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/