Final Post

    

    Hi, guys again! Unfortunately, this is the last update of my blog for now. I hope you are all doing fine. In this post, I will be mentioning my thoughts before and after the educational technologies class about technology integration in language classes. I see technology integration as a very important subject for current education, though it is not shown sufficient importance to it. To be honest, I haven’t been thinking about some conventional ways of technology integration in language classes is very wrong and old-fashioned when evaluating the 21st-century conditions. My thoughts have been changed, for instance, I haven’t been thinking the forbiddance of mobile phones during class times is very against the character of this generation. I have always been thinking about technology must be adapted to language classes, yet I haven’t had any acknowledgment about any ways to get this done. Thanks to this course, I have learned lots of ways to use technology appropriately in my future classes. I can easily say that what I have learned most importantly is technology integration doesn’t mean using the latest devices or tools in the classroom. Giving creative projects that could be done with papers, pencils, etc. to students can be very effective. As I mentioned, we have done lots of tasks throughout the semester, and my favorite is podcasting. In my personal life, I listen to podcasts about specific topics, and I like the culture of the podcast. I have always dreamed about making one, thanks to this course it provided me to create one of mine. I least liked creating an infographic because I found it a little bit hard. I suggest that after each task we did a checklist separately. In my opinion, it could be done as a whole class. It was a very joyful and deductive class. I appreciated being a part of it.

Digital Storytelling

    Hi guys, in today's topic we have, as you can see from the title, Digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is a creative project, in which you design the animation, the story, and the vocalization. I and my friends Selin and Tugay made digital storytelling for our educational technologies class. During the process, we use 2 tools, which are Pixton and Adobe Premier Pro. First, we needed to create our context and then transform it into an animation. We wrote our story, then we vocalized it one by one. After that our sketch was ready, we created our characters and plot by Pixton. In the last section, we had to unite our audial story with the scenes we created by Pixton. In order to achieve this part, we used Adobe Premiere Pro software, which is a very creative and limitless software. Digital storytelling should be an indispensable part of language classes. It is a very enriched activity, and it really motivates students to use their imagination with their creativity. I think everyone should taste this experience even for once, in terms of its joy and uniqueness. Creating this type of activity as a group is another important thing because you need other points of view during the creation and working as a group helps a lot. 

Here is our digital storytelling project!

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Here is Selin's blog

Here is Tugay's blog if you want to check out!

See you next time!

Infographic

 

Hello guys! How are you doing, hope you are all fine. This week's topic was to create an infographic which is a kind of a chart about a specific topic that has a very smooth interface generally. We had a few options to create one about it. I chose how to be successful in online education as a university student because I believe I know some facts and situations that enhance the quality of learning in online education. I used Canva as a tool to achieve this goal. It provided me a very comfortable study session in terms of its usage easiness. You just should have an idea, and Canva settles the rest of it. This is a very productive project for language learners. With the help of this project, they can create infographics about a specific topic and accelerate the learning phase. 

Creating a Digital Poster

Hello guys! How are you doing, hope you are all fine. This week's topic was to create a digital poster about a book we read before. We all imagined ourselves as cover makers for a movie poster and thought about if the book we had chosen was going to be in cinema, so we used our creativity in that way. At the beginning, designing the theme seemed a little bit tough, but then I got accustomed to it by trying a few examples on a paper. This fact provided me to enhance my perspective about art and designing especially. Secondly, finding catchy tags, headings, and slogans compelled me to be honest. Yet thinking about producing that kind of stuff was really fun, although I couldn’t get any result for a while. In my opinion, you should feel the art director vibe in yourself when you are focusing on creating this kind of project, and the second you feel that vibe it all comes from behind. You have numerous tools to create one for yourself. I used AdobeExpress having a simple interface that allows you to create one whether or not you have experience in this industry. This is all, for now, see you next time!

Learning through websites: KWL Technique

                In this project, we had to do group work about one of the specific 21st-century issues. In order to achieve this, we had to pick one of the issues from the list, and in the very beginning, we had to begin with writing down "what we know" about that topic. I and my friends picked violence against street animals which is a very delicate subject for all of us as a group, so we did very diligently. We did this project by using the website called padlet and this website has a very organized structure that provides us to create our project very easily and it made all production processes very smooth. When we face an issue in our daily lives, we may ask ourselves how this issue can be avoided but we ask it only for that temporary time which will be stay forgotten until the next same incident. This project provides us to get focused on the issue that we want to find a solution to also in this way we force ourselves to ask questions about the issue. To sum up, this project has a very effective role in 21st-century learning skills in terms of its interactivity and close relation to the real problems in the outer world.

If you want to check our project click here

Wikiing

            Wikiing was a very interesting and pleasant experience for me. I was supposed to create a film review on a very free platform. The reason why I say it free, because of someone’s capability of editing my text on that platform, and it was the first time I encountered the feeling of someone could edit the text I had started to write. In my opinion, it is a highly fun and very relaxing activity to deal with within spare time. I %100 percent use wikiing activity in the future, in my class. Because I believe that at least for once, every student should have this experience.

PODCASTING

I and my friend Selin created a podcast as an assignment for our educational technologies class. We decided to create a sound-rich story podcast. We were inspired by detective-based stories and shaped our structure through them. Actually, we tried to create something as a fragment like a short movie to attract the audience in a short time, which is 90 seconds.

First, we created the outline of the story, then we completed the sketch. After deciding what would happen to the character, we began to record the dialogs, adding sounds, and music. From my point of view, recording the dialogs was the most challenging part, due to the fact that acting properly, reflecting emotions, and intonation could be really hard for amateurs, we experienced it.

During the creation process, we had lots of fun especially when we were recording the dialogs. Because I realized that bringing fictional characters to life is very euthanistic.

In the future, I would definitely give my students similar tasks. The reason behind this is, podcasting makes students think about the dialogs in the foreign language, while forcing them to create something in a good way, and I sincerely believe that it is a very important fact. 

If you want to check out our podcast here is the link

If you also want to check out my friend's blog here is the link.

Have a nice one!