Arda Özdinçer

Welcome to my blog about educational technologies!

[ardaozdincer]

Another Goodbye

Hello, my dear followers, this will be my last post concerning my Material Design in ELT course, thanks to this course I have found many great ways to utilize technology for my future teachings, I always thought technology is a gift to us mere mortals and teaching is surely one of the greatest ways to make use of it. Hope you could learn as much as I did. All in all this class kept itself pretty entertaining while also staying educational for that I want to thank my teacher, Gökçe Kurt Tiftik. I would also like to thank my partners Dilara and Orçun for being helpful and understanding through all the assignments we’ve done together It was a great experience and one I will forever cherish

Goodbye!

[ardaozdincer]

Creating a Webquest

Hello everyone, in this post I will talk about how me and my friends Dliara and Orçun created a Webquest using https://www.createwebquest.com To be honest, I was not satisfied with this task at all and I think it is very unnecessary to use WebQuests, they are not interactive and they don’t do anything better than a basic Microsoft Word file. All of the WebQuests sites are outdated, as are WebQuests themselves in my opinion, they open/process extremely slow and they are not user-friendly at all, it is a pain to add any media to a page of your WebQuests, the best way to write stuff on it is to copy directly from a Word file and I don’t see why anyone should be bothered. All in all, it was not a good experience and I felt like the only reason to make a WebQuest is to make what could have been a Word file “technological”, it is outdated and even though it is a great idea to make a project technological, there are other more efficient alternatives to do so. I don’t think I will ever use WebQuests in my teaching career. Here is the link to our WebQuest: https://www.createwebquest.com/node/61876

 Don’t forget to check my partners’ blogs:

 https://dilarasezgin0.blogspot.com/

https://orcunozcan.blogspot.com/

[ardaozdincer]

Hello everyone, in this post I will talk about how me and my friends created a handout using augmented reality. We couldn’t use a real AR application since it did not work well, instead we used QR codes on the handouts we created which takes students to a 3D museum tour, Times Square , Central Park and Empire State building. We thought this was a fun and interactive way of teaching and I personally will use this on my future teaching career.That’s all! I hope to see you all in my next post But until then, ¡Adios!Here is the link to our handout:  shorturl.at/zARU2Don’t forget to check my partners’ blogs:https://dilarasezgin0.blogspot.com/ https://orcunozcan.blogspot.com/

[ardaozdincer]

Augmented Reality

Hello everyone, in this post I will talk about how me and my friends Dliara and Orçun created a handout using Augmented Reality, we did not use a real AR application since they did not work well so instead we used QR codes, when students scan these QR codes they will take them to a 3D museum tour, Times Square, Empire States and Central Park. I thought this was a fun and interactive way of teaching and I will be sure to use this in my future teaching career. That’s all! I hope to see you all in my next post But until then, ¡Adios! Here is the link to our handout: shorturl.at/zARU2 And here is our video teaching how to use QR Codes: shorturl.at/rsCOR Don’t forget to check my partners’ blogs: https://dilarasezgin0.blogspot.com/ https://orcunozcan.blogspot.com/

[ardaozdincer]

Flipped Grammar Lesson

Hello everyone, in this post I will talk about how me and my friends Dliara and Orçun created a Grammar lesson using nearpod. I am sure most of you will remember what nearpod is as I mentioned it in my previous post but for those who doesn’t it is a very useful and easy to use site to create lessons for your students, as we used it in the previous lesson as well we didn’t really have much difficulty preparing this lesson.  Here is the link to our lesson: https://share.nearpod.com/pUq7mZ0qDgb Don’t forget to check my partners’ blogs: https://dilarasezgin0.blogspot.com/ https://orcunozcan.blogspot.com/

[ardaozdincer]

Flipped Classroom Approach

Hello everyone, in this post I will talk about the flipped classroom approach, this approach makes students do the groupwork and activites in the class and listen to the actual lesson at their home! We can think of it as the opposite of the traditional approach, me and my friends Dilara and Orçun prepared a lesson using this very technique!! We used https://nearpod.com/ which is a very helpful site for teachers who want to prepare lessons online! Here is the link to our lesson: https://share.nearpod.com/pj8MnFkpDgb Don't forget to check my partners’ blogs:

https://dilarasezgin0.blogspot.com/

https://orcunozcan.blogspot.com/

[ardaozdincer]

Creating a Language Awareness Task

Hello everyone, in this post I will talk about creating a language awareness task, but Arda, what is a language awareness task??? I am glad you asked! A language awareness task presents students with specific data and students try to deduce the grammatical rule or classify vocabulary by using the given data from a corpus, which falls under the name of “data-driven learning”. In the material we created, we made students inspect data given in the form of handouts and we also designed an activity that lets them find the grammatical rule without learning it beforehand which is an example of inductive learning. After they find and understand the rules, we gave them a fill-in-the-blank activity concerning for and since usage.

That’s all! I hope to see you all in my next post But until then, ¡Adios! Link to our teaching material: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SMcPprc5F6CKKZr0EfCaWxzBPLQKP6ER/view?usp=sharing

Don't forget to check my partners’ blogs: https://dilarasezgin0.blogspot.com/ https://orcunozcan.blogspot.com/

[ardaozdincer]

Material Design

Hello everyone, from now on I will be posting about our material design lesson, as the name suggests this course aims to teach how to design materials for English language teaching. I will keep you updated! But until then, ¡Adios!

[ardaozdincer]

HASTA LA VISTA!

