Gülnaz Akalın

MY EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES BLOG Hello Everyone! My name is Gülnaz AKALIN. This is my Educational Technologies Blog and I have been taking Educational Technology Classes in Marmara University. I will be posting lots of specific information about technology use especially in education area and introduce you new, effective and useful tools in my blog. I am studying Enlish Language Teaching in the University, so if you are interested in English and and 21 century teaching methods, I hope that you'll enjoy reading my blog very much. Thank you for visiting my page. Gülnaz Akalın.

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Good Bye For Now!..

Hello My Dear Followers,

As you know I have been taking an “Educational Technologies” course in my university for the last couple of months. While I was taking this beneficial, enjoyable, teaching and interesting course, I have written many different posts regarding my experience in my educational technologies blog. Now we have come to the end of our term and it is time to write a final post to say a short good bye! Soon I would like to continue writing in my blog as I discover new useful internet tools and technologic devices right after our short break.

Now, I’d like to mention briefly what I have learned about educational technologies during this outstanding blog writing journey. This course have been extremely beneficial for me because I am 30 years old and for quite some time I hadn’t got interested in the new internet tools on my own. Thus, by the help of this lesson, I had the chance to use many colorful tools for the first time in my life. For example, I have prepared a blog page for the first time and I like blogging because it is a relaxing and fun activity that gives me a chance to share my thoughts and emotions with you, my dear followers. Also, I could prepare my creative work and present it to the whole world instead of showing my HW assignments only to my teacher and my school friends, so the experience of writing a blog helps me to explore the world and show my abilities to a greater audience. Besides, they will be lasting longer in the internet and I’ll have a chance to share my creative products when I become an English Teacher in the future.

Before I took this course, I knew that technology integration in English language teaching is crucial, but I didn’t know how to use internet wisely in ELT area. This course has helped me to improve my 21st century teaching skills especially about internet literacy. Now, it seems sympathetic, easier and interesting to prepare colorful infographics or podcasts for my future students. I may also ask them to write their comments about my English class in a wiki page so they may read their schoolmates’ ideas freely. I may also assign them various tasks such as preparing magazine covers or book review pages. I have gained a great deal of experience on creative tasks and I know their advantages and disadvantages through my own experience. Thus, today I am many steps forward from where I stood about technology integration in educational area before I took this course.

The tasks that I enjoyed the most were preparing a 60 second long podcasting, creating an infographic and constructing a PSA against animal abuse. I love to talk and work individually, thus, I liked to prepare a podcast and it was very enjoyable to choose a free topic on my own. Also, I prepared my infographic by using Canva and I like that useful program. Lastly, in the PSA preparing process we worked with Sevcan and İdil and they were brilliant group members, so I enjoyed experiencing group work with them.

This lesson was an extraordinary one that I loved as it is. Thus, all I can say is that I feel lucky to have such a great experience before graduating as a teacher. My students will benefit a lot from doing similar activities in my English lessons and I’ll happily lead them in this process. I am looking forward to see what they will create in the future thanks to what I have learned about integrating technology in ELT in this class.

Hopefully we meet again in my new posts in the second semester!

Thank you for following me everyone!

See you soon. :):):)

Don’t forget our motto: If you have no reasons to cry today, then you have many reasons to laugh!

Best Wishes…

Gülnaz.

[gulnazakalin]

PSA- Animal Abuse

LET’S STOP ANIMAL ABUSE IN TURKEY

Hello My Dear Followers,

Today, my post is about a very crucial and sensitive topic: Animal Abuse. Unfortunately millions of animals are killed in Turkey every single year. In the first 6 months of 2020, this number is 522,349,599 animals! Tousands of valuable animal friends get tortured and suffer severe injuries. Most of them get both physically and psychologically hurt due to cruel attacks of humanbeings. This situation is overwhelming. We must stop this! Our friends with 4 feet deserve the chance to live happily. Let’s protect them together.

Please watch this PSA (public service announcement) that my friends İdil, Sevcan and I have prepared for you. This PSA  which is about animal abuse in Turkey and created by the three of us hopefully will affect you to take action. We want to raise awareness in our society.

While preparing this PSA, the most challenging thing for us was editing the video. We used Movavi Video Editor Plus as a tool for editing but some problems occurred and we had to do the editing twice. Also, 1 minute limit was very restrictive for a 3 people group to talk about such an important issue.   

Performing this PSA preperation activity and other duties have introduced me many technological tools that I can and will use in my English classes when I become a teacher. 

