There is No End to Learning!

Hello there, Reader!

This was the title of my first post on this blog. At the beginning of the semester, I was very excited about blogging. I’ve always loved being present on the internet, sharing my ideas on things and blogging. Thanks to our Instructional Technologies and Material Design course, I was able to share my projects and opinions on various topics about using technology in language teaching.

Looking back on my philosophy statement about teaching with technology, I can say that I still stand by my words and think ELT teachers must integrate 21^st century’s technological offers in their classrooms.

Throughout this experience, I didn’t notice any changes in myself. Only thing that comes to my mind is I’m more patient when it comes to using technology. There were times when I found some of the tasks boring and repetitive, but I still completed them, nevertheless. After a while, it become boring to search for tools and harder to be creative.

Of course, there are things that I liked about this course. For instance, as I mentioned, I liked that we got to be creative and share our opinions. Some of my favorite posts are;

• Wiki What?
• Turn Your Favorite Book into a Movie!

Another thing I didn’t like about the course was the group/pair works. Some tasks took up too much of our time. Maybe, the number of those tasks could be decreased and focus more on individual works like the blog itself. My least favorite tasks are (based on the process, not the outcome);

• Padlet Project: Endangered Species
• Digital Storytelling: The School Trip

Overall, this course taught me so much! And I think it wouldn’t be as effective as it was if we didn’t have our blogs. With this blog, I was able to work on every new thing we learned during our lessons.

Thank you for following me and hope you have a wonderful day!

taken from here

Get Help From These Web 2.0 Tools

It’s 2019 and we are on the internet almost every hour. We are reading the news, watching videos of cute kittens, checking our e-mails or just keep refreshing the same page over and over. Some of the time we spent online is very productive, but sometimes we are just wasting our precious time.

Web 2.0 tools are a great way to utilize our time on the internet. From education to business, there are so many apps/websites we can use to do this.

This week, our assignment was to create an infographic of our favorite Web 2.0 Tools and explain their pros/cons (if any exists) and why YOU should use them.

I chose five of my favorite tools, Memrise, Duolingo, Voscreen, Google Drive and Padlet. You can find the information about each of them in the infographic that I created.

Once again, I used Canva for this project.

Feel free to comment any of your favorite Web 2.0 Tools!

Meet RSS, A Time Saver!

Imagine following a blog. You visit it every day to read new posts. No problem. But imagine following fifteen different blogs, maybe more, about (let’s say) five different topics. Wouldn’t it be hard and time consuming to visit each of them, everyday? Don’t worry, there’s an easy solution to this problem: RSS.

• What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically, it is a feed that gathers all the new posts from blogs and sites you follow and store them in one place. Isn’t it amazing? You can simply download or add a free RSS reader to your computer. Then just go to the sites you want to subscribe! RSS will show all the new posts in one place and some readers even give you notifications when there is an update.

The reader I use is feeder. You can add it to your Chrome browser by clicking here. Another reader I used for a while is feedreader.com. I’m new to this RSS world so I’m still trying to find the best tool for me.

1. What you see when you open your Feeder. 

2. You can change the display settings and add filters from here. 

3. You can add new feed by clicking on the "+" sign.

Here’s a blog I enjoy following. It’s called Team 2 Eagles. It’s a blog written by a classroom teacher. She updates everyday with what they did on that day with pictures. I like this blog because as a teacher candidate I enjoy seeing other teacher’s classroom activities. I think teachers and teacher candidates like me would really enjoy following this blog.

What are your favorite blogs? Comment down below :)

Turn Your Favorite Book into a Movie!

Hello friends, hope you are doing well! This week, I’m back to share a new task I did for our course.
Our assignment was to either create a magazine cover or turn your favorite book into a movie/create a movie poster. And of course, being the book lover that I am, I chose the second option.😊

(some movie poster examples. taken from here)

For the book, I chose the first book in one of my favorite series: THE RAVEN BOYS (THE RAVEN CYCLE #1)

I found this task very fun, but I’m not sure if I’ll be giving this assignment to my students in the future. On one hand, I think creating a poster/cover on its own is not helping our students’ language skills. On the other hand, if students are asked to present their covers with their friends and talk about the plot of the book, their choice of casting, etc. it can be helpful for their speaking and presentation skills, which is great! In this case, I’d happily give this task to my students.

As always, here are the tools that I used:
Canva (for creating the poster)
Pinterest (for finding images)

My Poster:

Digital Storytelling: The School Trip

Hello everyone! This week I’m back to share my digital storytelling project with you!

taken from here

The process of creating a digital story depends on the story you want to tell; once you have a script, you can choose between different apps to find the best tool for your project. I created my story with my friend Sare. 
First, we wrote a script for our story, which was about a school trip where the class goes to a career fair and learn about different jobs. Then, we recorded ourselves. We also created pictures with the characters we created. For this, we used Buncee. To edit our sound, we used Audacity and Freesound to add some sound effects. Finally, we used Windows' Video Editor to combine the pictures with the audio.

