A Contemporary view "Integrating Tech. into Edu.

Hi there, my name is Enis, I am 19 years old & currently I am majoring ELT in Marmara University/Turkey.

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My reflection on the course and overall experience

Hi people, this will be my last post on this blog in regard to my Instructional Technologies course. However, I am still thinking of continuing to write on this wall about more personal stuff.

I would like to start this post by reflecting on to my “teaching with technology statement” (the post titled “you know nothing”).

I still almost completely agree with the idea of people perceiving technology as a “cool tool” rather an actual phenomenon.

However, MY OWN perception has changed significantly over the course of the whole term as I got to use technology more actively. The tasks given helped me see the advantages more clearly and understand the practicality and benefits it brings to the classroom.

Besides these, the variety of the ways that how it can be integrated in lessons has enabled me to form new ideas and lesson plans in my future classrooms.

As for my reflection on the course;

Firstly, I really and TRULY want to say that I am very happy and thankful to have this course I think it’s one of the most beneficial and relatable from the ones we had this semester. I truly enjoyed completing every task and I think they were all very well-selected and moderately easy. The only thing I didn’t like and made the course more challenging was the overlapping tasks.

Also, I have to admit that this course has made me feel more comfortable about the “entertainment part” of my future lessons because I now know that I can use the help of technology to make things more fun by using the proper tool/ website.

I don’t really have any suggestions to improve the course and I don’t think the tasks given were TOO much, the theory parts of the lessons were also good. Maybe (if absolutely necessary) the Word cloud or the RSS feed task can be cut off.

Thank you all for support and attention. Peace. :))

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Creating an Infographic

Hi people, in this post I will talk about the infographic that I have created.

Like most of the other tasks I have mentioned in my blog, this was my first creating an infographic.

In my infographic I introduced my 4 favorite Web 2.0 tools, respectively Blabberize.com, mindmeister.com, photofunia.com and kahoot.com. 

I gave some brief information explaining the tool, talked about their affordances and constraints, and why you should use them.

Hope you’ll like it, Enjoy!! :)

You can also click here to see my infographic in the original website.

https://codecondo.com/web-tools-services-highly-rated-by-experts/

P.S: Tools used; https://create.piktochart.com/

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RSS feed

Hi people, in this post I will talk about what RSS feed is. 

An RSS feed is a kind of a tool that provides it’s users with great practicality and convenience. It basically shows the contents of the posts in a more reader-friendly format. It also makes it easier to follow blogs by informing you about the content that is shared.

I personally use an online RSS reader which is named flowreader.com

My favorite blog among the ones that I am following is ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org

She is an English Language teacher and authoress from Turkey. She also produces various materials/ works on different fields of ELT.

In her blog she shares;

About the upgrades and innovations/ developments from the ELT field,

About the integration of technology into EFL classrooms,

A ton of tools and websites that can be helpful for EFL teachers and learners -with instructions and brief information- (dictionaries, vocabulary tools etc.),

Ideas for classroom activities (games, puzzles etc.),

I highly recommend following her blog. Her posts can be useful to all kinds of teachers (from pre-service to experienced).

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Creating a movie poster

Hi people, this post will be about my “creating a movie poster” task.

The task was pretty simple and wasn’t time-consuming, basic editing skills is more than enough if you planning to do such activity.

I think this task is especially useful in developing learners’ visual skills and creativity. It also helps them to learn about editing. So I would give such a task in the future.

Here is my poster.

P.S: Tools used: https://www.postermywall.com

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Digital storytelling

Hi people, today’s post will be about digital storytelling. Below, you can find the steps of creating a digital story.

Find an idea

Write the draft/script

Find the fitting images to your story

Record voice over

Edit the photos and the voice

Add sound effects, titles, music etc. (optional)

Edit the transition(optional)

Export the product

(We skipped the optional ones in our digital story.)

This was my first experience with a digital story and I find the overall process really fun and simple, however, finding the tool that provides all the affordences we need was a bit challenging.

I would definitely give my students a task about digital storytelling.

I think it is one of best activities (if not the best), that supports the development of 4C’s simultaneously.

It encourages collaboration and communication(students exchanging ideas etc.) especially when given in pairs, stimulates brainstorming, creativity and critical thinking(drawing images and thinking out the plot etc.).

Here is our story. I worked with Ahmet Can KARATAŞ.

