Irem-Love

Hi everyone! I'm İrem and this is my kitty Aşk. I promise we are going to learn a lot of things about English and technology integration in language teaching/learning. Stay tuned!

[uniquelingominds]

It’s time to say goodbye!

With this course, we have all learned to design our materials in a way that is too far from being traditional and I think this is the biggest strength of this course. As for its weakness, I wish we had the chance to complete some of the assignments during class time. Because sometimes I have felt uncomfortable using some tools couldn't find my way through it. Actually this is not the weakness of the course but weakness of the time allocated for this course. Most of the assignments have been quite easy to complete but I  have had torubles dealing with the Augmented Reality assignment it was I guess due to the fact that I wasn't familiar with this type of an assignment. Creating a flipped-classroom video was my favorite since we can use be more creative in an online environment and it is much more time-consuming than in-person classes. I have liked the Augmented Reality the least. Most probably it has something to do with the troubles that I've experienced while completing the assignment since I couldn't download the necessary app. I will strongly recommed the newbies of the next year to attend to all of the courses, push their limits and be creative as much as possible! This course has taught me how I can design the most creative materials while saving time for basic neccessities of the class and keeping the boundaries of the class.

It was all nice to reach out all of you during this semester! Hope you've found my materials and effords valuable! Take Good Care and Goodbye!

[uniquelingominds]

WebQuest: Erasmus+ Programme

Erasmus Student Exchange Program: Introduce Yourself and Your Country! INTRODUCTION Have you ever wanted to live abroad and experience a foreign culture, meet new people and learn a foreign language? Have you ever been excited to share your ideas and to create good things with other students from...

Here is another technology-enhanced project! This project is so beneficial from both students' and teachers' ends. Students will be able to do technology-enhanced research while Webquest documents guide them through all the steps. With this project are students will have a chance to introduce themselves to someone who doesn't speak the same language. They will learn some aspects of specific cultures such as landmarks, cuisins, museums and festivals. They will use these aspects while creating a video with their pairs. And our Webquest gives them a strong motivation to create this video! They are to upload their videos on Youtube and the owner of the most watched video will be able to attend the Erasmus+Exchange Programme! Research, guidance, technology-enhanced and real life motivation... These are the magical beans of our Webquest that I and my pair Melisa Turan have created. You should also check her blog to broaden your horizon.

[uniquelingominds]

Hello there! In this post, I'd like to talk about Flipped Classroom Approach. As a teacher, if you want to focus more on the activities or the production and cover the basic, explanatory rules out of the class time, this approach is bliss for you. For example, let's have a look at the flipped classroom that we've created with Abdurrahman. Our lesson subject was Comparative & Superlative Adjectives. Firstly, We prepared a presentation and we used Canva as a tool. Abdurrahman took care of superlative adjectives and I was responsible for comparative adjectives. We first gave the students a basic definition of the subject without confusing them. Then, we introduced clear example sentences in keeping with inductive learning. We also included a lot of pictures since as we all know visual prompts are great tools to activate students' schemata. After we were finished with the presentation, I shared my screen and recorded my voice on Zoom while giving the lesson. Here, I prefered not be visible on the video in order not to distract students. However, it is likely that some students would like to see their teacher on the video. For the future record, I'm planning to make a video that I am visible on in order to compare the students' reflections to these different types of videos. This is basically how we created the video. First, students are supposed to watch the video. Then, in the class we'll have a chance to see more productive materials and exercises. I will insert the links for exercises so you can also benefit from the websites and if you want to watch our flipped classroom video, you are more than welcome!

Links for exercises:

Gap Fill

Scrambled Sentence

Random Wheel

[uniquelingominds]

Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation

A corpus-based activity is the best way to put the students on the spot and make them think analytically and systematically. If they are trained properly, they can get to use the corpus-based sources by themselves. This is such a bliss because in this respect they can make their way through inductive learning. Students can discover some grammatical rules and patterns by themselves. They can easilt make connections between some nouns and verbs, accordingly they can learn how and when to put them together. Of course, as I mentioned before, a training and a preparation is a must. As teachers, we should guide our students along the way. At the first place, we should introduce them with the easy tasks and encourage them to discover the source they use step by step. Set aside all of these advantages, there are some disadvantages as well. For example, the need for computers and software systems, these are not available to all teachers and learners. Teachers or students can lack the interest in corpus-based activities. This activity takes quite a lof time and trainig, so it can be time-consuming and impractical. All the results can be confusing and the students might lose their way through making proper analises and relations. However, if we have enough time and necessary facilities, students can overcome these dificulties and make the best of it with the help of their teachers.

[uniquelingominds]

As its title suggests, this timeline is about the history of technology in language learning. We can examine the projects, apps, and software created for ELT purposes over the years. While I was creating this timeline, I had trouble organizing all the information by years. Especially, some timeline tools made this process really difficult. Some of them wanted a lot of details while I was trying to choose the basic and important ones. In the end, I came up with "Microsoft Timeline Template". It was so practical to use. The fact that I was using this template on Power Point made everything so easy and familiar for me.

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Introduction

In this blog, we will learn many things about the historical relationship between technology and language learning. You will have a chance to engage your language learning process in some technological tools whether you are a student who is taking language classes in a school environment or a person who is trying to learn a language on his/her own. It is good news, especially for those who are no longer intrigued by the traditional ways of language learning.