WHAT DID THE COURSE CONTRIBUTE TO ME?

       
     In this century, we are surrounded by technology. It is everywhere, on the buses, at cafes, in schools and the new generation is growing up with technology. I even see some babies playing with cellphones and tablets in the baby carriages.  As preservice teachers, we should be aware of the danger :) and we should think that we may take the advantageous of technology for education. But how? Are we sufficient for using it? At the beginning of this course, I thought that I was capable enough to use technology for my education in the future. In my opinion, using technology for education would be easy. However later I learned that I had just the ability to open google and search for something.

     Thanks to this course, I discovered many sites and tools which make my teaching effective in the future. Now I think that I am a really capable of using technology for education. I can provide my students with the tools to create a song. I can teach them how to evaluate a film or create stories on the internet. I can recommend some useful mobile apps to them for learning English. In this way, I can get my students' attention, They will be more motivated to engage in the learning activities. They will be active and develop their skills like creative thinking, writing. The most important point is that they can take the pleasure in learning.

     At the end of the course, I am glad with having this course. It made me advantageous in terms of using technology beneficially. I am now aware of that there are much more tools and sites for education and they are waiting to be used. In my opinion, each preservice teacher should take a course like this course and learn how to integrate technology into his or her lessons in order to be an effective teacher and have effective teaching.

MEETING A NEW USEFUL TOOL: STORYBIRD

     Hello everyone!
     Our last task is giving information about the tool which we presented in the class. We had chosen Storybird as a tool to present with my partner Buse and we introduced it in the class last week. Now it is time for you to meet with Storybird.

     Storybird is a platform which lets anyone make stories or in seconds. Especially it gives opportunities to teachers and students to develop their writing and creative thinking skills. You can write stories by adding some photos to your story and publish them on the website. You can also write a poem on the website. However you must sign in Storybird, before you come to the process of creating a story. You can sign in Storybird for free via your email address or you can create a new address there.

   
     After signing in Storybird, you should decide what you will write. Are you going to write a poem or create a picture book or create a longform story? It is up to you! After you decide what you will write, you begin to create your own material. For example if you want to create a picture book, you write your story and according to the topic of the story, you can add a cover page and some images which are given on the site. Finally you can and publish it privately or publicly. If you want to publish it privately, only your family and friends can see your work, but if you choose to publish it publicly, everyone can access and read it, you can also share your story somewhere else by the means of the embed code of your story.

IN TERMS OF LEARNING ENGLISH

     English language teachers can benefit from storybird. Teachers can create some tasks for their students to develop their language learning skills and to engage in learning activities. While creating a story, students can invite their friends in this creative process and in this way they can learn to cooperate and collaborate with each other. Teachers also provide the students with the opportunity to develop their creative thinking skills by writing a story. Students can learn to think creatively. These are some task example for students:

Option 1: Teachers can give some keywords to students and ask them to write a story with these keywords by adding some photos to their stories.

        Ex key words: car, traffic, road, bridge, motorway

Option 2:They can write just the first sentence of a story as a clue and expect students to make the story continue, to complete it based on this sentence.

      Ex : One day Robert went for a walk. On the way he saw a/an....

Option 3: They can give only a word as a theme to students and tell them to write a story about this theme.

      Ex: Love

OUR STORY 

We chose second option as a task and created our story with my partner on the website. Here is the first sentence of our story:

     One day, Simon and his mother are discussing about ...........(future)

If you want to read it, you should click here: FROM THE DECISION TO THE FUTURE WITH SIMON

CONSTRAINTS 

     Storybird has some constraints. Firstly you can not use Storybird without having an account or an email address, Seconly you can not upload photos or use the images you want because the images are  categorized, You have to chose one category and use the images about that category. Additionally, you can not add your voice or a song into your story.

