Farewell!

 Hello everyone! How are you doing? It is the end of the semester and I can’t believe we made it this far. Unfortunately, this will be my final post. Fortunately, I am very excited for the holiday :) Do you have any plans? I want to rest a lot after this exhausting semester.

I learned a great deal of things throughout the semester from this course. I did not know there were this many ways of integrating technology into teaching. I have always supported the idea of using technology in education. Therefore, taking this course was a great opportunity. I did many assignments for this course. I was not aware of how AI could help this much in education before this semester.

With the help of this course, I am now able to teach English to my future students more effectively. While taking the course, I always thought about how I could use what I was learning in my teaching years in the future. The collaborative writing task taught me how to use GoogleDocs and how to write something with other people engagingly. With the infographic task, I am now able to convey my thoughts and knowledge to other people more effectively. I learned how to collect information on a single sheet and still manage not to overcrowd it. I can now prepare infographics for my own students. These are just the two of the tasks I did for this course but as you can see, I learned a lot from them.

My favorite task was writing a film review collaboratively. I liked the film I watched and receiving comments from other people was fun. It was not difficult to do the task as well. My least favorite was the digital story one. Even though my partner and I worked well, doing the task was challenging. I didn’t like that I had to do a voiceover and it was hard to match the video with my voice.

Overall, I enjoyed this course and I learned different things. However, the tasks were overwhelming and too much in my opinion. Except that, I really enjoyed getting to know the opportunities technology offers to us.  

Thank you for being with me and my blog! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Take good care of yourself and feel free to comment on anything!

Interviewing Charlotte Brontë! (Yes, you heard me right) (an AI task!)

 Hello guys! How are you doing?

Today’s task was using AI to interview a historical figure. I chose Charlotte Brontë and used MagicSchool in the process. At first, I was skeptical because I was not sure if this would work. However, it worked wonderfully! It was like I had Charlotte Brontë in front of me answering my questions. I could ask her whatever I wanted and could receive well-thought-of answers. After the interview, I wrote a report about it and summarized it. Then, I used MagicSchoolAI again and made the bot give feedback to me. It was a great experience, to be honest. The bot gave me feedback and fixed my report accordingly. I used GoogleDocs’ comment feature to write the feedback the bot gave me. You can check them!

AI tools are a great help actually! They can improve your assignments and help you when you struggle to do them. You just have to know how to use them correctly. After using them for my assignments over and over, I started to get better at it. However, there were times when AI couldn’t give me what I wanted. In those times, I tried to give as many details as I could so that AI could understand me. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not. Except for the challenges I mentioned, AI was able to help me with my assignments.

I could totally use AI tools in my teaching in the future. I am thinking about teaching my future students how to use AI effectively so that they can get help from it. Then, they will be able to adapt to technology and AI. These days, using technology effectively is essential and I want my students to adjust to the changes. They can get help from AI when writing essays, doing research, getting ideas for something, and a lot of different things! Especially in learning a language, AI can help you a lot! We can get our students to practice speaking or grammar with AI. There are so many opportunities for those who want to learn!

Here is a link to my interview with Charlotte Brontë! We talked about her novel ‘Jane Eyre’ and the women of the Victorian Era. Don’t forget to check the comment section for the feedback AI gave me.

That is all! Thank you for reading and take care of yourself! Feel free to comment on anything.

a Film Recommedation for You! (a Collaborative Writing Task)

 Hi everyone! How are you today? I am okay and surviving the semester, I guess.

I am back with a different task. I worked on a collaborative writing task with my partners Elif and Melike (click here and here to see their blog!) We were supposed to write a film review together on Google Docs. We started by deciding on the movie. Then Melike shared a Google Docs link with us so we could write on it. Our movie was “Saltburn”. After deciding who would write which paragraph, we started doing our task. Using Google Docs was very easy. I could see the whole review as I was writing. I could shape my paragraph according to the ones the others wrote so there could be a consistency. To finish our review, Elif added some pictures from the movie as well as the trailer so that our review would be more engaging. We worked well together. When writing, we asked each other our opinions about our parts and shaped everything accordingly. We were able to correct each other’s mistakes easily thanks to Google Docs! Personally, I do not use Google Docs in my daily life but now I am sure I will use it more. I think this task was very entertaining. Even though I am not a movie person myself, I enjoyed watching and writing about this one.

After we were done with the review, we asked another group to add comments to it. They wrote their opinions and we commented on their review as well. I loved this feature of Google Docs a lot because it enabled us to see other people’s opinions regarding our task!

This is all for today. Thank you for reading and take care of yourself! Feel free to comment anything,,

I am adding screenshots of our review and a link in case you can't see the screenshots well.

Links to the commenter group:

https://actuallymsenablog.wordpress.com/

http://gethey2.wordpress.com

http://berksanv.wordpress.com/

PSA: Animal Testing (a digital story task)

Hello guys!