Hope you’ll like it, Enjoy! :))

P.S: Tools used: https://tr.kizoa.com

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Evaluating an ELT website

Hi people, today I am posting about my evalution of an ELT website which is named as follows; http://www.5minuteenglish.com/ . As the name already suggests, this website is designed to teach English to it’s users, aiming mainly teenagers and adults.

 Hope you’ll like my evaluation, feel free to comment on the parts you agree or disagree :) Enjoy!

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

I ransacked the whole website and the internet, unfortunately, I couldn’t find any kind of information related to the author/s of the website.

2) What is the content of the website? 

In this website, you can find the sections that are listed below;

Grammar (describing the usage of words, various examples in sentences etc.),

Reading, (lots of texts with a great range of topics to choose from such as special occasions and TV shows, new vocabulary items are highlighted with its answers),

Vocabulary, (explaining the word formation, it’s root etc.., differences between the British & American versions of specific words etc.),

Listening lessons (real life dialogues, lists of new vocabulary items, true or false questions etc.) However, I have to note that some of the audio recordings are not clear and hard to understand for beginners.

Slangs and idioms. (Phrasal verbs and their use with different words, use of idioms based on various topics etc.)

Pronunciation (intonations, pronunciations for specific sounds in English, phonological rules etc.)

Within these lessons, there are mostly textual explanations and question-answer exercises. For listening lessons, there are also audio recordings. Besides that, there is a list of other websites, which may help language learners improve their language skills.

A listening exercise. Dialogues and the vocabulary list can be seen.

3) Who is the target audience?

EFL teenagers and adults are the main audience.

4) What is the purpose of the website?

This website is designed to make English language easier to learn by giving you short and easy explanations and exercises.

5) Is there a date that shows when the site has last been updated?

No there is not. However, the website seems to be updated frequently.

6) Accuracy of the information- Are there any errors?

Both the information and language are accurate. I didn’t encounter any errors.

7) Are there any broken links?

I have checked %90 of links in the “lessons” section and there are not any broken links. However, some images aren’t available. Also some of the links to the (additional) websites that were advised to be checked were broken.

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

Images that are still working are of good quality, they are not 10/10 but good enough to be beneficial.

9) How can it be applied to EFL teaching?

This website can be especially useful for teachers, there are various activities with the answer keys ready and they are easy to download. They can be given as homework or can be used as revision exercises. You can also edit and reutilize some of the audio recordings and use them in your classroom activities. There is also a forum-like section in which learners can discuss the answers of specific questions. 

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The Padlet task

Hi people, today I will be posting about my experience with Padlet. Hope you’ll enjoy!

While preparing the task; we made some background reading about the issue to get more information about the situation. I also made some brainstorming with my groupmates in order to compose my opinions on the issue.

I think Padlet is useful in that; it serves as a secure, easily-manageable and stable location for the student-teacher and student-student cooperation and communication. You can save lots of time by using Padlet in terms of sharing the materials and resources for your class. It gives students the feel of freedom and comfort while doing their tasks/homeworks. Besides that Padlet lets students to see each other’s ideas on certain subjects and makes it easier to think about the given task/project.

I found it enjoyable to work on Padlet. Cooperation and being in constant communication with my groupmates made the whole process very not-challenging.

This task contributes to the 21st Century Learning by this means;

Students virtually make use of the technology instead of using it as a “cool-tool”.

The learning process becomes more learner-centered and teacher is the facilitator. (Only directs the task and gives instructions, it’s the students who do the real work)

Students’ ideas reach more than just the teacher, they share for their audience.

Click here to see our padlet wall. Enjoy your time! :)

I am also attaching the links to my groupmates so you can check their blogs out too :))

Cihan, Ahmet Can, Esma, Barış and Çağlar.

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My book review

Hi people, today, I will be posting about a book that I’ve read a while ago and I find very striking, The Ritual by Adam Nevill. In the link I attached below, you will find the necessary information that will make you have a clue about the book. Hope you’ll like it and enjoy your reading! :)

Click here to see my review.

ourbookreviews [licensed for non-commercial use only] / The Ritual

The Ritual deals with events that 4 old university friends Dom, Phil, Luke, and Hutch pass through after their reunion for a hiking trip through the Swedish Forests. The action begins when the group is forced to take a shortcut through the woods when Dom injures his knee.

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Podcasting

Hi people, today, I will be posting about my very first podcasting experience; 

While creating our podcast; Firstly, we made up a story and recorded our voices reading that story with an audio recorder.

