Time To Say Goodbye!

        Hi everyone!

        As you realize it is the end of the term and with this post I want to talk about  my blogging experience. 

        I started writing on this blog as a requirement of my course, and I tried lots of things that I haven't heard before. I used lots of English language teaching materials and having experienced them before being a teacher is a huge advantage. Personally, I am generally a person who doesn't like trying new things. For instance, the  first time I used a tool that I had to record my voice  was a big challenge for me. But as time passed, I realized how much I make new things  a big  deal.  Now I feel more confident as a pre-service teacher.

       From now ow, I know that when I became a teacher, what tools I can use with what proficiency level.. How I can make my classes for enjoyable and beneficial for my students etc. 

       To be honest, having to write something every week, trying something you don't know every week makes you  reluctant sometimes. But it also made me have a discipline. 

       I didn't enjoy all the time of course, because some tools were challenging, but I have a favourite!

       Creating a Wiki Page is my favourite even though It was hard to create one for me. I remember doing it, I had to do it twice because I couldn't manage to attend the right class and the tool became a hard thing for me. But when I fixed it, may part has come. Because I love reading a lot, and I love talking about the things I read. From that time, It wasn't an assigment for me I was like doing it as a hobby.

        So if someone who is like me, who doesn't have a courage for new things, I want them to know it may not dissappear it completely, but it will make difference. 

        And, as we came to the end of the term I will have a break. That's my last post for a while. It will stay here as my university experience. If I find a things to write about, I will be back.

        Thank you!

        

     

What is ''Voscreen''

Hi there!
I came to talk about a mobile app which you can use in your classes. It is Voscreen, learning language through videos. It is so simple, also after downloading it and creating an account it shows you how it is used. I will put the screenshoots showing how to use it in here, also.
Of course, you can find lots of applications to suggest your students as a teacher but it has some opportunities.
 It is not an online website but a mobile app so your students may stop using it and when they re-open it they can continue from where they left it.
It is about listening movie/series/video parts and guessing their meanings. And to me, it is one of the things that makes it desirable. Students, also in high school levels generally loves movies/series etc.
So, let's talk a bit about how to use it.

As you see, it shows you these pictures the time you sign in. When the game starts, it shows the video and stops. Then you can choose (the  first 2 pictures) whether show the transcipt or not. Then you give your answer and continue.

 

For example: This is the transcipt of the video and you have 2 options. If the one you select is true it turns into green, if not it becomes red.

It is that easy to use it and I think it can be a great exercise as homework. You can say your students to downlad it and have an account. Then they start doing that and when all of them reached the same level, they would tell their scores. It may be done weekly and the highest score gets rewarded.

Thank you!

Book Creator & My Presentation Experience

Hello!
Today I am here to talk about me&my classmate Ünzile Arslan's (to reach her blog you can click here ) presentation about Book Creator.
I will leave our example made in Book Creator but first, I want to give some information about the website first.
It is a digital storytelling tool which gives you a chance to create your own story book. All you have to do is creating an account. You can use it online on Chrome or download it to your iPad. If you've done that, you are ready!
But why we should use it? What makes it different? Well, it has lots of opportunities.  You may add your voice to your story, you may make paintings on your book, you can add images videos etc. Sounds enjoyable, right?  Then let's start!

1-You should choose a book shape. Then it gives you blank pages.

At the corner of the page, you will see some options including adding some shapes, changing color, adding images etc.

 

And after finishing with the book, book creator gives you a chance to publish it! Or you can just download it to your computer, also.

I think it is a good tool to use in language classes. For instance, students would enjoy writing a fabl, adding their voices, trying to speak like a animal may be enjoyable!

In our presentation we used power point to give some general information about it and showed one example.

Thank you!

Let's Tell a Story!

Hi everyone, today I am here to talk about digital story telling.
What is Digital StoryTelling? It is a way to create your ebooks.
 Actually there are lots of materials/sites on the internet that you can use about that. You can create your books online, by adding them your voice, a music, photos etc. You can use websites like Book Creator for instance. Or you can create a story by an app (like me and my partner did, you will see). Moviemaker or Photo Story  can help you do this for example.