Creating a digital story was difficult. We had difficulties with finding an app/tool to create our story. Because of this, this process took up so much of our time. I don’t think I’ll be giving a similar task to my students in the future; there are so many other projects students can do in a language class.
Pros: Helps students to improve their pronunciations.
Cons: Difficult to use/find the right tools. (Can)Take up too much time.

To visit my partner’s blog, click here: Sarah Typing...

Please enjoy our story and leave your comments!

Introducing & Evaluating: iSLCollective.com

Hello, language lovers! This week I’m back with a website evaluation that I think ELT teachers can benefit from!

The homepage of iSLCollective.com

The name of the website is iSLCollective.com, a.k.a. the “Internet Second Language Collective”. 

Click here to visit the website.

iSLCollective.com is a community of English language teachers, where ELT teachers from around the globe share their home-made worksheets and lesson plans. Its purpose is to help ELT teachers find classroom materials such as grammar or vocab activities, according to their students’ levels and age group.

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

The materials are uploaded by ELT teachers. You can find the username of the content's creator next to it. But the website was founded by three founders and has a core team and translators. (Visit their About Us page for more information.)

What is the content of the website?

The website has lots of different; 

• printable materials (such as activities with music, classroom posters, boardgames, crosswords, icebreakers, etc.), about grammar (adjectives, tenses, etc.) or vocabulary (animals, body parts, days of the week, etc.)  that is specifically designed for the level (beginner, elementary, etc.) and the age group (high school, adults, kindergarten, etc.) of the students.
• projectables (powerpoints) with different topics/levels/student groups.
  
• and video lessons focused on student's listening skills.
  

All of the materials can be downloaded as word documents or powerpoint files (Once you sign up).

Who is the target audience

The target audience is ELT teachers.

What is the purpose of the website?

The purpose of iSLCollective.com is to offer ELT teachers different materials that they can use during their lessons.

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

The website has a section dedicated to the newest uploads, which tells you when the file was uploaded once you click on it.

Accuracy of the information- Are there any errors?

All materials are prepared by ELT teachers, so there are no errors. (I also checked different materials randomly, just to make sure. You’re welcome 😉)

Are there any broken links?

For this criterion, I checked worksheets focused on adjectives for intermediate (B1) level high school students and all the links worked for me. Of course, you must sign up first to download any material.

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

Most of the images of the materials have high qualities. (Both colorful and black and white ones.)

How can it be applied to EFL teaching?

Since there are so many materials available- with specified levels and student group types- for ELT teachers to choose from, teachers are able to find classroom activities very easily and implement these tasks into their teaching. Teachers can use the materials they find on the website to enhance the students' learning or simply make their lessons more enjoyable.

source : click here

Padlet Project: Endangered Species

This week in our Instructional Technology and Material Design course, our task was to create a padlet project about one of the following: a global/local problem or freedom. With seven of my friends, we choose one of the most important problems: Endangered Species. 

After choosing our topic our group friend Gamze created a padlet page and we begin to sign up and start contributing to the page. Opening a padlet account and creating posts on our page was very easy for me.

When deciding what to post on our padlet page, I did a quick Google search on endangered species and found so many videos, blogs and orgnizations about this global problem. One of the biggest blogs on nature and animals, National Geographic was my first stop. I was able to find insightful information and pictures about our topic in just a few minutes of research.

During this task, padlet was the main tool we used to share our findings. I find padlet to be a helpful tool to get students contribute in a project. Students get to search online to find useful information and choose which sources are reliable and can be used. Therefore it develops their ability to make judgments about what they find on the internet. It also helps student to explore a new platform where they can share anything on any topic. These are just some skills that a learner in the 21st century must have and padlet can help students to achieve.

Have you ever used Padlet before? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Here's the link to our padelt: Endangered Species

You can join Padlet (it's free!) by following this link: Padlet

photo taken from here

Wiki What?

This week in our course, we learned all about Wikis!

• What is a wiki?

Wikis are sites similar to blogs. What makes them different is anyone can edit the information on a wiki entry. Like blogs, you can create a wiki page based on whatever you want. Do you want to talk about your favorite book or TV show? Chances are there is already an existing page that you can read AND edit!

You can go to the wiki entry I created for one of my favorite books, A Darker Shade of Magic by clicking here

photo taken from: here

cover photo taken from: here

Listen To Your First Podcast Today!