Hi, my lovely followers! Today I am writing my last post on this blog ever, in the course “Educational Technologies” I have learned a ton about how to use technology effectively for education. I am the kind of person who thinks that technology is a gift that people did not have the chance to utilize until now and I think we should use it in every aspect of our lives, including education. It is easy to access, it gets jobs done a lot faster than traditional ways, and thanks to this course I will be able to use it for teaching my students when I graduate and become a teacher! (hopefully).

Overall this class was harder and more complex than your regular university course as we had a lot of assignments but it was fun and very useful as well, I’ve always loved trying out new things and this course pushed me to do just that! I made a podcast for the first time in my life, We’ve made a KWL chart on padlet with my friends Sırrı and Dilara, I even designed my own gaming magazine, which was my favorite assignment! I think it is safe to say that this course taught me a great deal about how to teach in a modern way and It was one of the most useful courses I’ve taken to this day. Although one thing that I was not a very big fan of was the wording limitations on our posts because sometimes I wanted to say more and sometimes I thought I could write shorter and much clearer.

It was a great journey and I can’t be more thankful that you tagged along! Have a great rest of your lives and don’t forget to wash your hands!

Hasta la vista!

[ardaozdincer]

Earthquake PSA

Is Turkey just unlucky? What can Turkey do to prevent casualties from earthquakes? What precautions does Japan take? This week, me and my friends Dilara and Sırrı answered these questions in an Earthquake PSA video we created. We used Movavi Video Suite 18 to create the video, it was pretty easy thanks to our prior knowledge of the editor tool but even if we didn’t know about it Movavi is very beginner-friendly and thanks to its basic user interface it is a piece of cake to navigate through it. Everyone can use this tool and create or edit videos that looks really good thanks to the transition wizard in it which enables you to put transition effects between your videos or photographs with just one click! We also added non-copyrighted background music and trimmed it to match with the video’s length. This group-work has also taught me some information about earthquakes I did not know and I think it was very useful. I will surely assign my students homework like this when I'm a teacher! Don’t forget to check my group-mates blogs too: https://dilarasezgin0.blogspot.com/ https://sirriozdemircelik.blogspot.com/ That’s all! I hope to see you all in my next post But until then, ¡Adios!

[ardaozdincer]

My Gaming Magazine!!

Do you like gaming?

Do you want to know more about the newest gaming console Playstation 5?

Did you ever wonder how the physhics engine of Red Dead Redemption 2 was coded?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions you are in for a treat!

This week I made a cover for my gaming and coding themed magazine, I used postermywall.com which has a user interface that is very easy to navigate for beginners while still being able to hold enough depth for more experienced users. I found this task very entertaining, I also think it taught me a very important skill which is making posters! I will definitely assign this task to my students once I become a teacher, I can’t wait to see what kind of creative ideas they will come up with!

 That’s all! I hope to see you all in my next post

 But until then, ¡Adios!

[ardaozdincer]

KWL Chart on Padlet

What are the main causes of poverty? 

How does poverty cause death?

What is the rate of poverty in the world? 

 These are some of the questions we answered in our padlet this week. We made a know -  want - learn chart (turns out there are a lot we did not know) using padlet and it was a very useful tool, it helped us create the chart together with ease. I’ve found padlet to be very useful during this project and it definitely contributes to 21-st century learning skills such as group work, online learning, collaboration, and communication.

Even though I think padlet to be a useful tool overall when used by small groups, such as we were, I can think of some possible problems that might come up when used by groups more crowded than we were, one of such problems might be that it could be very hard to organize if used simultaneously by several users, as everyone can edit each others’ and posts can get on top of each other making it hard to maintain a certain layout. Nevertheless, I think I will use padlet in future keeping this possible problem in mind.

 That's all! I hope to see you all in my next post

 But until then, ¡Adios!

[ardaozdincer]

How would I change the world?

Hi everyone today I published my first podcast ever!

I found podcasting very easy and accessible since there is a lot of free sites such as Podomatic or Voki. It was enjoyable and exciting, I wish to use it in future as I think my students will benefit from it greatly.

That's all! I hope to see you all in my next post

But until then, ¡Adios!

[ardaozdincer]

21st Century Learning

Era of Technology

As you all know, we live in a time where the use of technology and media are almost everywhere. We use technology at work to sort out files and send them, we use it at our homes for a lot of purposes such as security, heat and entertainment and of course, we use it for education as well. Technology makes our lives a lot faster and easier, it enables us to do things in a matter of seconds which would take weeks or months to do a century ago. For children of this era to keep up with the rapidness of technology and be an active individual of society, they need to possess some critical skills.

Explaining all these skills in one post is not realistic but I made a word cloud for some of the critical skills a student should acquire and I will explain two keywords which, in my opinion, are the most important ones.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking has upmost importance because without it students can’t make logical and effective deductions.

Adaptation

Mastering adaptation as a skill is essential for an individual to gain success and hold on to it both for his/her career and social life

Which keyword is the most important in your opinion?

That's all! I hope to see you all in my next post

But until then, ¡Adios!

[ardaozdincer]

Hello Folks!

WELCOME!!!!!!

Thanks for visiting my blog! You will learn the usage of technology in terms of education and how to use it effectively.

I feel like this is going to be a great journey and I hope you will join me on it!

 What purpose does this blog serve?

I created this blog for my Educational Technologies class and I will be sharing my opinions about what we’ve learned in class. I decided to use Tumblr because of its user-friendly interface and popularity.

That's all! I hope to see you all in my next post

But until then, ¡Adios!