In that post actually I want to share an example which I made with my classmate Unzile Arslan. (To reach her blog you can click here.)
Here is our digital story. It is about friendship! To do this, we download ''PhotoStory'', we found some photos related to our story, we recorded our voices, we found a music which we find fine. Of course it requires some creativity, writing a story is a hard job to be honest. But the internet makes it easier as always.
That is why I think it should be used in language classes. Because if you want your student to create something, learn the things he or she has learnt, it is a good way. They will enjoy while recording their voices, while making up a story. And it will prevent your lesson from being an ordinary one.

Thank you for reading!

Using RSS Feed & My Favourite ELT Blog

         Hi everyone!
         Today, in this post I want to talk about  the RSS feed, what it is etc.
To start, I think I should explain what it is. Well, you probably follow some blogs/websites  regularly,  but checking them back everyday to see if they've been updated takes such a long time and becomes a boring thing by time, actually.  At that point, RSS feed is here for you.
          At first, of course you should have a RSS on your computer. I use it online on Chrome, it is good enough to me. After creating an account on it, you can start adding your favourite sites and it will let you know when any of them is updated. That is how mine looks like:
       

       
           Before finishing the post, I also want to talk about my favourite blog which I follow. It is A Journey in TEFL .

 It is a well-designed blog in which you can reach some examples of her lesson activities, you can find some songs which you may like to try in your classes. Also she has done lots of talks in variety of subjects. They are all can be found in the blog. As a teacher, one should follow it because it gives lots of ideas to you about making the class more beneficial and prevents the lesson from being an ordinary one.
Thank you!

An ELT Website - News in Levels

          Hello, in that post I will be talking about one of the ELT websites, News in Levels. It is a website started to work in March 2011. Their aim is to help students who wants to learn English. This website helps you to improve your English level in reading, writing, listening and speaking by using news. It has short new articles which are published every working day.

          For reading, you can work on the articles and try to translate them.
          For listening, there are records for all the articles.
          For writing, you can join the facebook group chat or you can comment on the articles.
          For speaking, you can go to SKYPE section and choose one person to talk.
       
          In general, the exercises (the articles, videos, books, jokes etc.) are divided into 3 levels and you can choose any of them as you want. In other words, you can choose one post, you can read and listen it in 3 different difficulty levels. For instance;

This is the last shared exercise on the website.

           To sum up, in my opinion it should be used in ELT classes. Because it has exercises for all skills and it is easy to use. As it includes recent news students will be more interested in studying on them or if they find it boring to deal with articles they can study on jokes. Reading and listening about jokes in target language can be a challenging thing so an exciting exercise for them.
           Of course there are lots of websites which you can use in your classes. I looked into some of them and decided to write my post about that one. That is just my suggestion. I hope it gives you at least an opinion about website use in ELT classes.  Thank you for reading!

Creating a Wiki Page

Hi there. I just wrote a Wiki for the first time! And I want to share my experience with you.
First, you may ask what is Wiki?
 It is a work you can write your own content and with your permission it can be edited by the visitors.
I enjoyed doing it actually. It is a different environment, for instance. Learning how to use it made me feel more confident about technology use in teaching/learning.
In addition, when I think about as a teacher, I would absolutely use it. Because as we know and appreciate, writing is an important skill to develop in language learning. But rather than just giving my students a piece of paper and make them write a passage, I find it more beneficial for them to use a tool like wiki and write somenting on it.
 In addition to this, in wiking, they can make comments on each others page and it will also develop their communicative skills.

For instance, I wrote one about a book I read and loved. That may be the reason why I loved wikiing. Because I love reading and talking about he books. So if you want you students to enjoy learning you may find a subject that they may love to talk about and  make them use wiki.
To read the one I create, you can click here. But I will leave it here for you, also.

I actually liked creating a wiki page. I may do it again if I find something interesting to write about.
Thank you for reading!

