nikolykind(hayrunisa altın)

Hello there,humankind. This is a pre-service English teacher's page.

[nikolykindsblog]

To Bid You Farewell…

As summer birds sing their songs, we are reaching the end of another academic year…Finals are around the corner… But don’t worry after the summer break we will meet again!

Throughout this semester, I am really grateful that we were asked to start a blog page. Prior to the ICT course, I had never written any blogs on any website. However, I was never distant from writing. I have been writing poems and short stories as well as writing a diary.

I always thought writing my feelings, thoughts and emotions was the best way to convey them. However, I never shared my work because I always thought it was not enough. I always kept them to myself and perceived them as private, and I only shared some of them with the people I really formed an emotional bond with.However, sharing my thoughts here helped me a lot, it decreased my concerns about criticism and helped me deal with my perfectionist side. I am really grateful that I had the chance to overcome these issues.

Throughout this academic year, I enjoyed all the projects that I have made however, my favourite one was the digital storytelling. As I have already mentioned earlier, I really like writing fictional works. It was a great chance to show my creative side! In addition to the story writing process, it was really fun to design the characters and do the voice acting. I really love the activities that we do not have to act like ourselves and be someone new! Before the ICT course, I was already knowledgeable about the technologies of today’s world, however I had limited idea about how to integrate them into the classroom environment. I always thought that technology would hinder the creativity and critical thinking skills of the students. But with time, I learned that it is only true when they are using it without proper literacy. I also learned that not only the students but also we as future English teachers must be literate about the technological tools and their limits and affordances.

This song is a gift from me to listen if you ever miss me during the summer break! That was all from me for today! Enjoy the summer humankind!

[nikolykindsblog]

TALKING WITH HISTORICAL FIGURES

Hi there humankind! Long time no see! I have been really busy with my final studies after the Bayram Holiday which was full of drama at home! But unfortunately, now I am here with my last project for this semester! In this project, we were asked to chat with a historical figure using the AI tool Magic School. I chose to talk with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as I really admire him.

Before I started to work on this task, I was a bit stressed as I had not used Magic School. I was unaware of the skills it possesses; what kinds of stuff it can generate, whether it was only a chat-based tool or not. But once I logged in to it, it did not take so much time for me to sort things out as the website was designed in a neat way. It was easy for users to find the tools and users were even allowed to adjust the prompts as they wished. Nevertheless, I had hard times too. After finishing my conversation I wanted to save the transcript and could not find a way. For this reason, I had to copy every paragraph one by one and honestly, it was time-consuming. Apart from that, I personally believe that the chance of speaking with a historical figure is an unbelievable experience. If you said that it was possible 5 years ago, I would probably assume that you are out of your mind! Developing an AI tool to talk like a certain person is really a hard job to fulfil as it requires so much information about that person’s life and personal traits. However, I think if I were to really talk with Atatürk he would not be answering me that formally, I believe he would be more genuine with me. In the future, I will definitely encourage my students to use these kinds of AI tools as they provide unique experiences to the users. Additionally, students can enlarge their knowledge of words as well as gaining insights about historical events. That was all from me for today humankind! Take care until next time!

This is the first version of my report:

And this is the revised version of my report:

Finally this is the transcript of our conversation:

[nikolykindsblog]

ONLINE COLLABORATIVE WRITING

Hello there humankind! It has been a while since I have been away. However I am back with a new task!

We were asked to work in groups and write an online work collaboratively. My group members were Burak and Aysel for this task. There were many online writing tool options to choose from but we decided to do a film review so we used Google Docs. The movie we chose was The Silence of the Lambs and it was Aysel’s suggestion. Even though I am not that into horror/ thriller movies I really enjoyed the movie. Thanks Aysel!

After watching the movie we opened our review page. It was the easiest part. However, at first we did not know how to allow other members to edit the page. But after some time we figured it out. Apart from that I can clearly say that we worked at ease throughout the project. We were always in contact and we were always checking the page to see if there is any mistake or anything missing. Thanks to Google Docs we did not have to spend time to discuss the minor errors, we could just edit it in a few seconds!

After finishing our review we asked our friends to reflect on that and write their thoughts in the comments and we did the same thing for them. Doing this peer review session enabled us to see things from different perspectives and dive deeper into them as well as creating a chance to be more engaged with our classmates.

Thanks to this project, I am now well aware that working in groups really affects the way you approach a problem. And now that I have the knowledge to use Google Docs, I can integrate it to my future studies.

See you next time!

You can see Aysel’s and Burak’s blogs too!

You can see our review here.

