Final Post!

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Hello everyone! Today, I completed another university semester and I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the “Current Issues” course I took at Marmara University.

Firstly, I believe that this course is highly significant for “teacher candidates”. I consider myself as fortunate to have taken this course with the professional instructor Gökçe Kurt Tiftik, who has a lot of information about 21st-century learning.

While this course is undoubtedly enriching, there are occasional challenges. For example, when ı decided to create a good thing, ı might have to pay for Canva to access pro items. Of course, this is not a problem directly related to the course, but I have sometimes encountered some challenges in finding free resources. Furthermore, I believe that most tasks in the course are challenging and developmental, encouraging continuous research and learning. My favorite task was definitely the AR Integrated Material. I greatly enjoyed designing a trip to London through this task.

I have an idea for the improvement of this course as well. In the first semester of the second grade, we take a course called “Educational Technologies.” I believe it would be more beneficial if a “Current Issues” course were offered in the second semester of the second year. Also, university should put more practical courses like this could be to support teacher candidates in developing their teaching skills.

My advice to students taking this course is not to forget the websites they use and to learn the details thoroughly. Because in the future, as they become teachers, they will need to use these websites extensively.

This course contributed significantly to my personal development, especially by enabling me to learn important educational applications such as Canva, Wordwall, and YouTube VR-integrated videos. It also helped me to understand the differences between AR and VR, and gain a clearer insight into the requirements of a 21st-century teacher. Furthermore, the constant assignment of tasks in group format given by the instructor significantly enhanced my teamwork skills.

It was a long and enjoyable adventure. I learned a lot, and in the future, I will do my best to contribute to a more enlightened and advanced society with the knowledge gained. See you soon!

AI-Integrated Worksheet Material!

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Hello everyone, today I will write about the “AI-Integrated Worksheet” process that we designed with my friend (Mustafa Şen) on “Canva Website”.

Firstly, we prepared a “Describe Task” for students. We designed this as a preparatory activity before the main activity. In this activity, we utilized images generated by the artificial intelligence model “DALL-E” for design. Students look at the pictures and express their thoughts on paper. Subsequently, we created a “Create Task” and asked students to use the “Capitol” artificial intelligence to generate new things. Finally, we created a “Compare Task” and asked students to understand the differences between the two images.

I enjoyed completing the assignment overall, and it helped me better understand the significance of AI tools in the learning process. See you soon!

Mustafa Şen’s blog adress: https://www.teachermustafa.com/

VR-Intergrated Handout Experience

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Hello, welcome to my blog. Today, I will talk about a VR-supported handout that I designed with my friend Mustafa Sen. I will also share my ideas about AR and VR technologies and the process of creating our handout.

Firstly, it is a fact that technologies like AR and VR, which make our lives easier, have been rapidly advancing in recent years. The use of such technologies in language education can significantly facilitate teacher’s work. Besides, there are many areas in language education where AR technology can be applied, primarily in visual subjects. For instance, AR technology used to teach the name of an animal can be truly memorable. In addition, I find VR technology to be more immersive and controllable. However, people using VR technology can lose their sense of reality. So, teachers should be careful while using such technologies on students.

We prepared a handout themed “Let’s explore London,” consisting of four parts. Each part has its unique feature and is accompanied by a QR code. For example, in the first part, there is a 360-degree video related to a London guide tour that they can explore around and we also added relevant questions in the handout to reinforce what they have learned. In the second part, students go through a virtual tour of the “British Museum,” an important symbol of London. In the third part, students learn about “Admiral Horatio Nelson” and note his findings. In the fourth part, students share their ideas about the British Museum by writing an online review.

I had a good time working on this project with my friend Mustafa Sen. Learning new technologies and integrating them into educational materials are so important. See you soon!

Mustafa Sen’s Blog: https://www.teachermustafa.com/2024/01/introducing-our-vr-integrated-handout.html

Flipped Classroom Material

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Hello everyone, today I will write about the “flipped classroom material” that I prepared together with my friend Mustafa Şen. In flipped classroom material, the main goal to enable students to learn the target topic at home or outside the classroom, and reinforce it at school. I believe this technique is beneficial, especially when students have effectively studied the material before coming to school. However, if the responsibility given to the students is not fulfilled (for example, students may not watch the video and create background knowledge), it might make difficult the progress in terms of classroom balance.

We chose “Modal Verbs” as the topic and, using the Canva application, we obtained a video template targeting 9th-grade students. We specifically introduced the topic to our students in a general way, emphasizing patterns such as “must,” “do have to,” and “should” that are modal verbs. Additionally, at the end of each modal verb explanation, we added at least an example and visual. I also collaborated with my friend Mustafa during the narrating process of the video. On the other hand, in some cases, finding relevant images and integrating them into both our narratives and quizzes has proven to be a bit challenging.