Creating a Podcast

Hi, in this post  I want to talk about what is a ''podcast''.
Podcast is a program which you can download music or voice recordings via internet, or you can record your own voice.  There are some web sites to create one.  They are easy to use actually. You just need to record your voice. Me and my classmate Ünzile Arslan (to look at her blog you can click here.)  created one for you.  To me, the hardest part was listening your own voice. But I think  the more you try, the easier it will be . I think I can use it when I become a teacher for my students. That can be a different experience for them.
To create your own podcast, you can click here.
And, you can reach our podcast from here. Thank you!

If you want, you can follow the transcript while listening.

A: Hi, why has it taken so long to get here?
B: Sorry, I'm late but I couldn't sleep till the sunrise.
A: Why is that? Are you okay? You look really tired.
B: I had an awful and terrifying dream last night.
A: How was it, you wanna talk about it? A nightmare?
B: Okay, as I remember, I woke up suddenly because of a scream coming from outside. It was dark everywhere and I was scared but I couldn't stop myself and went through the sound. It was cold but I kept walking. When I arrived near the lake, I realised that the scream I heard was coming from a cat. I got a little closer to the cat..
A: It sounds really awful. Then, did you see the cat?
B: Here, I am coming to the most awful part. The cat was struggling with a nice red scarf!
A:Didn't you see anyone?
B: No, because at that time a rattle coming from the door woken me up. I thought  it was a thief but when I went and opened the door I saw a postman trying to clean the vase he just broke.
A: It must have been a really hard night for you. I think a coffe will be good.
B:Good idea!

Historical Development of CALL

 Here is a timeline which shows the historical developments of CALL. But I think, I should talk a little bit about ''What CALL is?'' It is defined as  ''Computer assisted language learning (CALL) has been defined as ''the search for and study of applications on the computer in language teaching and learning.'' in  that article by Sandra Fotos, Charles Browne and Aoyama Gahuin.

     And let's start looking at the timeline. It starts with Behaviorist Model which icludes 1960's. Then  in 1970's it changes as Humanistic Movement. But in the end of the 1970's it becomes Communicative approaches based on meaning-focused language use. And lastly in 1980's-90's Cognitive  Method takes place.
To make your own timeline you can click here

Learning in 21st Century

1.1 Word Cloud about Learning

Hi, let's start with my first course related post!
In this post I am going to share a word cloud I made which includes  some key words about learning in 21st century. These are the keywords which we talked about in our lesson. Firstly, as we all know learning styles  change through time because the conditions and environment change.  For instance, today's learning style includes almost full use of technology while it is not like that 2 centuries ago. If we talk about today's style, we see lots of technological issues, computers, etc (as in the word cloud)
 But what if we reject using it? You may think that we can still be creative, productive etc. without technology but I think our ideas will be limited in that way.  In that point technology helps. But of course it is nothing on its own.  I think we should be in a collobration with technology while dealing with learning.
Before finishing the post, I want to talk about some of the words in the cloud  briefly.

• Technology: I don't know what you think but I can't imagine a life without using it in this time of the world.
• Computer/Phone: Using computer in language learning is a big advantage for me. There are lots of websites, applications etc. to help you learn a language. Also it can be a part of your teaching program. New generation loves it!
• Innovation: It is 21st century, people! You will face lots of problems, you will need to find solutions. With this advanced technology you have many  assistants with you. Without doubt, it is much easier to make your ideas real in this century.
• Creativity/Productivity: Here is one of your best assistants. To make a difference, you need to be creative and be willing to product. 
• Critical Thinking: With the help of technology you have a chance to reach lots of people's minds. You must evaluate them as much as possible and use them while building your own. 

 Well, these were my opinions. But now I wonder, what is your ideas? You can leave comments if you want.
And, to create your own word cloud you can click here.
Thank you for reading.

Welcome

Hi everyone!
Welcome to my first post. Actually I wasn't planning to do this but as a part of my educational life, I will be blogging from now on. In this blog, I will post my assignments related to the Instructional Technology & Materials Design course. In the following days maybe I can share my experiences as a language student with you. I will try to make my best and I am waiting for your suggestions, always.
Thank you!