Today I will talk about podcasting and my first experiences while creating one. Podcasts are very similar to radio shows; you can have a guest on your podcast and talk about whatever you want! Anything can be the topic of a podcast, which I found very cool. Comedy, education, motivational speeches, language learning, therapy... My favorite type of podcasts are motivational speeches like TED Talks Daily.

Another great thing about podcasts is that you can listen to them on any device as long as you have internet connection. You can listen to them on your phone right now! Podcast are also there for you as an alternative when you don’t feel like listening to music while running, walking, cleaning…So I invite you to listen to your first podcast today! As I mentioned before, podcasts about language learning can also be very helpful for learners and a fun way to develop listening skills. 

What about my own experience as a podcast creator?

As a part of our Instructional Technology and Material Design course, me and my friend created a podcast together. I personally didn’t like the recording part of the process. I was very stressed at first, but I feel like if I ever do another one, I’ll be much more confident.

One difficulty I faced was editing our audio. We had to add special sound effects to add to the mood of our story. The app we used for this step was Audacity and it was hard to figure out how to crop and add the sounds. Finding the sound effects, on the other hand was very easy. We used freesound.org to find them.

Lastly I want to talk about using the podcast with my students in the future, which I would definitely do! Even though it was not easy, listening to the final project was so much fun. Sharing my podcast on this website where everyone can find and listen is also very stressful but gave me confidence.

I created this podcast with my friend Sare, you can check out her blog here: Sarah Typing...

photo taken from: here 

Teaching with Technology: Good or Bad?

We are living in a century where almost every day a new technology is being invented. With today’s technology, scientists are always discovering new things about our universe!

Thanks to technology, we can achieve what the older generations could only imagine.

What I want to talk about today is how do we teach with technology? Is technology something we can use while teaching? And my answer is YES, it is. I think being able to teach with technology is a must have skill for every 21st century teacher. The important thing is to know that while there are so many advantages of teaching with technology, there are also some disadvantages. Therefore, how we integrate technology into our teaching is very important.

For instance, students can use technological devices/softwares to practice their pronunciation or translation skills. These are just two examples of its benefits. On the other hand, allowing our students to have access to technology in the classroom can quickly become a distraction for them. It is our duty, as teachers, to make sure our students know how to benefit from it.

In my previous experiences with technology as an English learner, I can’t say that any of my English teachers integrated technology to help our learning; they either struggled to use it themselves, or used it to teach old things with new ways, like using the smart board to show PowerPoint slides instead of writing the information on the white board. Yes it saves times. But it doesn’t provide any help to the learners; which is what it should be focused on in the first place.

As an English Language Teacher candidate in the 21^st century, I am planning to integrate technology into my teaching. I think if we are confident that we can help our students with whatever tool we can find, we should try it. A good teacher must develop him/herself according to today’s sources and find the best way to integrate it into his/her teaching.

What is YOUR opinion on this topic? Do you agree/disagree with me? Please comment your ideas and let's have a conversation! 

photo sources: click here , and here

A Brief History of CALL

Introducing: Computer Assisted Language Learning, aka CALL!

You read it right! In 21st century, computers are a big part of the language learning process. 

Let's have a look at how CALL was developed and shaped into what is today!

• 1960s and 1970s: A Behaviorist model of language learning based on habit formation.
• 1970s: Communicative approaches based on meaning-focused language use.
• 1980s: The emergence of increasingly powerful microcomputers.
• Early 1990s: The computer was used as a stimulus.
• Mid 1990s and Today: Integrative CALL. The development of desktop computers that support rapid use of the internet.

Below is a timeline I created that explains the development of CALL in more detail:

source: click here

What You Should Know About 21st Century Learning

In today's world, technology is a huge part of daily life. So, it is no surprise to see how much technology is being used in language teaching.

When you think about 21st century learning, 4C comes to mind. What is 4C? It is critical-thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity which make up learning and innovation skills every student in 21st century must have. These skills prepare students for today's complex life and work environments.

There are also some 21st century subjects that students should be taught:

• Global Awareness
• Financial, Economic, Business and Entrepreneurial Literacy
• Civic Literacy 
• Health Literacy
• Environmental Literacy

These key subjects expand students' approaches to situations and help strengthen their critical thinking. 

Other skills a student must have in 21^st century include:

• Life and Career Skills
• Information, Media and Technology Skills

If you are interested in this topic you can: click here to watch a video on YouTube for further information on this topic.

Hello There, Reader!

Hello everyone, it's very nice to have you stumble upon my blog!

A little bit about myself: My name is Saliha and I am a sophomore student in the ELT departmant at Marmara University. This year we have a course called "Instructional Technologies and Material Design" which is why I created this blog; to share my experiences and findings in our course, with you!

I am very excited to be on this platform! Hope you stick around with me for what's to come! In the meantime:

source : click here