IN CONCLUSION 

     Although it has some constraints, Storybird is a useful tool for language learning. By using this tool, teachers can grab their students' attention and students can engage in the activities and enhance their some skills like writing, reading, creative thinking, so they may not get bored and take pleasure in language learning proces.

LEARN ENGLISH FOR THE SAKE OF LEO :)

     Hello, everyone!

     In this post, I am going to introduce a mobile app for language learning. As you know, we are equipped with many technological devices in this century like computers, mobile phones. Although they have some disadvantageous in terms of health, they also have many advantageous. They generally enable us to access the information easily and learn fast. There are many mobile apps in your mobile phones. The most common types of these apps are the ones for learning a foreign language. Today people look for some apps which help them to learn a language everywhere and everytime and they also want these apps to be funny. I will introduce a great mobile app to you for learning English. It's name is "Lingualeo" It is a personal online service that helps people master foreign languages.

     THE PROCESS

     I thought that I would have difficulty in finding a different app for learning English at the beginning  because many apps for learning a language in mobiles are similar. I asked for some help from my roommate. She suggested this app and mentioned about it. Then I began to think it would be appropriate for my task. Firstly I searched it on the internet and had some ideas about it. It appealed to me, later I downloaded it on my phone to learn more about it. It is for both all children and adults who are able to use a mobile phone. It is a really funny app because learning a foreign language in this app is like playing a game. There is a character called "Leo". The more you learn the language and make a good progress in the language, the more saturation Leo has. In other words, it is like feeding an animal by learning a language.

     

HOW CAN YOU USE IT?
   
     You can download it and sign up for it freely however it has some in-app purchases. You can also use your facebook account to sign up. You choose your proficiency level and begin to discover it. According to your level, it includes grammar courses.  It has also lots of trainings for reading skills like restoring texts and in this way, you can develop your speed reading and understanding. It provides many vocabulary games and exercises to learn new words and memorize them. If you want to improve your speaking, there are also many materials for you to use in the "collections" section. For example, you can listen TED Talks with subtitles. You may have materials for everday speech and business speech. It also charges you with some tasks like "brainstorm" training, completing lesson in the course, studying a text or a video.

 
      To sum up, I think this app is very useful for learning a foreign language. You can learn a foreign language in a funny way. I recommend this app to you. While other apps for learning a language does not force you to make a progress in the process, this app does. You may feel you have to make a progress in order to saturate Leo while using it. :)

MAKING LEARNING ENTERTAINING BY USING DIGITAL STORYTELLING

     Hi, everyone!

     Our new task is to create a Digital Storytelling Project. Firstly I want to mention about what it is. Digital Storytelling means a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their story. It entered our lives with technology and became a useful device for education. Today, Teachers can incorporate digital storytelling into their instruction to make learning entertaining and make their students engage in learning activities. I shared this task with my partner Buse Nur Bozkurt. We had some options for the project. We chose to create a fictional story, because we believed we could also improve our creativity in this way. We used Storymaker to create our story because it facilitates lots of opportunities in terms of using different colours and varied images.

     We wanted to create a story which may be beneficial to learners in terms of learning how to use an English pattern in a sentence. We wrote a short story. We created the characters and the scenes in the website, and then we added our voices into the story. Finally we made them combine by the means of Movie Maker.

     The story's name is "Julia's Secret Ability". It is about 2 minutes. It's main character is a girl called "Julia". She tries to discover her abilities in the story. We wrote the story for primary and secondary students. The story has some purposes. It aims to teach students how to use "can/can't" in a sentence. It also aims to make students have an implication from the story about life. 

      In the process, we had some difficulties. For example, we wanted to make characters move but we couldn't. In addition to this, we had a difficulty in vocalizing it because we had to find a silent place to vocalize it. Luckily we could overcome this problem and vocalize it but it took some because we thought that we shouldn't make a mistake about pronounciation and also we should use the right tone of our voices so that we can grab learner's attention. Therefore we had to record our voices again and again.

