Last Words...

Hello for the last time my dear readers

This year I’ve written so many things and share my opinions with you. I began writing my blog because of my Instructional Technologies and Material Design course. At first I was little bit scared of writing posts and share on my blog. But with the help of my teacher’s instructional informations and my attempt to learn how to write, I covered a distance.

When I look at my early posts about teaching with technology, I saw the saying that technology is really important in teaching process is true and with the experience I get while writing this blog I can approve this with a clear conscience.

This experience taught me lots of thing. Firstly I’ve learned so many tools that will be useful for my classes in future. Secondly I realized that technology is not that much scaring to use in classroom. Lastly I didn’t do my tasks because they are my duty I enjoyed the process.

There were tasks that I loved and didn’t like. The one I loved so much was Digital Storytelling because the task required to being creative. To achieve this we think about so many crazy things and it was really funny. Also creating a short cartoon movie gave me the feeling of that we DID something. But Evaluating a Website task was boring for me. Also it was hard for me to find a website suitable for task.

 In the end i can say that with the help of this course I've learned that I'm capable to use technology in classroom. I'm happy to share my experience with you.
Thanks for following me. 
Best Regards...

Infographics

Ola!

I think you can understand how international person I am from the very beginning of this post 😅

Okay let’s put aside my colourful character, this week our task was to create infographics about our favourite web 2.0 tools. Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly (taken from Wikipedia). So when it comes to my favourite web 2.0 tools I listed 4 of them. Firstly, I really enjoy while using Voscreen. Because you don’t feel like you are making practice of English language skills, it feels like watching video clips just for fun in your free time. To mention about Padlet it can be said that it is very useful especially for group work while Duolingo is so practical for individuals. Blogger is suitable for who loves to share his/her ideas, experiences and thoughts.  
I used Canva for creating my infographic. It is easy to use and allow you to be creative

Virtual Collector: RSS

Hello everyone,

Do you feel like you have to read so many things but cannot organize things and get confused sometimes?

I think everyone can experience that kind of moment in their life. Having so many article, news, etc. to read but because they are far away from each other we need something to put all of them together for us. Actually there is something for what we demand and this magical tool is called RSS.

RSS is a tool that is used for you to keep on following sites, blogs and podcast websites when there is a new article or post you can see it all in one page. It is really easy to use RSS. You can just go on internet find a best RSS reader for you and upload it to your computer. So you can follow your favourite blogs, news, website then it is ready for you to read them easily in a just one page. That’s it!

I’m using Feedly as a RSS reader. It is easy to use. When you open it you will see a one page. There is column in the right side of the page. In that column you can see the blogs you are following. When you click one of the blog the posts will appear on the main page.

My favourite blog is Language Garden. It is operated by an English teacher. He shares activities and stories for both learner and teachers. I recommend this blog to my teacher-to be friends because it is really funny and educational blog.

Creating Online Poster

Hi dear readers, this week our task was to creating online poster. We had 2 options we could create either movie poster or magazine poster. I chose the magazine cover project. According to task I had to create a cover for a fictitious theme magazine. I created a magazine cover for cat lovers. It contains tips for cat food, care and interesting information about cat breed. While creating my poster I tried to make it interesting and attractive. And I really enjoyed thinking about my magazine’s content. I used postermywall to create my magazine cover. Probably I will give that kind of task to my students in future. Because as they doing this task they can be inspired by cover and it can lead to create a real magazine.

Digital Storytelling

Hello again sweethearts!

I didn’t post anything last week because we were preparing digital story for you with my friend Dilruba. Digital storytelling is an entertaining way of teaching. With visual and audible effects it helps to take attention of the students.

 Creating a digital story was a really funny and enjoyable process to me. Also it made me to think creatively. We used Vyond to animate our story. After we made the scenes of our story we recorded our voice to make talk characters. For sound effects we used Freesound.

In future, I probably give this kind of task to my students. Because I think this task will give chance to be productive, creative and cooperative.

Here is our digital story. Hope you enjoy it!

Evaluating Websites

Hello everyone

This week our task was evaluating an ELT websites. So I find a useful website for English language learners. Let’s look at what kind of exercises and information this website contains. Website’s name is “englishpage.com”.

 Q1- Who authored the website? Is there any information about their qualifications or credentials?

-          There is no information about the author in the website.

Q2- What is the content of the website?

-           It is a grammar teaching and exercising website for English language learners. In the main page there is list on the right side of the screen. In the list there are sections of grammar subjects (modals, gerund& infinitives, tenses etc.), listening lounge and reading exercises, games, dictionary and vocabulary. Also there are tutorials for learners.

Q3- Who is the target audience?

-           Target audience is English language learners

Q4- What is the purpose of the website?                 

-          Purpose of the website is giving opportunity of teaching grammar subjects and supporting learning process with pop quizzes, tests and games to learners. 

Q5- Is there a date that shows when the site has last been updated?

-          There is no date showing when the last time the website is updated was.

Q6- Accuracy of the information- Are there any errors?

-          The information I’ve checked is accurate as far as I checked. I couldn’t see any errors.

Q7- Are there any broken links?

-          I’ve tried to check all possible links and all of them worked.

