ONLINE COURSES: UDEMY, Coursera, EdX

Hello everyone welcome to my blog! I wish everyone a very happy day! 

Today in my blog I want to tell you about some applications that may help both to us teachers and the students! How great!

     As is expressed in the title, these online learning platforms -Udemy , Coursera , EdX- provides you many online courses, lessons that you can benefit from. You can find lessons about nearly all the fields from music, science, marketing, yoga to language learning, gardening, career training..! Lots of area you gather information about! In my post I’ll specifically review Udemy since I found it more user friendly and enrolled in its classes.  

      Firstly, when you log in tour account you see a search option to find a suitable course for you! There are paid ones there are free ones. I have found all the nice-interesting- ‘appealing to me’- free classes and add them in my wishlist to not lost them and take the each course after one course finishes! I should tell you guys that there were hundreds of great courses free! So, that’s even more helpful thanks to all the teachers of these courses...

        Secondly, you enroll you course and start listening to all the lectures and when there are resources you should read you read, when there are quizzes you need to pass you take them. All in order! The courses I firstly chose to take was ‘Presentation Skills Secret’ (in accordance with my occupation) and ‘Modal Verbs of German’ since I want to learn the language! The first one was a 3 hours long class while the other one is 40 hours long class. I watched and did every necessary thing I need to do to complete the courses whenever I’m the most ‘available’, ‘ready to take a lesson’ and became a good student to my teachers , I believe. Because I learned so much! By the way since they will always be present in my courses section, I can go back and watch any episode of them, any time I want. This is great, to be honest... In addition to all of these, there is one more great feature of this app and that is if you get a paid course you get completion certificate in the end. I was able to get one certificate for the courses I took but unfortunately not able to get for the other one... It’s okay. You can still take advantage of these courses! I hope you enjoy! 

~~GOOD BYE~~

THINGLINK IN EDUCATION

Hello everyone, welcome to my blog. Eid Mubarak! <3 I hope everyone’s having a great day!

Today in my blog the platform we’re going to be looking into is ThingLink! Such an useful website to create materials for your students!

    Firstly even if you don’t buy a packet in this platform you can sign in as a teacher to benefit from its features like sharing, creating students...

When I first logged in I watch the helpful video that’s prepared for the people who just started using it. Then, examined the material types that are created here. There were many! Maps, audio introductions, Infographics... We , as teachers, may prepare exercises related to each of our topics.

Here , as can be seen, you create your group of students. Plus, you can be a member of another group. This works only by giving or entering specific ‘invite codes’! Easy peasy!

To create a material. We should firstly choose a background  to add descriptions, link, videos or photos on specific areas according to lesson. I , for example, used this one for the ‘My Town’ unite of 5th Grade English learners! 

When I clicked on add tag option, I saw these three types of adding tags! 

In ‘Add text and media’ type you can write the title, description , give the URL of an instructional site, add photo or video... This one is , I think , the most useful one! However in Add text type you can only write a description. When you’re indicating the areas on the background you may choose a related, convenient icon to be more understandable! As you can seen, i chose a grocery bag while describing Supermarket.  Overall, I tried to use ‘any available option’ to create a good material. 

A very useful feature of this platform is this: after clicking on the symbol that involves ‘a megaphone upon a book’ , they hear the robotic voice of a human who tells the descriptions in English. This might quite help learners improve their pronunciations as well. If you want them to hear YOUR voice instead of a robot’s you have the opportunity to add yours! 

When you’re done with this part, you can go settings to animate your tags and choose scheme! Don’t forget to add a title! 

Lastly, I had to click on ‘done’ and chose a sharing option. For all of you to see , I made it public and published! 

      With these kind of materials our students might study out of the classroom on their technological tools pretty efficiently. However, ThingLink can be used  ‘in’ the classroom too, surely! We can open the material on the smart boards and progress by clicking on each tag with an appropriate order, brainstorming and learning together. In that way we will be working on the topics by seeing, hearing, exploring the available resources...

    So, here ‘s the link of the material I prepared by benefiting from all of the advantageous providings of the Thinglink. I hope you liked it:   -PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SEE MY MATERIAL ON THINGLINK-

GOOD BYE! <3

STORYBIRD: TEACHING & LEARNING WITH FUN STORIES

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog!

I hope you all are okay and having an amazing day!

   Today  we ,as teacher, will examine the Storybird app/website. It may be very useful to use it in and out the classrooms! 

      First of all I would like to say it’s a paid application and free trial doesn’t very acquire a lot of options to see the app in detail, however in the website form it is available to do more (e.g. writing a story). If you and your students can be able to afford the necessary payments of this helpful platform, you won’t regret it for sure. Let’s see the reasons! 

 Firstly, this application provides a lot of instructional books from which students of any grade can benefit. For example in the story ‘It’s Okay to be Circle’ , auther introduces us the name of the shapes from circle to hearts! It may be very nice to share it with students who are learning English! There are not just Picture Books like these but Longform Stories , Comics, Flash Fictions and Poetries are presented as well! All of them are pretty educational in terms of appealing to students vocabulary knowledge, visuality, creativity -since they can prepare stories individually or collaboratively. 

Since we as teacher sign up with our teacher identity, we have the opportunity to create classes, determine the grade and share materials accordingly. 

 Also, in challenge part, learners may be better writes with all the lessons , quizzes , video tutorials that are created in this platform! 

While trying to write a story for your students you can see a lot artistic works, drawings from other talented people to get help to visualize tour story. There are very nice, beautiful pictures ! I personally got the drawings of the artist named ‘bluedogrose’ in the Storybird. He or she is absolutely amazing at this!

