It's been a while since my last post but dear readers, I've decided to make a comeback. I'll be coming back with more educational context and share my experiences and thoughts with you. 

    We'll meet again really soon so take care!!😸

My Final Goodbyes to Instructional Tech and Material Design

    We've come to an end. It's been 10 months since we started taking Instructional Technologies and Material Design classes. To be honest, at the beginning of the last term I didn't expect to learn this much. One of the things I've learned that using many tools makes the lesson more productive. I always thought like "Oh, I know this tool so I can use it everywhere even if it's unnecessary my students will have fun." but after this class, I learned that tools are only useful if they help in the learning process. Tools being fun is on the second plan. Another thing I learned that your tools should be up to date and not complicated. There are plenty of other tools honey don't stick to one like your life depends on it.

    I never knew that blog writing was so much fun. I really enjoyed doing almost all of our tasks (except that animation one).

• Coming Soon... (Creating a movie poster for a book.)
• The Key is Smiling 😁 (Creating a podcast.)

    These two were my favourites (check them out if you didn't already). Those tasks also thought me that BEING CREATIVE is really important. Teachers should help the students to awaken the creativity inside them.

    If we come to think about what can be improved about this class... I would say that some tasks were really challenging and you had to do it in a limited time and mostly in pairs. That makes the tasks harder to complete. Other than that everything was great. I've learned too many things and I'll definitely use most of them while teaching. Oh, and I will definitely continue blogging. This is the end for "Instructional Tech and Material Design" course but it's a beginning of my BLOGGER LIFE.

GOODBYE FOR NOW 👋

All Blogs in One Place?

 
   Have you ever wished to gather and read all of the new posts from your favourite blogs on one page? Well, your wish has already come true with the help of RSS. I'm sure that many of you seen its symbol since it's basically everywhere.

 

➪ Let's learn about RSS!


RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. (source)




    The RSS reader I'm using is Feeder. I've tried another RSS readers like the old reader and Feedly but feeder was simpler and handier for me to use. Oh! I almost forgot to mention that it's paid and I'm using a free trial for now (15 days) so after my trial ends I have to discover a new one. Enough talking now let's discover Feeder.

This is how it looks like. You can see the feeds you follow on the far left.

The posts of the blog you chose in the middle.

At the far right, you can read the post you like you just need to click on it.

Feeds you follow will appear there.

You can also sort them however you like.

     I also follow a few blogs about teaching with the RSS reader. Here's one of my favourite blogs: English Teaching 101. I discovered it on Pinterest while studying for the university entrance exam. I always wanted to be an English teacher so even that time I used to check it out from time to time. This year after I started blogging I started to follow its blog. English Teaching 101 is a blog created by an English teacher named Melchor Bernardo. He aims to share his teaching styles and philosophy. He also shares his experiences and many creative ways to use while teaching with the readers. I really enjoy reading his blogs. I also think that the blog is well designed and well-organised. It might be useful for teachers they will learn about new tools or strategies if they follow it.

As you can see one can reach whatever they want easily using the options bar.

There are many creative projects about speaking, reading, vocabulary etc..

For example:

This is an example post. Its content is more or less like that. 

• I also want to share its Pinterest page with you. Click Here to discover. 😁

ELT Infographic on Web 2.0

    Our task for the week was creating an infographic about some Web 2.0 tools to use in ELT. Infographic is some kind of chart which provides information. What is a Web 2.0 tool? It's a term used to describe a new generation of Web services and applications. So since we've become familiar with the terms let's start, shall we?

    Now I want to start introducing the infographic I made. I created it using Piktochart. It was aimed to inform the readers about my TOP 4 Web 2.0 tools which are Quizlet, Edmodo, Socrative and Kubbu. Each one of them can be used while teaching. They also may help to make students more attentive in class and the information learned will be more permanent. As you can see these tools can be really useful but don't forget only if they have a purpose!!

    Here's the infographic I've made about my favourite web 2.0 tools and if you want to check more web 2.0 tools click here.

Coming Soon...

    

    In this task, we were given some instructions to follow. Since I've been obsessed with reading books recently I decided to do the movie poster inspired by a book task. The book that I've chosen was Last Island (original name Son Ada) written by a Turkish author, Zülfü Livaneli. The images on the poster visualise the scene where the people who live on the island hunt the seagulls who are the real owners of the island. The tag line is written at the top which is "The strong one has one wish: more power!". There are also some quotes from the book on the poster.

    I used Adobe Spark while creating the poster. It was fun, easy and there were many beautiful templates you can use. I would definitely use this kind of a task if needed while teaching. I think it would awaken the student's creativity.

    and now... *drum rolls* Here's my movie poster!

Click on the image to see it on its original page.

Flutterby and the Chameleon

    Today I'm here with a storytelling project. In the process of preparing this project we first brainstormed to find a plot. After deciding on a plot we wrote it down and created our story. Doing these the only thing left was recording and creating the animation. The animation was created with a website called Animaker.

Click this picture to visit the animaker website.

    In the process of doing this, we faced a lot of difficulties and we were pretty unfortunate. We were unfortunate because of our luck there were many technical problems. Another difficulty was I don't think there are many suitable free apps to create animations. Almost all of them was paid and free trials weren't very helpful. Although the storytelling part might be a useful task to give my students in the future I wouldn't make them animate it. Instead of animating it they can act it out and film it. This would be more logical.

    Here is our story Flutterby and The Chameleon. Finally, I like to thank my partner Elif Cansu Çakallı in this project. Don't forget to visit her blog. ;)

Fun Way to Learn: Film English

(Click the image to go to the Film English Website)

The ELT website that we'll be talking about is Film English. In this website, there are many videos with the aim of teaching English. You can choose the topic and the level according to your audience and it'll provide you with the videos. 

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

The author of the website is Kieran Donaghy, a freelance writer, international conference speaker and trainer. He is also an experienced speaker and trainer who has given talks and workshops in many countries. 

If you want to get further information about the author click here to watch an introduction video.

What is the content of the website?

There are many videos with activities. You are expected to do the given activities in order to learn way more better. You can follow the lesson plan step by step. In this blog, I'm going to give you examples from the topic of animals.

Who is the target audience? What is the purpose of the website?

The target audience is not specified by age or a level in general. It's mostly aimed at English teachers and learners. The purpose is to provide them with many activities and exercises. These videos are all made for with the aim of teaching the subject. They also help students to learn by listening and visualising. I watched plenty of them and trust me they are really fun to watch. Here is one of the videos.

Is there a date that shows when the site has last been updated? 
Newest posts are at the top and you can see the day that it was posted. For example:

Accuracy of the information- Are there any errors? 

Since there are too many topics to check one cannot say that it's error-free. We can say that it's trustable because the author is experienced in that field. If you look at the comments about the website you can also see that many people loved and praised it.

Are there any broken links?

It's pretty up to date so I didn't encounter any.

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

Videos are so well done. When you watch them you understand that they're the work of a professional. They are also creative and not so long. This makes them more appealing to their audience.

How can it be applied to EFL teaching?

It's an ELT resource so it's already applicable. Videos will make learning more effective. Learners can watch videos according to their topic and it'll also appeal to various learning styles.