To My Mind: Instructional Technology and Materials Design

Hello again my dear readers! In this post I'll write about my Instructional Technology and Materials Design course which enables me to create this blog. We have come to the end of the course and this makes me feel a little bit empty cause I really get used to write you my own thoughts and experiences. I'm not going to explain the course in formal way contrary to this -as always- you will read my feelings and thoughts.

About this course, the most attractive thing is the process of blogging. At first it really bothers me to write a post especially about education and teaching but since I go on I really enjoy it. Among the assignments we have to do, my favourite one is podcasting. Because in our podcasting assignment there are 3 options and one of these options is writing our own lyrics and singing it.  I love listening to music, writing lyrics and singing them on my own so when I read this assignment’s requirements, I was like “Wow! It is time for fun!”.  I enjoy my time when writing lyrics trying to rhyme and recording my voice but to be honest embedding my voice in karaoke is a bit challenging.

I sometimes feel lost about how to get my audience’s attention and the deadline of the tasks. Because I want to write a post which is perfect and I have other works and lessons to study, so sometimes it is difficult to write a perfect post until the deadline.

To think about its benefits, I think with this course I take my first step into teaching. With all this tasks like podcasting, introducing an app, using different tools that we can relate and use in our future classes, I start to getting used to create my own method in teaching. When I sat in front of a window and look outside thinking about my future job career, I felt very confused that I have no idea to create a different atmosphere for my students to warm up English. However after this course, some ideas have started to come into my mind so I feel less confused.

If you ask me to improve the course we can be more active in the class, for example; we can discuss the most attracting post. Of course this means not judging or rewarding; it is like giving the best example to enlight other ones who have difficulty in getting the things together. 

And at the end of my post I have an advice to the students who would take this course next year; please don’t be opinionated to this course and blogging at the beginning. Since you keep blogging, you will understand its importance and you will start to enjoy your time while writing different posts.

Keep blogging and reading my dear readers! Don't think that this is the end, I hope I'll keep blogging. :)

Start Brainstorming: Bubbl.us

   Hi everyone! This week I presented the tool for mind mapping called bubbl.us. Many educators already know the value of “mind mapping.” A mind map is a graphical representation of ideas and concepts. It's a visual thinking tool for structuring information, problem solving, generating new ideas, or brainstorming with group members. For example, mind mapping is an excellent way to conceptualize and develop a position for a research essay because it helps students organize their writing and support their claims with concrete evidence. Traditionally, students have created mind maps on paper, but now there are electronic tools that make creating visuals fast and easy.

  There are many free, web-based concept mapping tools available, and one that stands out for being colorful and easy to use on any platform is Bubbl.us. The learning curve is minimal; students can start creating their own mind map almost immediately. Maps can be shared with others for easy collaboration and quickly saved as a jpeg image, png image, or HTML outline. Images can be easily used to customize student presentations.

Then let me show you how to use it!

When you first open the site, you see the screen below. You can start brainstorming without an account but if you want to save your map or share it with your colleagues it is must to sign in.

  Then when you click Start Brainstorming bottom you encounter the screen below. Click the bubble and write your main topic. You can add a lot of bubbles using the plus marks around the bubble. 

  You can click the letter "T" to open the toolbar. It provides you to change the color of the bubble and text, to change your template, to draw lines between bubbles and to add file. But adding files is a premium feature.

 See? It is very easy to use this tool for mind mapping. You can give so many tasks requires this tool, for example; you can want your students to draw a family tree or classify animals and create a map about it. 

These are some examples of works that are created with bubbl.us:

A Mobile App: Mondly

   Hi everybody! This week I'm gonna introduce you an app named Mondly. A lot of people have a hard time finding an app to help them learn a specific language. I don’t know what’s your native language and what language are you planning to learn, but Mondly has one of the widest language selection you can choose from. It offers 33 different languages: from the popular ones such as Spanish, French, Arabic and German to more the exotic ones such as Mandarin Chinese, Afrikaans and Indonesian. Some more inside info: a lot of people start learning one language then go on learning more. So, make sure you choose an app that has more options.

   Mondly is a website and app designed to help you learn languages in an interactive way. To get started, you will need to choose your native language and the language you want to learn. From there you can set your difficulty level and pick topics to perform lessons on vocabulary and conversation. You can change or add additional languages at any time. Keep in mind, many topics are locked and must be purchased in order to access them.
   You can select start from beginner, intermediate, or advanced. The topics will not change, but questions will become more complex and have more possible answers as you scale the difficulty upwards.

    From the Categories page, tap the flag icon in the upper left to swap between languages or start a new language. To change a language’s difficulty, choose “Add a new language” and select the difficulty you want. This will overwrite the old language setting but maintain your progress. 

   Tap “Lessons” at the bottom of the page to see an overview of each lesson, including how much time you’ve spent on each and how many stars you’ve earned.