I am back with a different task. My friend Elifgül Güven (click here to see her blog!) and I prepared a PSA video about animal testing. It is an ongoing issue and informing people about it might save the lives of many animals.

Creating the PSA was not that challenging. Elif and I split the preparation and did our best. She prepared the video using CapCut and I wrote the script. Then we added our voices to the video. I used ClipChamp to add the voiceover. It was a bit hard because I could not figure out the way to see the video and record my voice at the same time. Thus, I struggled to match the timings and did many retakes. However, the site was easy to use and I was satisfied with the result at the end.

Using digital stories in the classroom may have many benefits. It is a whole new experience and making students create one can help their learning. They might be interested in it as well. Instead of giving homework in the traditional way, we can get students to create something new with technology. However, creating a digital story is not that easy and we should be aware of the challenges students might face.

In addition, we don’t have to make students create one to learn something. We can use our own digital stories in the classroom to teach! I think students may enjoy this as well!

Until we meet again, take care of yourself!

Click here to see our PSA video.

References for the script of the video:

Cosmetics. Cruelty Free International. (2023). https://crueltyfreeinternational.org/make-change/cosmetics

Animals in cosmetics testing. Humane Society International (HSI). (2023, April 23). https://hsi.org.au/animal-welfare/animals-in-cosmetics-testing/

Animal Testing Facts and Statistics. PETA. (2024, April 2). https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/

Are You Feeling Stressed? *Hugs* (a Podcast Task)

Hello everyone!

How are you? How was your holiday?

I came back with a podcast task this time. I prepared one for the first time! It was supposed to be about an idea to improve the world. My idea was hugging people daily to increase happiness. I did not have any difficulties finding the idea. In fact, it came to my mind the moment our instructor showed us examples in the class. Then, I improved the idea and prepared my podcast.

Even though finding the idea and writing the script was very easy, the recording part was very challenging. I don’t even know how many minutes I spent on it. I used Podomatic in the process and it was easy to use, to be honest. However, the problem was with me. I wanted it to be perfect and I was not satisfied with any of the results. I kept making mistakes while speaking and even the tiniest ones bothered me. In the end, I just went with what I had. I hope that it is enough.

To me, the idea of creating a podcast is very unique and interesting. My students in the future might be interested in it as well. If I were to give them a similar task, I would not want them to make it long. It can be time-consuming and challenging. However, it might be a fun experience for them too! I think the students these days would find it entertaining to prepare a podcast as a task. I would certainly give podcasts a try in the future!

You can click here to view my podcast! I hope you enjoy it!

Thank you for reading.

Stop Being Mean on the Internet (an Infographic on Cyberbullying)

Hello everyone! How are you doing today?

This post will be about the infographic I prepared. My topic is “Cyberbullying”. One of the reasons I chose this as my topic is that I see a lot of examples around me and I hate when people are  being mean on the internet just because they can. I wanted to inform people about this. Another reason was that I was curious and wanted to learn. The research part was very interesting and I learned a lot of things.

I used Canva in the process. It wasn’t that difficult to use Canva to make an infographic but there were so many templates and I am an indecisive person unfortunately. The preparation process took me a while because I didn’t know where to put some things. In addition, I couldn’t decide which information to include in it. However, after deciding on those things, it was quite easy to change the template according to my preferences. It was really fun as well.

I learned a lot about infographics and now I think that we should use them more in our classrooms. Since they present the information in a more engaging way, the students might be interested in them. Instead of choosing to present information traditionally, we can choose to use infographics because they can hold more information and be still organized. You can include more things in it than a regular a4 paper and it still wouldn’t be too crowded.

That was all. Thank you for reading and don’t forget to take care of yourself!

Click here to see the infographic!

I will add a picture of it below as well.

21st Century Learning

Hello again!

In this post, I will talk about 21^st century learning. I hope you enjoy it!

We are in the 21^st century, this means we have to keep up with the teaching methods in this era. 21^st Century Learning expects teachers to use technology in the classroom. Teachers should get help from technology in order to teach more effectively. In addition, they should teach 21^st century skills as well. In Kereluik et al. (2013) framework, there are three knowledge categories named foundational, humanistic and meta that teachers should be aware of. By knowing them, the teachers can integrate them into their teaching since these skills have a great significance in learning.

The integration of technology in language learning is significant because it offers many options to the teachers and the students. The traditional way of teaching; however, does not contribute much to the learner. We are now living in a technology-based era. That means we have to use technology in our daily lives to survive. Why not use that technology in our classroom? Especially in learning language, the technological tools can help teachers a lot. Teachers can make their students listen the native speakers of the language, use educational videos, and benefit from many other sources. There are so many opportunities for them!

To sum up all the things I have mentioned above, I think as teachers, we should be open-minded about technology. We should find ways to use it in our classroom. We can make a huge difference with how we teach!

Thank you for reading. See you next time!

https://unsplash.com/photos/people-sitting-down-near-table-with-assorted-laptop-computers-SYTO3xs06fU