Q8-   Are the images of high quality and appealing to the target audience?

-          Actually there is almost no image in the website. And the existent ones are low quality. The website is not appealing too much for the learners. There is so many writings but few images.

Q9- How can it be applied to EFL teaching?

-          There are lots of exercises in the website. After teaching in the class, students can make exercises with the tests in the website to enhance their grammar, vocabulary and listening& reading skills. 

Padlet

Hello my beloved followers,

Our task for this week is creating a “Padlet”. We created a padlet with my group. I will share our padlet link and my friend’s blogs but first let me explain you what is “padlet”. Padlet is a website which allows user to creating a board about any topic. You can share images, links, videos, writings and more. If it comes to what we did in our task, I can shortly tell you that first we chose a topic and then Gamze took the first step and opened our padlet page. Later everyone contributed with facts, images, videos and informative websites. So at the end we had a well-designed and informative padlet page. This task showed me that padlet is very useful tool for language classrooms. Because it can be used as icebreaker at the beginning of the semester also it can be used for group homework tasks and projects. It is very easy to use and everyone can contribute it easily. So this makes “padlet” collaborative and entertaining tool for teaching.

here is our padlet page 

and here is my group friends's blogs 

Gamze,Sare, Saliha ,Seyma, Necla, Dilruba, Cansu

the image is taken from here

Wiki Wikis

Hello everyone,

A1

In our last course our subject was Wikis and we learned a lot about it. For example did you know that you can write anything you like and edit others writings! So our task was to creating a wiki page about our favourite book. My favourite book is "Dimming Nights" from Rifat Ilgaz and I created a wiki page about it. I attached link of my wiki page is here I hope you enjoy it!

A2

the image A1 is taken from here
the image A2 is taken from here

Sound-rich podcast story

Hello my lovely followers,

We really enjoy it! I mean really!

This week our task was to creating a podcast. Me and my friend Dilruba (here is her blog) chose a sound rich story to create a podcast. The process of podcasting was so funny. We tried to find creative ideas. I really enjoyed while making podcast. I probably will use podcasting with my students in the future because I think it is very entertaining and instructive. We used Audocity and Freesound apps.

Teaching with Technology

Hello dear readers, 

Today I would like talk about the topic “teaching with technology”. First of all what is technology? Technology means according to the Wikipedia “The tools and machines that helps to solve problems or do new things; The techniques, skills and methods for solving a problem”.  So it means that blackboard, pencil, power point presentations, or high-tech tablets are technological tools. But in what ways these tools linked to education? How these tools can be integrated to education? Actually we can’t separate technology from education. Because in every step of education we need help of the technology. With technology, learning process can be enhanced and increased. For example let’s think about a case, a language classroom, in which there is no technology tools, teacher is just lecturing without any technological aids. It will be boring for students to keep up with every word teacher is saying and learn everything lectured. But if we integrate some technological tools to this lesson it would be more entertaining and interesting for students. Thereby the learning process can be achieved successfully. However the tool shouldn’t be used without any aim. There should be reasonable purpose for using technological tools. In short, the method and the tool should be chosen carefully according to the aim of the course. I think using technology is very helpful for teaching process. If we want to make information and learning process permanent we should get the help of technology. Because as I mentioned previously in my “21^st century learning” post technology development has been increased so quickly that it is a requirement for us to keeping up with it in every area of our lives. To sum up, technology is a reality of our century and actually it is a very useful for us. So we should take advantage of it.

 the picture taken from  here

A Historical Timeline of CALL

Hello dear followers.

All of us using computers in our daily life but how it would be if we use computer as for educational purposes?  Actually we are already using it for that purpose and it is called “CALL”. Which means that  Computer Assisted Language Learning .It apparently can be seen that learning a language with help of computer is more easy and fun. There is a historical timeline for CALL so you can see how this magical tool became  itself over time!

Hope you enjoy it!

21st Century Learning

Hello everyone.
As we all know technology development has been increased throughout this century and gained a seat in our daily life. Therefore education got it’s share from technology. Unlike past years, education norms are totally changed. Nowadays education is not limited by textbooks, curriculum or isolated skills (listening,writing etc.) rather it is broaden its limits to thematic units and authentic resources like focusing on interpersonal, interpretive and presentational modes. Also roles of teacher and students has changed.  Now education is not teacher-centered but student-centered. The role of teacher evolved to facilitator/collaborator. Also emphasis on teacher as ‘lecturer’ changed to student as ‘doer’ and ‘creator’. Until now we watched  how  norms and invariants of learning changed. And it seems like future is going to bring a really different  changes, too. I’m so excited to see what is going to happen. Aren’t you?

Welcome!

Hi! My lovely followers.

I’m so happy to being here and seeing you guys! In my entire life I always talked too much but my audience was limited but now it is time to share my ideas and experiences. But first of all let me introduce myself. My name is Gizem and I’m studying at English Language Teaching department of Marmara University.I opened this blog for my "Instructional Technologies and Material Design" course. I'll post about my course content and my ideas.Different cultures and languages are always my field of interest. That’s why I’ve chosen ELT department.  I have learned so much things about English but my adventure continues. So if you guys are ready please fasten your seatbells because we are going to fly!!!