Get Lost In A Book

    
      Hi there! :)

      After the podcast of last week, this time we joined a Wiki page for our task in material design course. Our teacher opened a wiki page, we logged in and created our own pages about a book we want.

     What is "Wiki"?
     A wiki is a free website that can be edited by visitors to the site. It is a useful and easy to use tool especially for collaborative works. 

    If you want to know how it works simply you can click here and watch the video!!!
    
    What about it's relation with education?
     A wiki page can be used in class projects, homework etc. You can give individual or group tasks. It's useful for learners to do research and write about their research. It can help develop their language skills since they will be searching English content and they will be writing their own sentences in English. I think it's a creative task to give your students.
    And also it is a good opportunity to get to know the students and to hear about their ideas, knowledge etc. especially for the ones that don't talk much in class.
    
     If you want to watch a video on how teachers can use wikis in the classroom you can click here !!!

     About My Wiki     
     My wiki is about the book "My Sweet Orange Tree". I found it in my grandfather's house when I was younger. I read it more than once. I highly recommend to read this book.

    
     You can check out my wiki page HERE! ( watch out for SPOILERS!!!)

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See you next week! :)

Mirrorself: A Podcast Story

   Hi everyone! :)
   
   This week's post is about a team work. As a team, me and my two close friends Sıla Çelebi and Öznur Çelepi, we prepared a podcast for you!!! 

   For Sıla's blog click here and for Öznur's blog click here

   First of all, you might know all about podcasting or you might have no clue. So, for those of you who don't know about it, podcast is simply a digital audio file or a series of files made available on the Internet. You can talk (or sing) about any topic you want on a podcast.

   Fun facts: 
   If it contains video it's called vodcast!
   The name "podcast" comes from "ipod" and "broadcasting"
   

   We were given this assignment on last week's material design course and we had three options to choose from which were recording a song, talking about an idea and telling a sound rich story. We went with the 3rd option. We thought it would be nice to write a story. None of us ever recorded a podcast before so it was something new and exciting for each of us. We worked together in every process of the task and we started with forming a story. I personally found this part the most enjoyable because we gathered our imaginations and worked sentence by sentence. And actually that's where the difficulties started because we had time limitation and we wrote a little more than it was needed(ups!)... But we managed to shorten it. And then we found a silent place to record our story. And no, we definitely couldn't do it in the first trial 😅 But I think we did well for people who never recorded a podcast before. We found and made some sound effects since it had to be a sound rich story. And we finished our podcast by using this website called PodOmatic and all the other links to the sounds we found online will be down below.

   And if you ask me if I would use podcasting with my students in the future and why? I would say yes! Because I think it's a good opportunity for both creativity and speaking skills and I would definitely recommend them to listen to podcasts and record a podcast if they want.

Finally the podcast we recorded is about a woman who gave up her dreams too early and forgot to believe herself... If you want to know more about her and whether she will start believing herself again here is our podcast named "Mirrorself" 

     

Click HERE to listen to our story!!!😊

Listen to "lake and bird" sounds

Listen to "kids" sounds

Listen to "face washing" sounds

Look at the photograph

THANK YOU, SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!!!👋

Help of Computers

  There has been very interesting developments in history of teaching with technology especially in computer assisted teaching that have led us to where we are today. In order to get a general idea of the process let's take a look at the timeline I have made.

click here to see where I made my timeline 

  In 1930s large mainframe computers were found and later developed in mid 1940s. They were also used in World War II for missile guidance and cryptography in early 1940s. In 1940s also mechanical translations appeared but they were later seen inadequate.

  Throughout 1950s improved systems and therefore programming languages were developed. Also Call programs were used for drill and testing.

  

  The first electronic corpus " The Brown Corpus of Standard American English" was developed in 1960s along with a number of pioneer CALL projects. And also and most importantly at this time where computers were seen as practice teaching machines "Behavioristic CALL" emerged. 

Behaviorstic model is simply learning through the stimulus - response - feedback.

  In the 1970s-80s the "Communicative CALL" emerged as communicative language learning and teaching emerged. Communicative uses of technology were developed.

  After these kind of developments, in the 1990s powerful desktop computers that supported Internet use, LANs, multimedia and linked resources came into existence and set the present stage of CALL which is "Integrative CALL" .

  

  And all of this shows us that as the world improves the usage of technology increases accordingly. What we should do is to keep up with this improvement and  be aware of the opportunities in this century we live in. We are in a time of information. We should keep on using our creativity, be open to change and develop more and more....

Thank you for reading :)

Teachers Guiding the Century

click here to see where I did my word cloud

 
  When I compare the ways and materials used in classes today, even with the day I started school-let alone a century- I can't help but see a change, a development.I start to notice these changes more as I study English Language Teaching myself.

   These developments come naturally because people have an innate need of moving forward. Therefore everyday, every minute new ideas are put forth, new perspectives are born especially in learning and teaching. 

   With every new generation we can see inevitable changes particularly with the usage of technology that teachers need to keep up with. They need to use technology effectively and when it's needed. This means they need to learn how to repurpose technology to make it useful in teaching.
  
   And most importantly teachers need to be creative and they ought to show their students the way to be creative. They need to lead their students to communicate and collaborate effectively, and to think in a critical manner. 
   
 ➜Mishra and Keohler say " If you are not going to change pedagogy, then technology use makes no significant difference." 

   What 21st century needs and wants from teachers is to change their ways, their pedagogy  to be able to guide their students.

Thank you for reading!

See you next week :)

WELCOME!

source

   Hi!

   Welcome to my blog!! This is an educational blog in which I will post about teaching English by using technology. 
    In "Instructional Technology and Materials Design" course we are all opening individual blogs and each week we will have our tasks to post about. You can expect to see posts related to 21st century learning, CALL etc. I will try my best to bring you the useful content. Stick with me and you might learn things you didn't know you needed before.

  See you on my next post hopefully :)