Then we found and used an editing program to add sound effects to our recording.

The whole process wasn’t that hard, the only thing that we had difficulty in doing was finding the right editing program (bcs. most of them are paid or have very limited options).

We would use podcasting in the future. Solely because it allows students to listen to their own voices and makes them aware of their speech errors.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Ahmet Can KARATAŞ  and I worked together while preparing the podcast.

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You know nothing

Hi people, in today’s post, I will be sharing my “teaching with technology philosophy statement” with you. Hope you’ll like it, enjoy! :))

Well, using technology to assist teaching & learning is a topic that been around for quite a long time. In today’s world if you picked out ten people from the street and asked if using technology in teaching is useful probably all of them would say “yes” and the only thing that comes into their mind when you asked that question would be slideshows, like literally. The “actual” part of the technology is nowhere around to be known (probably because smart phones have dominated the whole concept and are the only part of it that almost every people can actually fit into their daily lives). But the truth is, uses of technology are innumerable and even me myself wasn’t aware that these uses and advantages expands to such higher levels until the last few years. We can list a tiny bit of those as follows;

Technology;

Can be used as a visual aid,

Makes virtual and online learning possible

Makes almost every source and material accessible without paying anything,

Is a platform that can gather masses  in one place,

Promotes individual and self-paced learning,

Increases students’ creativity and innovation.

These listed above are very general examples, you can check a little more detailed ones from here.

https://www.indianweb2.com/2015/08/10/how-technology-trends-impacting-the-education-industry-in-india-770/

But of course with the advantages comes disadvantages as well.

Technology;

Can be very distracting if not managed correctly,

Can make learners inattentive to the lessons,

By giving all the powers to control everything by a click of mouse, it can make students lazy,

Can make learners disconnected from the real world (online education tools etc.)

Makes cheating inevitable,

May not be accessible by every learner and could put some of them at a disadvantage.

You can also check very good and more explanatory examples from here.

https://steemit.com/life/@kenan1989/disadvantages-of-technology-in-education

As for me;

If you ask me if I consider myself as a technology user, well, definitely no at least not yet. I find educational technology very hard to get used to. However, I am constantly learning a lot of new things and getting more and more familiar with the whole concept in the hope of becoming proficient in using technology by the time I become a teacher. 

You should do so too :)) 

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"Then&Now" 21st Century Learning

Hi people, in this post I will be talking about 21st Century Learning, referring to the wordcloud seen above;

When old ways of learning started to become outdated a new term was coined “21st Century Learning”. 21st Century Learning aims to provide the best & authentic education for today’s world’s learners.

There are key subjects which are crucial if one wants to success in the 21st Century Learning. Some of the most important of these are under the title of Learning and Innovation Skills; the 4C’s;

collaboration which means the learners ability to work with the others,

critical-thinking which means the learners ability to form a judgment from what they know,

creativity which means the learners ability to create something new and useful

communication which means the learners ability to interact with others in a meaningful way.

21st aims to make learners USE the language instead of justpointlessly memorizing the grammar rules.

We can list the main differences between 21st Century Learning and old ways of teaching as follows:

The teacher functions as a facilitator instead of a narrator of the grammar.

Students are given real-life task as much as possible instead of artificial ones.  

Students are perceived as “doers & creators” instead of teacher being perceived as the “maker”.

Technology is integrated into teaching instead of being used only situationally.

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Milestones of technology integration into the educational field (with timeline).

Hi people, in this post, I will be making a brief explanation about the integration of technology into education; 

As the timeline that I have created suggests, the very first developments of CALL started to be seen in the early 1930’s to the 40’s through some earlier studies, also we can see the first occurrences of basic techniques such as mechanical translations in this period.

Shortly afterwards CALL became a phenomenon and was acknowledged around the globe.

Starting with 50’s, improved systems & programming language were developed.

As the first stage of CALL we can see Behavioristic CALL. Which consisted of structural-linguists’ methods such as drilling and was based on the audio-lingual method.

In the 80’s emergence of the microcomputers contributed to the CALL by a vast amount.

The present stage of CALL arose in the mid 90’s.

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Welcome to my new blog! :))

Hi people & welcome, my name is Enis and currently I am a 2nd grade ELT student of Marmara University, in this blog my posts will mostly be about the integration of technology into FL classes. PS: This is my first experience with a blogging site so I might get sloppy with my posts time to time. Hope you’ll like my blog. - Enjoy! :))