   Tap “Statistics” at the bottom of the page to see a page of your total time spent and words/phrases learned. You can drag the slider near the bottom to see a prediction of how much you can learn in how much time based on your current statistics.

You can tap a the colored nodes on the brain diagram to zoom in and view learned words/phrases. Tap the word or phrase to view it and have it playback.

As you can see Mondly is quite useful to learn a language and of course English. We can use this app to teach our students language efficiently.

  

Wikipage : Hickory Dickory Dock

   

Hello everyone! In this post I'm going to talk about wikis and share you a wikipage that I created. First let me answer the question in your minds: What is Wiki?
    A wiki (sometimes spelled "Wiki") is a server program that allows users to collaborate in forming the content of a Web site. The term comes from the word "wikiwiki," which means "fast" in the Hawaiian language.
   A wiki provides a simplified interface. It is not necessary to know HTML. At any time, contributors can review the history of the page they are working on or preview the Web page before publishing it.
   A wiki Web site operates on a principle of collaborative trust. The simplest wiki programs allow users to create and edit content. More advanced wikis have a management component that allow a designated person to accept or reject changes.

   Wikis are also very useful for language learning. They can be used in language classrooms to create mini-encyclopedia, stories, book project and they can be also used for brainstorming. 

   This week I create a wikipage on pbworks.com about a book from Agatha Christie named Hickory Dickory Dock. Creating a wikipage on this wiki is quite easy and enjoying. Have a look at the screenshots of my wikipage.

A Digital Story: How To Dye Your Hair

Hello guys! This week we talked about "Digital Storytelling" and create a digital story about How To Dye Your Hair with my friend Ayris. Check out her blog and read her posts if you want. So, let me explain what is digital storytelling and my experience about this issue.


This is a short story created by combining a recorded narrative with images (still or moving), and music or other sounds. The story is usually 2-3 minutes in length and told in the first person, about a person, event or issue the narrator feels strongly about. The digital storytelling process typically recognizes many elements of storytelling, including the oral tradition, the writing process, the power of visuals, and the role of digital media in recording and sharing stories. These are stories about people and places that often go untold. They can be transformational, as we are invited to see events, places and people from a new perspective and experience them in a new way.

About my experience; as I mentioned before I created a digistal story with my friend Ayris. At first we got very confused that there are so many tools for this task but at the end we can find the free one. Then we decided our topic and this is a bit challenging too because we wanted to narrate a topic which is unique. After we decided the topic we tried to use a lot of tools but at last we settled on "VoiceThread". We uploaded our recordings and pictures from our computers easily. We completed the task quickly. You can also add a text, a video or a phone number and communicate with your viewers online, and you can record your voice while adding drawings to the slides.

 Click here to watch our digital story about how to dye your hair. 

Finally, I also want to share my opinion about this task. I think although creating a digital story is challenging and a bit difficult for students and learners, it is also very useful to learn or teach something. It is entertaining too. So in the future I'll use this method in my class.

Really Simple Syndication : Feedly

  Hi there! This week, we had a task about RSS feed. First, I want to tell you about what RSS is.
RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. It is what it claims to be: a quick and easy way to create and use "syndicated content" such as news headlines and announcements. More and more websites and blogs use RSS to deliver articles and article previews to readers who are simply too busy to browse to our site and dig up the content they are interested in. Other sites use RSS to alert customers of new products or upcoming events.

   RSS is delivered to end users through "feeds", a more or less universal form of downloadable raw data ("universal" in that all feeds are in XML. Different flavors of feeds can vary slightly) which can be read with a variety of applications, including FeedBucket. The websites you already read may offer an RSS feed; if you don't already know what the feed address is, you may be able to find it linked to with a small blue or orange icon that reads either "XML" or "RSS".

   I use Feedly to follow my favorite blogs. It's an online RSS service. You can see the screenshot I took, below.

Among the blogs I follow, Games To Learn English is my favourite one. In this blog you can learn English with games and videos. I love playing computer games so for the one who loves playing games this will help a lot.

ELT- Related Website: iSLCollective.com!

   Hello again everyone! Today I want to give you some information about a website named iSLCollective.com ( it means ‘Internet Second Language Collective’)  that I think I’ll visit regularly in the future for my English Language Teaching carrier. You know all teachers enjoy reading and gaining access to more resources for lesson ideas or developing material for classes and I thought I would share this website that I like to refer to when I am seeking for lesson ideas or material to use in possible lessons.  These website below is my favourite website that I think it is very useful when preparing lessons, reading up on methodology or creating material.  So without any further delay, this is my must visit ELT-related website.

    There are three founders: Peter Laszlo, Adam Laszlo and Benedek Princz. They launched the English site on September 30, 2009. They're all from Hungary. The founders and volunteers of this website are a community of language teachers and translators from around the globe who share their home-made worksheets on this free-to-use platform. Currently, they host Word doc/docx and ppt/pptx (powerpoint) files. It's for all language teachers, whether teaching in schools or doing one-on-one private tutoring. The site has 6 platforms for the teaching of English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian.