[nikolykindsblog]

DIGITAL STORY-TELLING TASK

Hello there humankind! Long time no see! But I have a surprise for you all! Me and my friends; Selin and Dicle created a digital story!

We were given 3 choices to work on but as a group we decided to work on a fictional story as we thought it would be more fun and creative. We did not spend much time deciding on the theme of the story as I already had an idea during the class and in the break I immediately shared it with my friends and they thought it would be fun.

So we wrote a really short draft and made changes to shorten it make it more precise. I think this part was the easiest as we already had the main story in mind, we did only minimal alternations.

Our story is about a little girl called Anabelle, who gets lost in the forest when she was trying to find blueberries for her mom so that she could bake blueberry muffins. Fortunately, a fairy finds Anabelle and gives her the blueberries she needed and shows her the way home making sure Anabelle is safe in her room with her mother.

Honestly, what made me stressed the most was the animation part. Because I have never animated anything before! At first we talked about using the video-game The Sims 4 to animate our story but later we thought it would be so hard to create every scene and it would take so much time, so we searched for other options. We had to options; Storyboardthat and Toonytool. We moved on with the former one and created our animation as we wanted. After that, we recorded our voices, it was the funniest part because we needed to change our voices to better convey the emotions. And that made us laugh so much! Towards the end, the site that we created our animation gave an error and we thought our progress was completely gone! We were so stressed because we thought that we would have to recreate everything. But all of a sudden, fortunately we found out there was nothing wrong. Would I assign such kind of homework to my students? Yes! But according to their age, I would give different instructions. For example for younger learners I would choose the site myself and try to teach them how to use it step by step. This kind of tasks helps students to show how creative they are as well as practising their language skills. You can visit my friends’ blogs; Dicle and Selin

You can watch our digital story here:

See you next time!

[nikolykindsblog]

PODCAST PROJECT: VOX-POP

Hello there humankind! Long time no see! But I think it is worth waiting because I have a podcast for you! Actually, I did not work alone during this project, my classmate Aysel was my partner. We decided to do a vox pop because we thought it would be more fun and interesting. The Vox-pop podcasts aim to gather personal beliefs or opinions of different people on a specific central topic or a question. In our case, the question we asked the people was “What id the most overrated show you have ever seen?”. We have interviewed 11 people from our faculty building, including students and some instructors. The responses ranged from How I Met Your Mother, one of the most well-known sitcoms, to Game of Thrones.

You can listen to our podcast here.

Vocaroo is a quick and easy way to share voice messages over the interwebs.

I can say that my pair I did pretty well. We managed to decide on a topic very quickly. Then it was time to record. We were so lucky because my pair Aysel knows nearly everyone. We did not struggle to find people to interview. We recorded everything in one day. The hardest part was merging and editing the audio recordings. Neither of us had an experience like this before. We did not know what website or app to use. We searched the net for a free, simple tool, and we finally managed to edit our audio as we wanted. The overall process was so fun except for the editing part, we were so stressed as we were inexperienced.

I would definitely assign my students podcasts as a project because based on my own experience I can assure that it improves collaboration skills. As a future teacher in the 21st century, it is mandatory for me to facilitate collaborative skills and include materials and tasks that will be beneficial. Apart from that, I think students can reflect on themselves as they record themselves talking. Hearing and spotting every mistake they make, the mistakes can be eliminated with self-correction.

That was all from me for today. Stay tuned for more, humankind!

You can see my friend’s blog here.

Untitled

an English pre-service teacher who loves pinterest

Vocaroo is a quick and easy way to share voice messages over the interwebs.

[nikolykindsblog]

CYBERBULLYING INFOGRAPHIC

Hello the humankind! I am finally sharing something that I've been so excited for! My duty in this assignment was to individually create an infographic on the ethical and legal issues in technology use. We were asked to focus on one specific issue. There was no limitation in terms of the way we create our infographics or on which website. However, we were informed that no AI-generated material will be tolerated.

I chose the topic "cyberbullying" because when I was in high school, I was one of the sufferers back then I had no idea how to deal with such kind of stuff, and did not know that when someone harasses you on the web it still counts as bullying. That's why I did not have the chance to seek help and had to go through so much that my mental health was affected and in return, my academics were worse than ever. Based on my personal experience I think there are many more people who face cyberbullying than the actual number that is reported. For these reasons, I wanted to work on cyberbullying to help raise awareness on this critical issue of our era.