Please do something to protect animals. You can save many animals’ lives by signing the campaign from the link at the end of our PSA!

You can also follow my dear friends’s blogs, İdil and Sevcan are fabulous in blogging. You can also, watch our PSA by clicking here.

Being humane to the animals matters!

[gulnazakalin]

An Infograpic About The Online Distant Education in Higher Education in Turkey

Hi Everyone!

My dear followers, this week I have come up with a great new post and my subject is “An infographic about distant education in the universities.” As a very eager educational technology blogger, I love Canva as a great useful and easy tool. I advice you to make shiny, colorful infographics in order to attract your students’ attention in your lessons. When I become an English Teacher in 1,5 years, I’ll surely use inforaphics a lot in my classes especially in grammar lessons to give the rules to my students in a memorable way. Also, Canva and similar technological tools help the user a lot to find templates to prepare slides about almost everything in little amount of time. Please, integrate these nice internet sources into your studies and professional life so that you both save time and be successful in your online educations and jobs.

Both in higher education and also in professional business life, Canva and all those other technological tools are your best helpful friends forever!

SEE YOU IN MY NEXT POST!

[gulnazakalin]

Creating A Poster for My Magazine 

Hello my dear followers, I am back with a very lively and colorful post again. Our new task for this week is creating an online poster. We had two options: We were to create either a movie poster or magazine cover and I chose to make a magazine poster. In order to do this, I used PosterMyWall as a tool and I found it very useful. This duty required me to create a magazine cover for my  fictious theme magazine. I created a magazine cover for the people who wants to look beautiful and trendy. My magazine cover contains tips for 5 interesting hair styles and how to choose best pink lipstick. Also, trending fall hairstyles and information about face shape and what it signifies are included in my magazine, too. While creating my poster I tried to attract the attention of my audience. I believe that my magazine cover is helpful and appealing. I was so excited while creating my poster and I enjoyed it so much. I am also a pink lover so I would easily buy such a magazine if I had seen it on the shelves of a shop. I used postermywall to create my magazine cover and it was an easy and effective tool. I will offer this task to my students in future because it is so enjoyable and teaching. For example, I learned a lot about cover design, fashion and hair styles while preparing my poster. I hope that my students will enjoy and learn a lot of things by creating an online poster, too. This is the task that I enjoyed a lot while doing.

See you in my next post, always keep up your energy and positive attitude towards life!..

[gulnazakalin]

MIGRATION : A POTANTIAL EVENT THAT MAY CHANGE WORLD

Padlet ile yapıldı

THIS WEEK’S ISSUE IS “MIGRATION” AND I HAVE CREATED A GREAT PADLET FOR YOU WITH MY FRIENDS!!!

Migration is one of the most crucial issues in the world. In each and every year many people emigrate due to many different reasons such as labor migration, forced migration or displacement, human trafficking, modern slavery and environmental migration due to climate changes etc. All of these people face various hardships and they have to deal with various factors in order to survive and get used to the new living conditions of the new country that they have moved to. Migration is a temporary or permanent relocation of people and it is not a new concept. Up until now, there have been many huge migration waves in the history. For example in 622 Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) migrated from Mecca to Medina with the believers of Islam and in recent history, after WW1, a huge migration took place in central Europe. Also since 2013 Syrians are immigrating to Turkey.

My group members were İdil Eda May and Sevcan Mercanoğlu they have marvelous blog pages, too. I’d love you to follow İdil’s and Sevcan’s blog pages by clicking their bolded names here. As a group we have chosen this subject to work on padlet page because it is a very recent and daily issue in Turkey in the last 6-7 years. I used Padlet for the first time and that’s why I was very happy when I figured out that it is an easy tool to use. It was also very helpful and enjoyable for me to complete this assignment with my dear group members.

Padlet is a very useful tool, it is easy to use and anyone can put their info and comments on a page together as a group work by using this tool quickly. It also has a very stylish design as you will see, so padlet shows our research very nicely on internet. 

As a future English Teacher I find this tool as a very practical one and it provides the students a good chance for using their thechnological abilities as 21 century learners. Thus, when I graduate, I’ll ask my students to prepare their group works by using padlet. This will integrate them to global world and a 21 century learner must have these literacies.  

My Dear Followers, I have a last message for you: Pplease be sensitive and caring about people who were obliged to immigrate into our country and show how friendly and hospitable Turkish people are by accepting their rightful existance in our country. 