     Although we had some difficulties in the process, we were happy at the end of the process because we learned to use a device which may make us advantageous in our professional lives in the future. I think Digital Storytelling is beneficial to both teachers and students. It enables teacher to grab students' attention more easily and enables students to improve their writing, reading, listening and speaking skills and it also enhances creativity.

     This is our story. I hope you will enjoy it :)

NO PANIC, YES ENGLISH

     Hi everyone!
     In this post, I'm going to give my opinions about a website. I visited it and made an evaluation about it in terms of learning english.
     In today's world, learning english gains more and more importance, because it has become a global language as you know and therefore learning is necessary all over the world. For example; if you want to travel the world, and learn about other cultures, if you look for a good job or want to get a degree in your job, or if you want to be educated abroad, English must be in your pocket :)  You can say that: But how? How can I learn it? Don't be panic! You have lots of opportunities which technology offers you. However the point to be panic is how you can choose the right one. There are some criteria like accuracy, currency, content and functionality. I have searched and visited many websites related to learning English and chose one of them to evaluate for you. It is Learn English Free. It is a free online portal website suited for adolescents and adults learning english. It is a voluntary organisation and helps people to learn British English since 1999 for the love of English. Now it is time to evaluate it according to our criteria. :) 
     

      It consists of  7 sections. They are Learn English, grammar, vocabulary, improve, resources, chat and fun sections. In "Learn English" section, you can learn about the website and its background. In the "Grammar" section, it bombards you syntactic patterns and the grammar rules of English. It teaches the rules with both written texts and pictures. It includes many examples and exercises in order to strengthen your learning English.
         

     
      In "Vocabulary" section, there are many topics ranked alphabetically and you can learn lots of words about the topic which interests you. You can see the pictures related to the words and have dialogues, games and tests to understand how you use the words in a sentence or communicative situations. In the "Improve" section,  you have some clues about how to motivate yourself for learning, how you understand which learning strategy is the best for you and how to improve your learning skills, In the "Resources" section, you are provided with films, games, magazines, dictionaries, english radios, the news english. When you are bored with being bombarded by the rules and the vocabulary, you can apply these and practice your english in a funny way. If you say that I have learned all grammar rules and the vocabulary  but still I have difficulty in using them in communicative situations, you can also use "chat" section and make contacts with other people from different cultures online to communicate in English or  may have conversational practices on Skype, In this way, you may also meet new people and broaden your horizons. "Fun section" also enables you to practice your english with exercises like dictation, memorization, gap filling, sorting and matching. The site also provides English jokes, songs and poems for you. These are all very useful activities for learning English.

     We do not have a certain date to make sure if the site is constantly updated, but we can understand it is updated when we enter the website and look at news in English, films or magazines, because they are up to date.

     We can sure that the information in the site is accurate. The resources are reliable and the exercises are created by ESL English teachers (Lynne, Pryfllwyd and Amatsu) and many volunteers all over the world. You can also see their profiles if you want and do other exercises which are created by them.
     When I look at the grammar rules and exercises provided in the website, I couldn't find any errors and I think that they were created by professional teachers and also volunteers must have a high proficiency in english. 
     Additionally, images and videos in the website have high quality. They are varied and colorful and thus they may get learners' attention easily and make them more motivated to learn.
     As far as I have examined, this website does not include harmful things or propagandas to direct learners. It is a safe website. Its aim is just make learners love learning english. In my opinion, English learners may benefit from this website to learn and improve their English. It offers them lots of opportunities and gives lots of tips for improving their English. Now, it is time to decide for you. If you want to become a good learner, don't be panic, Just use this website! :)

"LA LA LAND" FROM OUR PERSPECTIVES

   
Hi everyone! 
Our new task for Technology and Materials Design Course is to create a wiki page with a partner. I shared this creative task with my partner Buse Nur Bozkurt. We completed this task by using "Wikispace" as a tool. We wrote a film review. We chose "La la land" to write a review. It is about a musician and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love in Los Angeles. You can access more information about the film by visiting our wikipage or you can see it and some photos about it below.