I created my infographic using https://www.canva.com/ because I already have existing experience working with it. I think Canva really allows you to be creative with its wide range of tools and layouts. However, I have never made an infographic on Canva before this and actually, it did not have layouts that are designed for infographics. That is why I had to use a poster layout for it. This made me spend more time because I had to design and calculate everything by myself. But I think this is what made my infographic unique. I think learners with lower proficiency levels will benefit from infographics more than any other learner group because we use simpler vocabulary and grammar in infographics. Both seeing and creating infographics in the English classroom may be beneficial for them to reinforce or improve their vocabulary knowledge.

What about you humankind? Do you think infographics serve a benefit for learners?

This is Canva's web page if you are interested!

Unsupported client – Canva

Unsupported client – Canva

This is the link which will allow you to see the online version.

[nikolykindsblog]

The Procedure of Learning in the 21st-Century

Hello there, humankind!

In today's post, I will be sharing my insights on 21st-century learning. I hope you enjoy reading!

The process of learning has been in our lives for ages, however the way we define it has changed dramatically and it is still changing. When the term 21st century is concerned, there are some roles that are assigned to the learners and to the teachers. Not only has the definition we assigned to learning altered but also the way it is employed has undergone inevitable modifications as a result of the technological developments all across the globe. As an English teacher candidate, I believe competent teachers ought to be aware of these swift changes in our perception of learning and the new approaches on how to implement and facilitate learning.

To begin with, the division of roles in the classroom in the 21st century is very different from the past. The predominant duty of the instructors was to present knowledge. The information was introduced to the learners by the teacher. However, because of the requirements of the 21st century, the passiveness of the learners had to be changed. Now, they are not only being provided with existing knowledge, but they are asked to discover it themselves thus making them active processors of knowledge. As a result, teachers are no longer merely the source of information. Rather, in this era they have to act as a guide when their learners have difficulties. It can be said that in the classrooms of the past, the active agents were teachers while in the 21st century, learners have become active agents.

Similarly, there has been a change in terms of the meaning we attribute to the concept of learning and the implication strategies. In the past, I think learning was seen as the procedure of mere memorization. If you are good at memorizing then you would be assumed to be successful back then. However, in the 21st century, I personally believe that memorization is not the key requirement for being a good learner. In this era learners are expected to think outside the box; they have to be creative, they need critical thinking and analyzing skills as well as the information about the current technological developments.

To conclude, in the 21st century learners are expected to be more active and productive. As an English pre-service teacher, I have reconsidered my responsibilities on how to best facilitate my students' skills and make them competent.

Thank you all for reading! Don't forget to share your own ideas in the comments section, I believe exchanging ideas will be beneficial for all of us! Hope to hear from you again!

[nikolykindsblog]

Welcome, Humankind!

Hello again, humankind! Now that you have illustrated who I am, what I am into, what major I am studying and all, I think it is time to explain the duty and the objectives of my blog.

Normally people create blogs to share their personal ideas on literally anything,from rocket science to gardening. However, in my blog my focus will be on the discussions, homework and the projects that will be assigned in one of my school subjects at Marmara University in the departmant of ELT, Instructional Technologies and Material Design in English Language.

If you are interested in English Language Teaching and integration of technology in education, you are more than welcome in my page! Stay tuned to hear from me and my studies. Also, I would really appreciate it if you can share your own ideas in the comments section. Looking forward to talk to you again!

[nikolykindsblog]

Hi there, humankind!

My name is Hayrunisa Altın and I am 20 years old. Currently I am an ELT student at Marmara University in Istanbul. The reason why I created this blog page is to share my journey as a pre-service English teacher. Additionally,I hope to inspire people and get inspired from them in return. I think it is time to get to know me better!

Who is Nikolykind?

You may wonder why my user name is Nikolykind instead of something related to my real name. Back in highschool, my close friends used to call me Nikoly, which still makes me feel unique. Like I am one of a specific kind.Then I attached the word kind at the end.I actually thought it would be creative to use it as a pen name. To refer my readers,I have come up with a nickname too, Humankind!

Apart for my interest in English language and Education, I am very keen on listening to different genres of music. Heavy-metal, rock and post-punk are some of them. This is one of the concerts I've been too!

Another interest of mine is fashion and life style. I am an alternative person and I usually prefer thrifted or second-hand clothes because they are much more cheaper compared to fast-fashion products. Additionally second-hand products are sustainable and don't cause harm to the environment as much as fast-fashion products do. I personally believe they re cooler too! Here are some of my stylings:

And last but not least, maybe the most neglected interest of mine is drawing. Although I can not spare much time to it, drawing is still the best comforting acivity for me. Here are some of my art works:

That was all about me! Looking forward to see your comments, Humankind! Until my next post, take care. Peace out!