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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles
Ed Tech Digest
Ten years ago, in another somewhat futile attempt to reduce the backlog of resources I want to share, I began this occasional “Ed Tech Digest” post where I share three or four links I think are particularly useful and related to…ed tech, including some Web 2.0 apps. You might also be interested in checking out all my edtech resources. Here are this week’s choices: Picatle is an online geography game. I’m adding it to The Best Online Geography Games. you do not have to use generative ai “art” in your blogs because there are websites where you can get real, nice images for free is from Live Laugh. I’m adding it to The “All-Time” Best Sources Of Online Images. Language Learning App Giant Duolingo Thinks It Can Conquer Math, Too is from The 74. GeoGPT5 is a GeoGuesser-like game, but you’re competing with an AI chatbot. I’m adding it to The Best Online Geography Games. The Size of Anything lets you compare…the sizes of countries, lakes, parks, etc. I’m adding it to The Best Online Tools For Comparing The Physical Sizes Of Different Countries.
Page Pebble is a Chrome extension that lets you annotate websites. I’m adding it to The Best Applications For Annotating Websites.      Sentences Of The Week geralt / Pixabay
I thought readers might, or might not, find this new regular post useful. Each week, I highlight several sentences, with links to their sources, that I find interesting/concerning/useful. And they may, or may not, be directly connected to education. I may also include my own comments or related links. This regular post will join my other regular ones on teaching ELLs, education policy, Artificial Intelligence, infographics, and Pinterest highlights, not to mention sharing of my regular Education Week posts. Here are this week’s sentences: But to keep Gen Z teachers in the long term, a majority of such teachers in the EdWeek survey and other studies say they need more flexible work structures, such as four-day weeks and more planning time during the workday. One of the things that we do so frequently with kids is say, “Don’t do this,” but then we don’t tell them what we want them to do. What is clear when one looks across East and West, North and South, is that the states that have built lasting educational success—whether Massachusetts in the 1990s or Mississippi today—have done so through patient, systemic investment in schools and in the people who work in them. Research shows that eating school breakfast is associated with a variety of positive outcomes for students, including improved academic performance and classroom behavior and better health outcomes. Roughly one in five student interactions with generative artificial intelligence on school technology involved cheating, self-harm, bullying, and other problematic behaviors, according to data collected and analyzed by Securly, a company offering internet filtering and other safety services. And yet the people who wave their hands and talk about some magical “AI” future insist they’re the realists; and the ones who want to fund schools and not the military, who want to hire teachers not buy tech gadgets, who want to build a future that cares for people not profits – we’re the dreamers; we’re the crazy ones. Designated e-readers can mitigate some of these problems, but research suggests that the absence of a third dimension—the fact that we do not physically turn pages—makes remembering what we read harder. You might be interested in The Best Resources On Which Is Best – Reading Digitally Or Reading Paper? Doucleff explains this with science—people who seem to have strong willpower, she writes, are actually just better at constructing environments that remove temptation, and that’s what we should do for our kids and ourselves, with screens and food. Routine digital exposure in instructional contexts is associated with weaker academic outcomes in a dose-response relationship. Student engagement measures proved to be key predictors of absence patterns. Third graders who had to repeat a grade in Texas were far less likely to graduate from high school or earn a good living as young adults, nearly two decades later. Reliance on AI among faculty is also on the rise, with observers pointing to the dystopian possibility that the college experience may soon be reduced to AI systems grading AI-generated homework – “a conversation between two robots”. “What tends not to [work] is, without throwing them under the bus again, sort of the approach that LAUSD had which was: let’s get out there quickly, let’s make it splashy, let’s make sure that we scale immediately,” Aguilar said. Political pressure is prompting more than a third of social studies teachers to axe some topics from their lessons, according to a new survey. “A war that was meant to prevent Iran from having a bomb could be the war that actually pushed Iran beyond the Rubicon to reach a bomb,” said Danny Citronowicz, an analyst at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, and former head of the Iran branch of Israel’s military intelligence. He and his colleagues found that “teens who have very little screen time are actually seeing a greater rise in insufficient sleep than teens with heavy screen use,” he says.
 The Best Resources For Teachers, Especially Those Teaching ELLs, To Learn About Google’s NotebookLM Simon / Pixabay
Google has tried a lot of failed experiments with AI over the past two-or-three years, but their NotebookLM is one that seemed to work. They are constantly adding new features to it. So, I’m just sharing the most recent resources as of early 2026, but will have to regularly come back and dump everything that’s here today and replace it with new updates: Impressive (but flawed) tests of Google’s NotebookLM is from Ken Kahn and is very thorough.     A complete Guide on how to use NotebookLM as a language learner is from The Average Polygot.     World Poetry Day Is On March 21st – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources
The United Nations has declared March 21st to be World Poetry Day. You might be interested in The Best World Poetry Day Resources – Help Me Find More.  A Look Back: Guest Post From Lorin W. Anderson, Co-Author Of The Revised Bloom’s TaxonomyFor the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2017. Editor’s Note: Lorin W. Anderson, one of the co-authors of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, left a comment on my post earlier this week, “Knowledge” & Bloom’s Pyramid. He graciously agreed to expand on this thought for this guest post. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy In The Classroom.
Lorin W. Anderson received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1973, having studied with Benjamin S. Bloom. He spent 33 years on the faculty of the University of South Carolina, retiring in 2006. He currently holds the rank of Carolina Distinguished Professor Emeritus and is a member of the International Academy of Education. Let me make a couple of points about the material in the post, “Knowledge” & Bloom’s Pyramid: 1. The triangle does not appear anywhere in either Taxonomy. The triangular representation was quite likely designed by someone as part of a presentation made to educational practitioners (e.g., teachers, administrators). I believe that the triangular representation was developed in order to indicate that, in the original Taxonomy, the six categories formed a cumulative hierarchy. That is, it was believed by the authors of the original Taxonomy that mastery of each lower category was necessary before moving to the next higher category. For example, you have to comprehend something before you can apply it. 2. The triangular representation of the revised Taxonomy is particularly inappropriate for several reasons. First, the revised Taxonomy contains two dimensions, not one. The authors believed that knowledge was sufficiently important to be a separate dimension. They also believed there were different types or forms of knowledge: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. Second, the nouns in the original Taxonomy were replaced by verbs, In this process, remember replaced knowledge at the lowest “level” of the second dimension, termed “cognitive processes.” If you read the text of the original Taxonomy, the equation of “knowledge” with “recall” and “recognition” is quite evident. Remember was followed by understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. Third, the categories (verbs) in the cognitive process dimension did NOT form a cumulative hierarchy. Rather, they were considered to be “tools in a toolbox.” Thus, it was possible (and often quite useful) to apply in order to understand or to evaluate as you apply. 3. In your blog post, Dylan William’s representation, entitled “Bloom’s taxonomy, as it should be” is a far better representation of the revised Taxonomy than the triangular representation. In fact, if you change the nouns to verbs (other than knowledge), add Remember to the list in the upper row, and realize that knowledge is multi-faceted (as I mention above) he has almost reconstructed the two-dimensional table of the revised Taxonomy. 4. Finally, after 40+ years in the business, I am greatly dismayed that many educators get their information from oral presentations and secondary (and in some cases tertiary) sources. This practice tends to result in passing along half-truths and misinterpretations. In this regard, I think you could do a great service by directing the readers of your blog to original sources (even if they won’t read them). With respect to the revised Taxonomy, it would be helpful for anyone who is interested in writing about or making presentations on the revised Taxonomy to take 15 to 20 minutes to read the excellent overview written by David Krathwohl in the journal, Theory into Practice.  More Recent Articles
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