Sharing our soil and resources will make us stronger together. 

[gulnazakalin]

A Walk To Remember is an unforgettable novel by Nicholas Spark who is the famoust, # 1 New York Times bestselling author. This is a marvelous love book, full of inspirations especially for young people who want to find their way in life.

A BOOK REVIEW ABOUT “A WALK TO REMEMBER” BY NICHOLAS SPARKS

A Walk To Remember is an unforgettable novel by Nicholas Sparks who is the famous, # 1 New York Times bestselling author. This is a marvelous love book, full of inspirations especially for young people who want to find their way in life. However, actually it is a great book for every soul that wants to get motivated to be a better person. I have made a distinctive and moving book review for you right here in a Wiki page and I’d be glad if you could read it.

This book is witten by Spark’s based on his sister’s true life story, thus it is very touching and increadably remarkable. By the way, if you like romance and drama genre, you must take into account that Nicholas Sparks is a legend in this area. After you are done reading Jamie Sullivan’s and Landon Carter’s story please also watch the perfect film which is based on this novel. 

I wish you the best, don’t forget our motto: If you have no reasons to cry then you have many reasons to laugh today. :):) 

Gülnaz AKALIN.

[gulnazakalin]

Visit Original Link

A Podcast Against Islamophobia

My podcast is about one of the most unpleasant, major issues in today’s world which is “Islamophobia”. As a true believer in Islam, I myself find Islamophobia as a pathetic problem and a big contradiction because Islam hates violence but people misunderstand Islam and hate Islam because they think it appreciates and increases violence in the world. In fact, Islam is the last divine religion that Allah has sent us and Islam teaches all of us how to be humanistic, caring, helpful and nice to everyone around us. 

However, since some political groups show Muslims as violent, conscienceless terrorists on purpose, most of the world has a negative image about Islam. I think it is an important duty to work as hard as possible in order to change this wrong perception.

My personal plan is to be a graduate of the faculty of theology (I am studying it as a second university right now) and continue improving my knowledge about Quran verses and the Hadiths and the Sunnah (sayings and deeds) of Prophet Muhammad –Peace Be upon Him. By using my expertise in English Language, I want to spread love of Islam to foreign countries in the future.

Since I love talking and working individually, completing this podcast task was really fun for me. Also, I could choose any topic so I had no difficulties in preparing this task. I will absolutely ask my students to do a similar task in the future because it’s a creative and enjoyable task.

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As 21st Century Learners and Teachers How Can We Adjust Ourselves to This Rapidly Changing World?

In this new world order, the computers have replaced many of the manual materials and old fashioned equipment in daily life. Especially nowadays, due to the covid-19 pandemic which has risen abruptly in all over the world, the concept of “school” has even changed dramatically. As students and teachers, we used to get together in the classrooms face-to-face but just in a couple of months a virus came and set up its own rules. This taught us that we have to adjust ourselves to these rapidly changing conditions and usage of technology got much more important now.

Due to these circumstances, 21st century skills get very crucial day by day. According to me, 21st century learning means to be able to use social media, internet, applications, electronic resources, computers, and all of the opportunities that technology provides us in order to become a successful learner. For example, 21st century learners have special skills like creativity, collaboration, effective communication, having information and media literacy skills, flexibility, leadership, initiative and productivity.

In this global world, if the English Teachers integrate technology into their lessons and teach all those mentioned skills, they will raise all-rounder and multitasking students who can communicate in a foreign language effectively, interact with the world on their own and improve their language after school. 

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WELCOME TO MY EDU TECH BLOG!

Hello My Dear, Precious Followers! 

I am Gülnaz AKALIN. I study English Language Teaching at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey. This is my third year in that beautiful university, so I’ll be a graduate of ELT soon. :):):) 

I am already a graduate of Uskudar American Academy, a well-known high school which teaches English with native speakers, thus I teach English to my students as a tutor in my private lessons. As an upcoming English Teacher,

 I wanted to improve myself about today’s technology in order to integrate with today’s global word opportunities. That’s why I have started to take an Educational Technologies course in order to learn how to use technology in the area of education and especially in my future lessons. Therefore, from today on, I’ll share my ideas, daily experiences, the information I acquire and my personal emotions in this blog with you about educational technologies. 

Every week I’ll try to share new, useful, enjoyable and interesting posts with you. I hope you stay tuned! Please your ideas and comments with me! 

SEE YOU SOON!!!

#welcome #educational #technology