   In the story I created , the adventure of a rabbit called Gamey is told. I tried to be a little didactic while being also instructional. I did not specifically focused on a certain topic but I made some verbs bold. I ,kind of, aimed to improve and make them practice their vocabulary knowledge. The result was a 14 paged picture book. Since I used a free trial, the link of it is not properly working. Therefore, I am adding my material here! I hope you liked it!

HERE IS THE STORY THAT I CREATED FOR MY STUDENTS:

  

Thank you so much, see you in another post, hopefully! Bye <3 

~ AUGMENTED REALITY IN TEACHING~ UniteAr

Hello everyone, welcome to my blog! 

I hope you have a great day. 

Today in my blog, we’ll be talking about the advantages of Augmented Reality (AR) in education and how to use them.

    While in Virtual Reality real-like environment are tried to be created in Augmented Reality some additions to the reality are made. We can see it in many games as well, the most famous example can be Pokemon Go. These systems show virtual object in the real environments. As teachers, using AR in our teaching environments may be very useful! 

photo from: https://www.google.com.tr/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/what-is-augmented-reality-anyway-99827

     The use of Augmented reality is divided into 2 groups: Marked- based AR and markerless. In markerless one the object you choose appears in any area you hold your tool’s camera to while in marker-based one, you need to scan a specific image for a specific object which is used in education the most. We can benefit from it by scanning certain pages or posters or flashcards to  make animated objects or creatures or ‘ a video’ seen in any lesson we teach from geography to biology. 

photo from: https://www.blippar.com/build-ar/augmented-reality-education

photo from: https://zealar.com.au/augmented-reality-in-education-industry/

      In my blog ,surely, I want to focus on language teaching. A very common use of AR in foreign language teaching is to benefit from flashcards. For example you can show your camera ‘the names’ or ‘the pictures’ of animals with the help of flashcards and then they will appear in the screen moving or stayin still. This will excite your students and they’ll mostly be very interested to learn in this kind of way. To make a similar exercise, I’ve made  a very amateur AR material just to give an example and understand the system of this ‘Augmented’ reality.  To do this I got help from the app ‘UniteAr’.

Once you open the application you can see the scan and AR gallery options to realise your AR experience. 

I chose to firstly examine the AR gallery, to see the characters in hand to create material. O was very happy to see the Animals gallery since I desired to make a material on that.  So i chose animals option. I just tried to create very simple papers on which there is a certain animal name. I imagined them as the word cards that are used by language learners very often. When the learner forgets one of them and wants to learn it for good, s/he can hold this card to the camera to learn what it is or maybe even further information about it if it’s not in a photo form but in a ‘video’ form.  In this example i just kept it in the photo form. I scanned the relevant paper( intended to be cards) with the animals and results were these:

AR,  when intensely and professionally worked on, will definitely provide effective learning to the learners. I hope all of us can explore platforms like UniteAr more and bring it into our classrooms!

Good by my dear readers.

<3   <3    <3

~ PADLET IN EDUCATION ~

Hello everyone! I hope you all are okay and having an amazing day! 

Today, in my blog we will be talking about Padlet which is also a very nice app to use in teaching!

To be honest, I fell in love with this application! Why? Let me explain! :)

When you first open the app, you are welcomed with your first Bookmark! It was in the ‘wall’ form when I clicked on it! From this time on, my journey with the application started! 

Padlet , as you can see in the  photo, provides you a blank page which you can use in any way you desire to use! It may be a wall or grid or shelf, map , timeline or etcetera. It gives you options to use it in a suitable way according to the various methods of teaching a lesson! In teaching a foreign language for example , you can use the ‘ wall ‘ option to firstly introduce your topic to the students in an entertaining way. In the material I tried to create I aimed to exactly do this, I also tried to give little assignments/duties to involve them in the lesson when the topic is going to be worked on in the classroom. However, this is just one of the ways to benefit from Padlet. For instance, you can use ‘Backchannel’ to create a communicative, collaborative environment through this platform which is very important for foreign language teaching!

When I opened my Wall , I firstly thought to name and design it! So , in the settings part I saw these adjustments about the material that will be provided. We - as teachers- can name, describe, give an icon, design our wall in a way that is  related to topic which will be presented to the students. I tried to keep it as esthetic as possible. 

While adding posts to your wall,  with titles and descriptions,  you can also add photos, videos, links of anything you need to you use for the topic (tests, articles, simple activities) to be understood. Then, you should click ‘save’ to make it appear! After adding all the necessary posts, your wall is going to be done which will be presenting an effective material for your students!

However, how you make it seen? Firstly, you should check the privacy setting of the material and choose how to share it with learners. They can just read, they can just write or edit the whole post! By the way, you have options to make it private, secret, public or available with a password. How nice! Since I just want to present an example with my material, I chose public/can read options! 

Overall, I should say that I really liked the app since it can be used both in and out the classroom very effectively. By using them in both of these environments we ,as teachers, can create very fun and permanent learnings for our students. I want to share my first experience on Padlet with all of you, it’s about ‘Seasons and the Suitable Clothes/Accessories/Activities’ , I designed it for 5th or 6th grade students , it can be used in the lessons for 2-3 weeks to understand and learn all the information, I think.

     I introduced seasons and asked from my students to write certain numbers of clothes/accessories we wear in each of them! I shared the photos of these clothes and accessories and wanted from them to identify/ analyze them. Lastly , I uploaded a very informative, easy to understand video to show them the activities that take place in each season. Here is the whole product: https://padlet.com/zineberfinonel/Bookmarks

I hope you liked it. Good bye!