1. It's not very easy to find science sources that meet needs of Middle and High School and ELL students. Facts On File, Today's Science is a database of science news and encyclopedia articles written on the level that students can understand.
2. Today's Science connects the content that students learn in class with present-day discoveries in
Chemistry, Biology, Earth Science, Environment, Medicine and Health, Psychology, and other areas of science.
3. Conversations with Scientists, Cartoons and Puzzles enrich and make reading engaging.
4. Visuals and the Read Aloud feature help students understand the text. Students can hear and repeat the correct pronunciation of difficult terminology. When needed, articles can be translated into students' native languages with a build-in the Google Translate function.
5. The "Resources for Educators" section includes ideas and suggestions for assignments, discussions, hands-on activities, and research.
The ELL Humanities II class studies cold climates. Reading and conversing are two main ways students develop their language skills and knowledge of the content. By asking questions, clarifying and discussing the topic students practice sharing their understanding.
Mrs. Sullivan's class is delving into library resources. Students learn the structure of informational books and find materials that best meet their needs.
Activity Around the table: Which book should I check out?
Library is an authentic environment where students hear others speak and have a chance to practice their verbal skills.
Russell Stannard published ten new videos (Teacher Training Videos.com). Among them are these that I think will be useful by our students and teachers:
Lit2Go is a collection of audiobooks. You can download audio (MP3) files and see the text of the books as PDF and a web page that allows you and your students to read and listen to the story being narrated to you.
MeeGenius! is a collection of K-3 audio books, some of them are free.
Bat Lyrics
Short Stories - free ELL stories and exercises, listen and read a story. Related vocabulary and activities are suggested for each story.
ClickNLearn is a collection of exercises for ELL, French and Spanish students of different levels.
Mousebreaker free games. To select a game click on the top search A-Z Games button. There are some that you won't play but you might like Drop a Block or Sudoku.
Below you can find several sites that might be useful for your purposes. Some of them specialize on teaching and learning vocabulary and grammar of English and foreign languages. Some of them help students improve their listening and speaking skills. Click and play them to see how to apply some of the new technology into your teaching. Digital Dialects - vocabulary builder, grammar, spelling, games, and other in French, Spanish, Hebrew and other languages. Wrds.eu is an easy way to learn words. Students can create word lists and test themselves at any time. Listen and Write improves listening skills and understanding of news in English, French, Hebrew, Spanish, and other languages. Photobabble.com or “talking photos” can be used for practicing verbal skills. Breaking News in English is used by ELL teachers to improve their students’ listening skills. Quizicon.com - learn and teach 100 most common English words Smories.com - original stories read by children for children.
VoiceThread: A new version of VoiceThread now allows people to browse entire collections of media while making a single unbroken comment. Now any faculty member will be able to edit any student's VoiceThread, moderate comments, or remove inappropriate comments.
Next month's issue of TEACHING Exceptional Children contains an article showing "how a web based learning tool (VoiceThread) can boost the learning skills and motivation of these students and many others as they work with multimedia to explore subject areas, express their ideas, and share information—and all at their own pace and learning level". You can read an excerpt here.
VoiceThread presentations can be easily embedded into Moodle.
Teachers and students... Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants... How to overcome the gap? What language should we speak to be understood and understand? It should be the same but isn’t English enough?
Technology became the language in which teachers should become proficient in order to communicate educational content and expect to be heard and understood.
What does it take to master a foreign language? Teachers of Modern Languages and from ELL department know it better than anyone else! Commitment, determination, and practice are the factors that lead to success. Your foreign accent and lack of fluency will always betray you as a foreigner and be areas to bring to perfection through the whole life, but we can do something about it.
Why do we need to bother? Technology does not replace the instruction. Web 2.0 tools are just new delivery mechanisms that are used to present the instruction to the individual learner! The reason is that technology is a part of students' life, the language they speak, and the environment they live in. Technology helps us find the way to conduct educational content that students enjoy and be gladly engaged to studying the subject. Why not to use it?
Technology integrators, once also being beginners and intermediate, threw themselves into the ocean of technology and immigrated to Second Life.
They have built some sites that connect us with others who decided to learn more about technology in education: Classroom 2.0 - an online network of those who are interested in using digital tools in education; The Educator's PLN (The Personal Learning Network for Educators) - a ning that encourages teachers to communicate with others and get an update on technology tools; ISTE Community Ning comprises a number of group that can be of your interest (like Moodle group, 1-to-1, etc.)
Don't ignore our local connections as well - we try our best to let you exercise your new skills and learn new vocabulary words: WBAIS Staff ning (WebCafe group), Library Buzz blog, and MBtoolbox wiki. Feel free to add your tools and participate in professional discussions.
Wiki Junio is a collection of resources for literacy teachers. There is a section forESOL teachers as well as a list of non-fiction books for 0-12 Simple English.
Lifelong Learners... Is it a term that we use describing what we want our students to be? Do we set it as a goal for ourselves?
To check where you are and keep growing professionally visit "7 1/2 Habits of Highly Effective Lifelong learners" - lesson 1 out of 10 of "23 Things" course run by Peggy Knudson http://k12learning20.wikispaces.com/1-habits
Today I joined a group of our teachers "playing" with a new collaborative tool - VoiceThread.com. It's a multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, videos, and audio file and allows people leave comments in 5 ways - using voice, text, audio files, or video. While talking, users can doodle drawing listeners' attention to what is being said.
Educators can open a free educator account and distribute their assignments via VoiceThread. Students can have their own accounts and work independently, develop their portfolio of works, submit their homework.
Join us now and catch up when you have time! Listen to Peggy's VoiceThread and leave a comment.
Other examples: Urie Salant: Voicethread can be used to start a conversation or introduce some ideas to students, and inviting them to write a note or using their own voice to comment on the images or text that you present. http://ed.voicethread.com/share/343925/ You will need to register if you want to leave a comment within the presentation itself. Urie
How to implement podcasts to your class effectively?
Podcasts are an excellent tool for sharing information. It's a piece of creation and distribution of voice possibly mixed up with music productions.
It's a publishing tool for student oral presentations. Teachers can use them for: Recording their lessons and putting them online, Recording of students' presenations to help them improve their speaking skills, Book discussions, vocabulary or foreign language lessons, international pen pal letters, interviews, debates, distribution of radio show.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows people to subscribe to a podcast and view new posts when they are publihsed.
The wide range of educational podcasts can be found at Education Podcast Network. It's a great directory for educators. There are links to suggested classroom uses broken down by grade level and subject.
Here it is a collection of sources that you can find useful when thinking about using podcasts in your class.
Getting Started with Podcasting: Gcast is a free software that allows you to create and publish your podcasts.
Download Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows and LAME MP3 encoder that allows Audacity export MP3 files (when download LAME MP3 encoder save it in the same folder where Audacilty is saved), Open Audacity Plug a microphone into your computer and click "Record" button in Audacity screen. After having saved your files, you can edit them by using the "Import Audio" under the Project section. To share your podcast you need to transfer the MP3 file from your computer to a server (ftp:).
2. Today's Science connects the content that students learn in class with present-day discoveries in 
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