After completing the video production, we prepared a quiz. With my friend Mustafa, we discussed sample sentences and created a “Modal Verb Exercise” consisting of 10 questions on the Wordwall. This website contains a lot of templates for quizzes, certain word games (such as Hangman) can be designed online, providing you with the opportunity to create up to 5 designs for free.

I enjoyed this design process, which served as the final activity of the year of 2023 for me. I had a lot of fun and learned new things. See you soon!

Flipped Classroom Material Video: https://youtu.be/LtRNWMSDUms

The Quiz: https://wordwall.net/tr/resource/66112725

My Friend’s (Mustafa Şen) Blog: https://www.teachermustafa.com/

Materials: https://www.canva.com/ https://wordwall.net/tr

Corpus-Based Material Experience!

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Hello to everyone! Today, I’m going to share my experiences about creating a “Corpus-Based Material”. I worked with my friend (Murat Berkay Bozkurt). Firstly, since our target audience was between elementary and pre-intermediate, we developed a vocabulary according to their level. Afterwards, we created an outline for the corpus-based material. We designed, the “corpus-based material” in four parts, aiming to assess the student’s knowledge first and then enhance learning through practical exercises. In addition to these, we aimed to attract students’ attention by incorporating a yellow background and school materials such as books, stars, and erasers into the design of the material. The first question in the material we created starts with “what do you know,” and here, we inquire about the difference between the words “since” and “for” by providing a sentence example. The aim is to assess the student’s knowledge. In the next section, we guide the students to a website called “English-Corpora,” encouraging them to explore the rich corpus material network for searching skills. For the 3rd activity, we ask them to write down the meanings of the words “since” and “for.” Finally, we aim to enhance their learning by including an activity at the end of the material. After everything, students will be able to understand and explain the difference between the word “for and since” correctly. On the other hand, an issue that may arise in a classroom is the absence of guidelines regarding a website (English-Corpora) that students can use to understand the topic. In addition, the “digital divide” problem, encompassing the lack of access to technological resources by students, can also restrict their access to websites and materials.

While preparing this material with my friend, ı enjoyed the process and thought that it is an instructive educational material, take care!

Final Post!

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Yes! we have come to the end of my journey (for a while, ı believe). I have shared my experiences and some important informations during this semester with you on this blog. During this adventure, I wrote about my wiki, padlet, podcast, movie poster and animation experiences. All these experiences were part of the technology and I think that these applications will become more widespread in the future, and the importance of using them will increase even more. I think that as an English teacher, we should benefit from the opportunities of technology and provide a modern education to our students. Also, by taking this course, I learned that I can use some applications (such as padlet and wiki) that I have not used before in teaching English. My favorite task was preparing a movie poster. While preparing that movie poster, I felt that I really learned something and improved myself. On the other hand, I didn’t like the podcast task that much and I remember having a hard time while doing it but of course it was also a very instructive and unique experience. In addition, with this course, I felt that I got into technology even more and some creative feelings were awakened in me. The only thing I can suggest for the development of this course is to increase the hours of the course and direct students to such modern courses. I really liked this course and I improved myself. If I were at the beginning of the term, I would like to take this course again.

See you soon! Take care of yourself.

My Animation Experience

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Hello to everyone! today, ı will write about my animation peer work. It was a very difficult and challenging task. However, I can say that I am satisfied with the result. Let’s see the details!

First we had to create a group and choose from the animation options. There were many options such as “digital story telling” or making a video about “how to do”. We chose to make an animation for the PSA option. We decided to prepare a blood donation PSA video. Our group consist of me, Arda Duraker and Okan Şıvgın. While we were doing this task, we did a task distribution and they (Arda and Okan) adjusted the sounds while I was doing an important part of the animation. While preparing our animation, we used a site called render forest. I searched many sites until I found this site, but almost all of them were asking for money. Actually, renderforest also asks for money, but it also offers a free option with the condition of putting a watermark on the video. We decided to prepare the video with a watermark without paying for the site.

We brought together animations related to blood donation on the site and prepared appropriate texts for them. Then we recorded our voice. Finally, we added these audio recordings to the video. It was especially difficult to match the timing of the audio recordings with the video.

To sum up, I liked the video that came out at the end. I learned how animations are combined and designed. Although digital story telling is a difficult task, I think it is important to learn new things and produce quality works. I spent a lot of time preparing this assignment with my friends and I realized that I learned new things.