     We chose this film because both of us watched and liked it, then decided to share our opinions about the film. This film is also important for me because being an actress is one of my dreams. At the beginning I felt nervous because this would be a new experience for me. However I benefitted from the link which Dr. Kurt sent us in Edmodo and looked the sample there. It enabled us to complete our task easily.

    We encountered a technological problem in the process. We have some difficulty in uploading photos and videos but we could overcome it. At the end of the process we are happy and satisfied because we have learned something new. Creating a wikipage is a helpful experience in terms that you can improve your writing skills by passing your thoughts into a page.

If you are wondering about the film, you can watch the trailer and have an opinion about it here:

Finally I want to share a song from the movie which gives me lots of energy in the morning and encourages me in pursuing my dreams :) I hope you will like our wikipage and then decide to watch the movie and I guarantee that you will like it. See you in next post :)

SMURFS CALL YOU BY THE MEANS OF A PODCAST :)

       Hi everyone! :) 
       
      In this post, I'm going to share a podcast with you. We created a Smurf song. We wrote the lyrics and sang the song with my friend Buse Nur Bozkurt. Our purpose of making this podcast is to provide students with some adjectives and grammatical forms in a funny way. We had some difficulties in the process because we looked for a silent place to take a record however at the end, we could manage to take the record :) We hope that you will enjoy the song and benefit from it in terms of learning English. In order to listen our song, please click this:  THE MESSAGE FROM SMURFIA

  If you liked our song and decided to sing it, here is the lyrics :)

 ￫I am always dropping or breaking many things (Whoops)

But it is an accident.

Who am I?

Clumsy Smurf

￫I have a surprise for my dearest friends but if you open this small box you will be (Boom)

Who am I ?

Jokey Smurf

￫I always carry my mirror and flower.

I look at myself for hours and hours.

Who am I ?

Vanity Smurf

￫I save my Smurfs from the greedy Gargamel

When he comes to our town, I say the magical spell (Poff)

Who am I?

Papa Smurf
￫We live in this sweety town, why don't you join us. If you are well behaved you can see us.

NOTE:Creating this podcast was a funny process for us, we will be waiting for your comments. See you in next post :)

LEARNING IN THIS CENTURY (21. CENTURY LEARNING)

Hi everyone! In this post I'm going to mention about what 21st century learning means for me. As you know, technology has been integrated into our lives in this century and we have begun to live faster than in the past. We can produce lots of devices at the same time thanks to mass production, we can reach the information easily via internet and we can learn effectively with technology. However we must have some skills like being creative, initiative, social in order to combine technology and learning because 21st century learning gains a meaning when we use our skills and technology in order to learn.

    

             Watch this video and discover which skills you must have for learning better in 21st century and if you want to add another skills which are required according to you, please contact with me :)

I HAVE BEEN WELCOME TO THIS NEW WORLD

 

     I'm Ceren, I am from Tokat. I'm 21 years old. I graduated from Central Anatolian High School in Tokat/Erbaa 3 years ago, and I have been a student at Marmara University for three years.
     I want to mention about my personality. Generally I am a person with full of life, I like nature, animals, people everything in the world, maybe even aliens in space :) I am also social, I like meeting new people and spending time with them and I believe that we can improve ourselves in this way, by meeting and spending time with different people.
     I have lots of  hobbies. One of them is theatre. I am interested in acting, I am a member of  the theatre course in Kadıköy. I also like dancing, I participated in Turkish folk dances team in my primary school. I also like listening to music. Sometimes a song makes me feel more energetic and motivates me when I feel I don't have enough energy to do something.
     In this blog, I will share my thoughts and projects about the topics in my Technology and Materials Designs class. I hope we will enjoy and learn better here. See you in my next post and have a nice day :)