From there, I did everything within my reach to become a teacher at Casa Thomas Jefferson, quit my job, became an English teacher and actively engaged in professional development opportunities to be qualified for the teaching position at the renowned English language institute in my hometown. Nowadays, I train teachers, teach a group of teens, teach online. How and why did the protests begin in Brazil? To many of us outside of the country, they appeared to come out of nowhere. I am not sure what the media around the world is reporting about Brazilians protesting on the streets, but, in fact, it all started with some protests in Rio, Goiânia and São Paulo because of the raise of public transportation rates in those capital cities. On the same week, we had the Confederation Cup opening in Brasilia and the soccer games all around Brazil, which are the preparation for the World Cup in 2014. What happens is that the rebuilding or remodeling of the stadiums in preparation for this world soccer event was more than 30 BILLION reais, around 15 BILLION dollars. The population has been questioning all along if we needed stadiums or more investments in education or in our health system. I guess this latent movement pro-Brazil and our society just took off and was amplified by the social media. Dilma Roussef, our president, was booed in the opening ceremony of the Confederation Cup, and from there, things just got bigger and bigger to the point that the protests were organized all over the country in a moment it is in evidence with lots of media coverage. Of course, the protests were legitimate with mottos like #wakeupbrazil (#acordabrasil), or #thegianthaswokenup (#ogiganteacordou) or #cometothestreets (#vemprarua) with the optimistic Brazilians fighting against corruption, for a better, decent life for all. However, there are always those who use such moments for their own benefit or even to promote hatred campaigns and vandalism for the sake of it, but this is just the minority of the population. Tons of Brazilians were unison on the streets in a peaceful parade pro-Brazil. I just want to highlight that I’m not against the World Cup. In fact, I love watching the Brazilian soccer games with friends and family. The point is that there is too much investment taking place that could be much more beneficial to our population. I’d exchange the World Cup in Brazil for more schools, qualified teachers and decent hospitals in the country. That’s what we’re desperately in need of. To have a better understanding of the World Cup issues, watch this video:
How are the causes behind the protests affecting you and your students, and how are the protests themselves affecting you and them? The moment is of reflection, one that should be taken to the classrooms for broader debate and awareness, for understanding how this movement is rooted in the many social and economic issues we face and it is much deeper than its apparent reasons. In fact, it is showing everybody that we have a voice, we have the power to change as a collectivity, we can’t just be mere spectators of decisions and attitudes from the State that directly affect us. Many of the students were on the streets, were part of the movement. In my case, I was traveling in a remote area of the country which hasn’t had any protest, but we were glued to the TV and social media to follow the crowds even at a distance. I was sad not to be in Brasilia for the pacific protest of huge proportions in my hometown, to show my kids that we should fight for what we believe in and we should be against all that is done against the public good. What do you see happening with the protests in the coming days, weeks and months? What do you think their end result will be? I have no idea what will happen from there. Today is one more day that everyone is on the streets to be heard loud and clear. What I know is that the government will think twice in their decision-making process. On the other hand, some bad-intentioned guys will use the moment for political gains, and I hope to see the population more aware and alert of their own citizen rights. I just wish this Brazilian awakening isn’t in vain and will result in concrete public policies, in the willingness of doing things differently, Am I being optimistic? As always, YES! But you know what? The last two times we had such a strong mass mobilization, our country went from a dictatorship to a democracy and in the other time one of our presidents has been through an impeachment process. Is there anything else I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to share? I just wonder what the world perception about our manifest is around the globe… I wonder how the media is covering the events here, for they have a very important social and economic component that might not be visible in a foreign’s eyes… Thanks, Carla!  The Best Science Sites Of 2013 – So Far
I’m continuing my mid-year “The Best…” lists …. You might also be interested in: The Best Science Sites Of 2012 — Part Two The Best Science Sites Of 2012 — Part One The Best Science Sites Of 2011 The Best Science Sites Of 2011 — So Far The Best Science Websites — 2010 The Best Science & Math Sites — 2009 The Best Science & Math Websites — 2008 The Best Science Websites For Students & Teachers — 2007 Here are my choices for The Best Science Sites Of 2013 — So Far (not in any order of preference): Wonderground is a game from General Electric where you visit various cities in The United States and are given “missions” to explore them and make discoveries related to science and history. It would be accessible to high Intermediate English Language Learners and others, and it’s very engaging. Here Is Today is a cool interactive infographic. I learned about it from Information Aesthetics, who described it like this: Ranging from one day to one eon, and framing the time periods different kinds of species emerged on Earth, the timeline ribbon acts like a dynamic stacked bar chart that enables easy comparison.
The Guardian has published an interactive infographic that lets you see the temperature change over the past one hundred years in most locations in the world. Just type in your city and country and, voila, you see it graphed for your location. NASA released this video showing temperature changes in the world since 1880 and including 2012 — it’s an updated version of one they’ve released in previous years. I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change.
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. 
Looking For Assets, Not DeficitsI’ve tried to apply the idea of looking for assets instead of deficits throughout my community organizing and teaching careers, and have written a lot about it in my books and in articles. One key strategy to make this work is by eliciting stories. Of course, this strategy is not limited to community organizing or to the classroom. Science Daily has just published a fascinating report on the use of this kind of strategy by medical students with dementia patients. Their purpose was to building on the creative assets of patients through having them tell stories based on thought-provoking photographs. Their strategy, called TimeSlips, seems in many ways similar to TPR Storytelling in second-language classes (at least to my untrained — in both TimeSlips and in TPRS — eye). I’ve embedded two videos of TimeSlips in action at the end of this post. However, before I end with them I want to point out that I’m blogging about it for more reasons than just the fact it has an interesting connection to teaching a second language (though the fact that dementia is beginning to make itself known in my family also makes it particularly interesting to me). The TimeSlips website is also perfect for English Language Learners. It has many great images and encourages people to write their own stories about them. In fact, they also provide multiple scaffolded prompts for each image. I’m adding the post, and their site, to various “The Best…” lists, including: The Best Ways To Use Photos In Lessons The Best Online Tools For Using Photos In Lessons
Here are two videos about TimeSlips:
 Newsela Provides “Leveled” News Articles & QuizzesNewsela provides several “levels” of the same newspaper articles, along with accompanying online quizzes, that students can read and take. Teachers can create a virtual classroom, assign articles and monitor student progress. I wouldn’t say it promotes higher-level thinking but, of course, I would say the same thing about most (if not all) of the sites on The Best Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress. They are, however, useful for reinforcement of certain skills at home or at the computer lab for an occasional change of pace. One thing that Newsela does have going for it is the different levels of complexity it offers for the same article. That increases the odds of it being useful to English Language Learners. One thing Newsela does not have going for it is that though it’s free for a “trial,” it clearly indicates that it will cost at some point but the only way you can find out the price is if you send them an email. That makes me a bit suspicious, especially since most of the other sites on my previously mentioned “The Best” list are free. Nevertheless, at least until they start charging, I’ll be adding Newsela to that list. 
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