"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles

The Parkland school massacre happened eight years ago on Valentine’s Day.

In addition to watching this interview done with Fred Guttenberg, the father of one of that day’s victims, you might also be interested in Not Very “Best” Lists Of The Week: Gun Violence.

 

Addendum:

 

Eight years ago, lives were forever shattered when a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 students and educators, wounding many more. We remember. We were told our pain, grief, and anger would fade with time. We were told that the systems putting gun… pic.twitter.com/AFp31MBSBl

— March For Our Lives (@AMarch4OurLives) February 14, 2026

     

It’s slightly dated, but this is a pretty interesting infographic from Visual Capitalist.

You might also be interested in The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change.

     

How Can Educators Teach in These Turbulent Times? is the headline of one of my recent Education Week columns.

To quell the anxiety of the chaos, make your teaching more human, not more heroic.

Here are some excerpts:

     

For the next month or so, I’ll be republishing my best posts from the last half of 2025.

geralt / Pixabay

About a year ago, I published a post sharing the few AI tools I regularly used and how I used them, primarily with English Language Learners.  I should also point out that, apart from online games, I seldom use tech in the classroom, and I primarily have students use it at home where no one else speaks English (see The Role Of Tech IN My ELL Classroom? Not Much, But That’s Not The Whole Story).

A lot has happened in the world of AI over the past year, so I figured it was time for a revised list (portions of this post contain the same info that appeared in that older one, but there is also new content)

I use ChatGPT for creating materials I use in the classroom.  Here are the posts I’ve written describing those materials in detail:

Boy, ChatGPT Sure Can Save ELL Teachers A LOT Of Time By Creating Conversation Sheets!

My God! I Can’t Believe How Much Time ChatGPT Is Now Going To Save Me In Creating One Of My Favorite Teaching Resources!

I Discovered Another Excellent Way To Use AI – To Generate “Jigsaws” For ELLs About Current Events.

I like Speakable for pronunciation activities, though it’s sometimes not great at picking up what students are saying.  It’s okay for students to repeat words and phrases, but it really provides a “value-added benefit” in having its AI evaluate student responses to questions.  You can read about how I use it in that way at New Cool Addition I’m Adding To My ELL Newcomer Final Next Week!

Quizizz is great! I primarily use its AI features to create games and flashcards (see I Discovered Another Useful Way To Use AI In Class Today) and for creating interactive videos (see Quizizz Lets You Use AI To Create Interactive YouTube Videos Once Again After Having To Stop Last Year – I Think It’s One Of The Most Helpful Ways To Use AI).

Students love playing Blooket, and now there’s an easy way to use AI to create games for that site (see I Finally Found Something Khanmigo Is Useful For – Creating Blooket Questions!).

I don’t use it often, but Padlet’s “I Can’t Draw” feature works well as a text-to-image generator (see How I’m Using AI Art Generation To Teach English To Newcomers).

Google has a good reading tool called Read Along, that is great for both literacy instruction and for supporting pronunciation skills for English Language Learners (see Google Unveils A Bunch Of New Education Updates, Though I’m Most Interested In What They Said About “Read Along”). They now include it as part of their paid Google For Education package, though it’s also available outside of it.  Within the paid Google for Education package, you can assign stories to students, use AI to assess pronunciation, and have comprehension questions.  Also, within that package, you can now upload your own stories (see “Read Along” Now Lets You Upload Your Own Content To Create Interactive Stories).

I also like some of the AI-powered games on Groovelet (see How I’m Using The Groovelit Game Now & How I Hope To Use It In The Future).

Quill  is an excellent writing tool that uses AI for adaptive learning, and has been doing so for a few years. Thousands of teachers are using it with their students, including me, but I think many of us don’t typically think of it as an AI tool.

There are two other ways I find AI useful – in writing first drafts of student recommendation letters, and in creating infographics for this blog.  Read about those uses at A Look Back: ChatGPT Is A Student Letter Of Recommendation Miracle! and Infography May Be The Best Tool For Bloggers Since Public Domain Images.

If I was still teaching this year, I might add:

I haven’t use it much this year, but if I was still teaching next year, I’d think I’d use ZenMic a fair amount (see I Think “ZenMic” Is Now The Best Online Listening Site For English Language Learners).

I would also probably try out AIR Language (see AIR Language Looks Like A Very Good Site For English Language Learners).

Google’s Storybook looks great (see Google Has Often Failed At AI, But They Have Hit It Out Of The Park – For ELLs, At Least – With New “Storybook”).

There are obviously tons of other AI sites for education, and I’ve tried out plenty of them.  But I think most are pretty useless.

I do like the ones I have listed here, but I’m still not convinced the perils of AI outweigh its advantages.

     

For the next month or so, I’ll be republishing my best posts from the last half of 2025.

I have always felt that having a growth mindset has made me a better teacher – really, a better person.

Many decades ago, a man who worked with Gandhi during the fight for India’s independence told me that the key to Gandhi’s success was that “he looked at every problem as an opportunity, not as a pain in the butt.”

Keeping that sentence in mind, I think, has dramatically improved the quality of my life.

A new study, Do Students Improve Their Academic Achievement When Assigned to a Growth Mindset Teacher?, shows that teachers who exhibit a growth mindset do better for their students.

I’m adding this info to The Best Resources On Helping Our Students Develop A “Growth Mindset.”