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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles
This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom geralt / Pixabay
At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM. Here are the latest: Color Joy AI is yet another coloring page generator. Debate GPT lets you…debate a topic. Draw To Video Generator is interesting. Deep Song uses AI to create…songs.
Using AI to Adapt English Speaking Tasks for Mixed-Ability ESL Classrooms is from English For Asia. Some Things Need to Be Grown, Not Graded, and Definitely Not Automated has a lot of interesting rubrics (scroll down). The AI Wolf That Education Must Face is from Marc Watkins. I’m adding it to A Beginning List Of Different Types Of Guidance Educators Are Giving Students About AI Use In Their Classes.
How Process Checklists Support Student Writing Skills in the Age of AI is from Edutopia. I’m adding it to The “Best” Strategies For Creating AI-Resistant Assignments. I’m adding this post to the same list:
     This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues
Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in seeing all my “Best” lists related to education policy here):
Immigrant kids can attend school regardless of citizenship – some states are challenging this standard is from The Conversation. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE PLYLER DECISION NOW THAT RIGHT-WINGERS ARE PLANNING A PUSH TO MAKE MIGRANT CHILDREN PAY TO ATTEND SCHOOL.
I’m adding this post to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE PLYLER DECISION NOW THAT RIGHT-WINGERS ARE PLANNING A PUSH TO MAKE MIGRANT CHILDREN PAY TO ATTEND SCHOOL:
Trump pressured states to limit undocumented high school students’ access to career education programs is from Chalkbeat.
I’m adding this post to The Best Resources For Learning About The Role Of Private Foundations In Education Policy:
 This Is A VERY Interesting & Useful Study On The Use Of Collaborative Writing In An ELL Classroom AND I Think It’s Findings Can Be Applicable With English-Proficient Students, Too
I’m a big fan of having students do collaborative writing – especially if they can choose their own partners (see The Best Sites For Collaborative Storytelling). A new study out of Pakistan found that students who worked on collaborative writing projects demonstrated greater writing fluency and skills than those who only worked on their own. At first, it wasn’t exactly clear to me what the study did. Then, I asked ChatGPT to review it for me. After it answered some questions, I was able to go back to the study and confirm its answers. Here are two questions I asked AI, followed by its responses:
QUESTION: This paper says that the collaborative writing group wrote much better than those who worked alone. What I’m not clear on is how it was assessed. Do they mean that the work that people did together was better, or do they mean that after the collaborating group worked together, they did an individual assessment and their individual writing was better than the individual writing of the people who did not collaborate? ANSWER: The paper you linked is titled “Collaborative Writing as a Tool for Improving Narrative Essay Writing Fluency and Writing Proficiency in ESL Students.” It uses a clear experimental design with two groups: Experimental group: Students who wrote collaboratively (i.e., working together in pairs or small groups) Control group: Students who wrote individually (traditional, solo writing) Both groups took pre-tests and post-tests of writing performance: The pre-test was administered to both groups at the beginning to ensure they started at similar writing ability levels. The post-test was administered after the treatment period (collaborative writing for the experimental group, individual writing for the control group). Writing tasks were scored with a standardized rubric measuring skills such as fluency, organization, accuracy, and overall proficiency. 📊 What “doing better” means in this study The study’s finding that the collaborative group “wrote much better” does not mean the group collectively produced a better group text. Instead, it means: ✅ After the intervention, students in the collaborative writing group scored significantly higher on individual writing assessments (post-test) than they did on their own pre-test. AND ✅ When compared to the control group, the students who had done collaborative writing showed greater gains in their individual writing performance than those who only wrote individually.
So the improvement was measured in individual writing performance — not just the quality of a collaborative product. 🧠 In other words ✔ Students wrote together during the treatment phase (collaboration vs solo).
their own pre-test writing, and the control group’s post-test writing. The collaborative group’s individual post-test scores were higher, showing that the collaboration translated into better individual writing.
QUESTION: Can you tell me how they collaborated together – what specific activities? ANSWER: Yes — from the actual text of the PDF you linked, we can extract how the collaborative group actually worked together, based on the authors’ description of the collaborative writing process they used (or referenced in the literature review). 🧠 How Students Collaborated Together The article describes collaborative writing as a social, interactive process in which all members of the group participate in the entire writing process — not just dividing up tasks. Specifically: 1. Full involvement in all stages of writing Students worked together through the whole composition process, from generating ideas to editing the final draft together. The text explicitly says that collaborative writing begins with brainstorming and ends with editing as a group, not with splitting responsibilities. 2. Shared Brainstorming and Idea Generation Collaborative writing in the study involved group members generating ideas together, talking through narrative themes and content, instead of each person planning individually before writing. This generation of ideas as a group discussion helped with richer content and better organized thoughts. 3. Co-construction of the Text All students in each group were equally involved in producing the final written document. The article emphasizes that responsibilities were not divided (e.g., one student writes paragraph 1, another paragraph 2). Instead, the text was co-authored collaboratively. 4. Peer Feedback and Negotiation During the collaborative process, students provided feedback to one another, helping group members refine sentences, organize ideas, choose vocabulary, and improve language use. This peer interaction is described as a key part of critical narrative writing reflection — students didn’t just write; they actively discussed and revised each other’s text. 5. Shared Decision-Making The groups engaged in collective decision-making about how the narrative should be structured, which language to use, and how to correct or improve draft versions. The shared ownership element is emphasized — every group member contributed to the final document. 6. Social Interaction and Scaffolding These collaborative activities included social scaffolding — stronger writers helping less proficient peers with sentence construction, vocabulary selection, and organizational features during the writing process, which in turn improved overall text quality. 📌 In Summary In this study, collaborative writing was not just working in groups on separate parts, but rather: ✔ All group members brainstormed ideas together
This means that the collaborative group’s activity involved continuous interaction and joint work at every stage of writing, not simply dividing up paragraphs or sections.
This is obviously just one study, but it seems to me its results could be applicable to English-proficient students, too. It reflects my experiences in both types of classes. I’m adding this info to Best Posts On Writing Instruction. ADDENDUM: This post from InnerDrive shares more research on the effectiveness of collaborative writing.  “What If History” Is A Fun AI Tool & Also Makes Me Feel Sad About What AI Has Done To Classrooms
I’m a big fan of alternative history. And doing alternate history lessons in my IB Theory of Knowledge and ELL classes were some of my favorite times of the year – the creativity and deeper thinking exhibited by students was off the charts (see The Best Resources For Teaching “What If?” History Lessons). But I felt like I had to stop doing them the last two years I was in the classroom because of Artificial Intelligence. The assignment was very hard, and I loved my students, but I thought the temptation of ChatGPT was just going to be too much for many of them. I remembered that sense of sadness when I learned about a new AI tool called What If History. It’s free, and it’s a lot of fun to just invent a scenario and have it run with it. Nevertheless, it’s a reminder of what we’ve lost over the past three years….  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: GeoStats Game has lots of pretty original geography games. I’m adding it to The Best Online Geography Games. oSlate is a free online whiteboard. ASVAB Citation Generator does just that. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning Research & Citation Skills. PuraPDF Tools and PDF Hub have lots of…PDF tools. I’m adding them to Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Ways To Convert PDF & Word Documents. Data Viz Kit lets you make lots of different charts and graphs. I’m adding it to The Best Tools To Make Simple Graphs Online. Guessify is a geography game. I’m adding it to The Best Online Geography Games. Dataguessr challenges you by asking you a data question (“Which countries have the highest rates of children under 14”) and then you have to put those stated countries in order.  More Recent Articles
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