    In website there are 6 different categories of learners: adults, business/Professional, high school, elemantary school, kindergarden, students with special educational needs, learning difficulties like dyslexia. So its target audience is very large. In this website you can also be an uploader if you want to share your workings with others.

    There are also images and videos about English Language Learning in this website and their quality is quite high. There are no errors when I visit the site.The links and printable documents are always accessible.

    To sum up; this website can be very useful either to teachers or learners. The site is all free but for support you can donate Money for the community. With this site learners and teachers can be both find documents, videos, images and exercises of English language. If you ask me, you should check this website immediately!  

Podcast: The Song About The Ancient Magus Bride

I take this photo from here.

Hello everybody! This week I have a podcast homework for my Instructional Technology and Materials Design and I decided to write a song about Chise Hatori who is my favourite character from anime called The Ancient Magus Bride. But first I want to explain you what does podcast mean briefly.

     Podcast is a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, typically available as a series, new instalments of which can be received by subscribers automatically.

    

 I had difficulties while I was writing the lyrics according to ryhme and to be related to its content. However, I enjoyed it. I think that I improved my vocabulary skills because I used so much synonyms for rhymes. And here is my podcast and its lyrics, enjoy it!

The Ancient Magus Bride

This is Hatori Chise

Was lonely and desperate but
Time has changed all my life

I thougt that I am a one of the teenage girls
But later they told me, ‘’Heaven gave you a curse.’’

What kind of curse that they told me about is
Attracting either good or bad spirits

This makes my body lean                                                                                             Chise and Elias
Till my magic begin

I have met Elias by pure luck
He wants to teach me and make me his wife
Thanks to his all workings
My body feels more keen.

I want to live all my life for Elias
Since he is my hero and paradise
I am Hatori Chise
More powerful and hopeful                                                                 
With my dear Elias

If you want to make a podcast visit this website.

Historical Development of CALL

I took this picture from this website.

I know when you start to read this post, you will get very curious about meaning of the CALL. Then let me explain it. CALL in long terms means Computer Assisted Language Learning.

Let's have a look at one of CALL's definitions: 

• Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) may be defined as the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning.

  So that you can understand its importance in our topic and my blog because it is completely related to English learning and teaching.

To understand the CALL itself we have to get a knowledge of its history first.You can check my timeline for history of CALL below.

If you want to create a timeline like above, visit this site.

I took some informations from here.

21st Century Learning

 As we learn more about the factors that affect learning, new strategies come up.Being a 21st Century educator means the ability to be able to make students achieve the skills called 4C.Then let’s look what is 4C.

Communication is about sharing thoughts, questions, ideas, and solutions. In the technological age, it’s much easier and, at the same time, harder to communicate. Technology has provided us with more convenient ways to communicate, but sometimes the various ways can become overwhelming. In addition, the communication can become more about the tech being used than the message you’re trying to send. Without effective communication, there’s no way to get anything done inside the classroom or anywhere, which is why this is an essential 21st Century skill.

Collaboration is about working together to reach a goal and putting talent, expertise, and smarts to work. Just like with communication, technology has made collaboration easier. Actually, technology takes collaboration a step farther, making types of collaboration possible that weren’t before technology. Just like with communication though, the same breakdowns can happen. The number of choices can get overwhelming, and the actual collaboration can get lost while we pay too much attention to the tool we’r.e using to collaborate. As the world goes more interconnected, collaboration will become a more and more essential skill than it already is, which is why it makes the list of the 4Cs for 21st Century skills.

Critical thinking is looking at problems in a new way and linking learning across subjects and disciplines. Just like with the previous two ideas, critical thinking has been an essential skill in every century and profession. However, technology has changed the critical thinking platform. The more technology makes menial tasks such as memorization null and void, the more room that gives us to spend time on more complex thinking skills. However, it’s too easy to let technology do the thinking for us, or thinking that it does. In order to succeed in the 21st Century, you have to remember that, no matter how high tech the machine, it’s useless without a person telling it what to do and thinking critically about the result.

Creativity is trying new approaches to get things done, innovation, and invention. The 21st Century is a fun time to be creative thanks to technology. Not only are the traditional ways of creativity still available, but there are tons of new possibilities made available. Instead of just painting a picture, you can animate it or arrange a piece of music on a computer without ever learning how to play an instrument. All that said, it’s still up to you to put things through the creative process. Whether you’re going to tell the world’s next bestselling story or you are just trying to find a way to organize your classroom more efficiently, it’s up to you to utilize both your own thinking power and the technology at hand to get the creative project done

.If you want to make a word cloud like above;

Click here!!

Welcome Everybody!

    Hello everyone! In this blog I’ll share my researchs and ideas about teaching and learning. You can post comments on my posts to share your own ideas. When we learn more, we can become better teachers and good icons for our students. So I hope you’ll find my blog entertaining and inspiring. Lots of love! 🙂