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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day..." - 7 new articles

Nice Cloze Generating Tool
Contribute A Post To The 33rd EFL, ELL, ESL Blog Carnival
How The NBA Finals Taught A Lesson About Not Being “Data-Driven”
Images Of The “Supermoon”
All My Ed Week Posts On The Common Core In One Place!
A Few Well-Done Interactive Infographics
Bono Organizes Impressive Site Of Protest Songs
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Nice Cloze Generating Tool

I’m a big fan of using clozes (also known as “gap-fills” and “fill-in-the-blanks”) in the classroom — both ones used by teachers for assessment and instruction, and also student-created ones. I talk a bit more about this in The Best Tools For Creating Clozes (Gap-Fills).

One simple way to make clozes that you print out is just to copy and paste text in a Word document and strategically delete the words you want people to fill-in.

David Deubelbeiss has discovered a tool that makes it even easier. The Cloze Creator was developed by Zander Martineau, and works great.

David has written a blog post and created a screencast showing how it works, which I’ve embedded below. David explains it in the context of using English Central video transcripts (which are excellent), but the same instructions hold true for any piece of text.

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Contribute A Post To The 33rd EFL, ELL, ESL Blog Carnival

Eva Buyuksimkesyan is hosting the next EFL, ELL, ESL Blog Carnival on August 1st, and the theme will be Songs in ELT Classrooms.

You can learn more it at her blog post and contribute a post though this submission form or through contacting her directly on Twitter.

You can see all the previous Blog Carnivals here.

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How The NBA Finals Taught A Lesson About Not Being “Data-Driven”

'LeBron James' photo (c) 2011, Keith Allison - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

I’ve written a lot about the importance of being “data-informed” and not “data-driven” in schools (see The Best Resources Showing Why We Need To Be "Data-Informed" & Not "Data-Driven") and, among other examples, have used stories from baseball and basketball to support that position.

Bruce Jenkins from The San Francisco Chronicle is one of my favorite sportswriters. Today, he illustrated that same point by looking at the just-completed NBA finals. He is critical of one of the most fashionable stats today in basketball — the plus/minus statistic, which can be defined this way:

The +/- stat is tied to team performance during the time that that particular player is on the court. The games official scorer records the differential in terms of gain (plus) or loss (minus).

Here’s what Jenkins wrote about it:

Michael Wilbon took a wicked shot at the metrics/analytics crowd on ABC before Game 7 of the Finals, calling it “suicide” to make player judgments on statistics when your eyes tell the real story. I’m on Wilbon’s side, largely because I’m as old as the hills and used to analyzing basketball a certain way. A lot of very smart people feel otherwise.

Much of the debate centers around the plus/minus statistic assigned to players after each game, having to do with the team’s performance (i.e., the score) while that player was on the court. I’d never bothered to even consider these numbers until Game 7 of this year’s Finals, and here’s what I saw:

Manu Ginobili, whose brutally reckless play cost his team so badly: plus-6.

Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs’ most influential player with 19 points and 16 rebounds: minus-8.

Dwayne Wade, who resurrected his game and his team’s identity with 23 points: minus-2.

LeBron James: Plus-8, when it seemed more like plus-infinity, and a lesser number than teammates Mario Chalmers, Chris Andersen and Shane Battier.

Think I’ll keep my old-school eyes on the court.

I, like Jenkins, will continue to be skeptical of fashionable stats that purport to be the end-all, be-all of measurement, like plus/minus numbers and Value Added Measurements.

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Images Of The “Supermoon”

Here are some new additions to The Best Resources About The "Supermoon":

Supermoon rises is a slideshow from The Washington Post.

Up in the sky, look: It’s Supermoon! is a CNN slideshow.

In pictures: ‘Supermoon’ lights up night sky is from The BBC.

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All My Ed Week Posts On The Common Core In One Place!

Q & A Collections: Implementing The Common Core is my new post over at Education Week Teacher. It brings together all my posts there on…the Common Core.

I’m adding it to two “The Best…” lists:

The Most Useful Resources For Implementing Common Core

The Best Resources For Learning About Common Core Standards & English Language Learners

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A Few Well-Done Interactive Infographics

Here are a few well-done interactive infographics I’ve seen recently:

The Associated Press has a new interactive on hurricanes. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Hurricanes.

E-Mail: Not Dead, Evolving is a pretty interesting interactive from The Harvard Business Review.

Graduation Rate Trends 1999-2000 to 2009-2010 is from Education Week.

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Bono Organizes Impressive Site Of Protest Songs

The singer Bono has organized an impressive online collection of protest songs, including their video performances, lyrics and background information on each.

You can read about his new site in this newspaper article, and visit the site directly here.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Protests In History.