You can find the blog addresses of my friends below.

You could watch our video from here.

Arda and Okan’s blog adresses!

See you soon!

a creative task : making a movie poster!

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Hello ! Today, ı will write about a poster assignment that ı made. I’ve never done such a fun homework before in my life. I did not only have fun, but also improved myself in terms of creativity. Let’s start!

My task was to prepare a poster for a book we read, assuming it was adapted into a movie. First, I chose a book and thought about how I could make a movie poster about it. After thinking for a while, I chose Stefan Zweig’s famous book, “Chess Story”. I chose this book because I knew I could make a good cover and ı love this book so much. This book, which shows what determination can do, has always been a motivation for me. After deciding which book to make, it was time to choose a poster design site. I noticed that there are many different and original poster drafts on a site called Canva, and I prepared my movie poster using this site.

Since the cover I was going to prepare tells a chess story, there should definitely be an element of this on the movie poster. I chose the pawn as the highlighted item because it is the most self-sacrificing and most used piece in chess. I thought it would draw more attention because of this situation. Then, I quoted some words from the book and wrote down the important actor names that took place in my imaginary movie. After adding the author of the book and my own name, I made a few changes in the fonts. I added to my poster famous “watch it on IMAX” sentence that I saw in many famous movies’ poster.

To summarize, I really enjoyed this assignment and I think my work looks like a professional movie poster. While doing this homework, I always thought about what I could do more creatively. In the end, such a beautiful result came out and I was quite satisfied with the result. When I become a teacher in the future, I would like to give my students this beautiful and fun task. I think this assignment is very important for them to use their creativity.

Here is my movie poster!

Choice of people who like to listen : Podcasting!

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Today I’m going to tell you about my interesting podcast experience! First of all, I have to say that I’ve never done a podcast before and I didn’t expect it to be this hard. Anyway, let’s get started.

Initially, ı had to choose a podcast method. I chose 60 seconds idea to improve the world, which is also on BBC. Then ı started looking for an idea. I especially studied the samples in BBC and decided how to record my voice. While choosing the subject, I was thinking about how we can make the world a better place, then I remembered the documentary “25 liters of water” starring Gökhan Özoğuz. Then I imagined how conscious people would be if this idea spread all over the world, and ı decided the topic “if everyone used a limited amount of water for a day”.

In the podcast, I talked about the importance of water and how limited water use can raise awareness. I had a lot of difficulty because the podcast was supposed to be exactly 60 seconds. I recorded my voice many times and I was nervous most of the time. After at least 15 attempts, I was finally able to complete the podcast in the time I wanted. I transferred the audio recording to my computer and edited it by using the audacity program. I added a chime at the end to signal the end of 60 seconds time and removed the background noise with audicity’s noise reduction feature.

In summary, listening a podcast is actually fun but it is hard to produce. It takes effort to use special audio editing programs and prepare the text to voice. Frankly, I didn’t have a lot of fun preparing podcasts and I don’t think I will use it for a long time. But thanks to this experience, I learned the podcast better and understood the difficulty of preparing a podcast. As a teacher, I do not think that I will have my students do this hard task as a homework.

You can find my podcast from here.

Stay in touch!

A tool from 21st: Padlet

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Today, I will write about my insteresting web 2.0 tool adventure! Padlet is a web tool that people can write and work together. With my teammates (Arda Duraker, Çağla Kaftan and Ceren Su Tufan), we determined a topic and created a KWL Chart (What do I know? What do I want to learn? What is my learning?) about it. Padlet is pretty nice and gives you the opportunity to change a lot of things such as colors, texts and fonts. Ever since ı started creating the site, I thought about how simple everything was. Besides, padlet looks very professional with its site settings and design.

Firstly, we created padlet accounts . Then, we chose a topic and answered the questions. The topic we chose was “poverty problem” and we started research on it. We searched from many famous and reliable sources such as unicef, world bank and wikipedia. Then, we uploaded the things we found about them to the padlet. Then we put an icon and title on the padlet wall we created. After adding our blog addresses, we also made some changes on fonts and colors. We generally used black tones to make our wall more gloomy and found a suitable background image.

To summarize, padlet is a very nice web tool. You give short informations to people with small notes. If they are interested, they can get more information from the links we put on padlet or they can do a search about the topic. Also, padlet is simple and easy. These features make it compatible with the dynamic standards of the 21st century. If you are someone who likes fast, eye-catching and short informations, you can take a look at the KWL charts on the padlet!

You can find our padlet page from here.

See you soon!

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