QR Code of My Blog!

 

Hi everybody! I’d like share the QR Code of my blog with you all!

I’ve created it by using QR Code Generator , you can easily customize your code by choosing a model and  the colours, then you paste the link of your site and it is done!

Now you can reach to my blog much more faster, and you should try out for yours as well!

Flipgrid!

 

     Hi everyone! Today I would like to share a interesting tool for you all, it is Flipgrid! It is a website that allows teachers to be in connect with their students through short videos that they take and not through the typical texts. It is indeed an innovative way to communicate with your students!

    To be able to use it, first you need to create an account by clicking “Educator Sign Up” and you can choose your Google account for that. After creating your profile with your personal informations, you can create a group for your students and add specific qualifications of your class, like which subject is it? When you are done creating the group, you can share the group code with your students and you are all joined for Flipgrid!

    Then, you can create a topic by asking them a question like what their favourite subject is and why they love that subject. To complete this assigment, students need to respond to these questions while recording a video of themselves and upload it under the topic section, which appears as a tiled grid display.

     Aand here is the link for the discussion group for our class: https://flipgrid.com/1e7e0c80

     I hope you liked Flipgird use it for your students as well!

     If you’d like more, here is a much more detailed tutorial video for Flipgrid: https://youtu.be/Wy5xHwDqOsI

3 Dimentional Virtual World: Second Life!

 

    Hi everyonee! Today, I would like to introduce you to Second Life, which is an 3 dimentional virtual world that allows users to create avatars and interact in their world! Even though it was launched in 2003, Second Life is still popular and people continue to spend nice time in this virtual world. It would be right to say it is actually ahead of its time since with its technology, Second Life is much more than having avatars, there are many things that you can do like creating new worlds, buildings, objects, animations, you can join social events like concerts and conferences, also chatting with other users through text and voice, buy clothes and things from shop, just like we do in our real world. Even you can make your online classes in Second Life, with the students sitting on desks, teacher on the board almost everything is possible in this virtual world!

take a look at my teacher’s class that he created!

   So, in order to join Second Life, first you need to create a new account from its site, then download the application to your computer! After that sign in and you’ve taken your first step into this new world.

   You can create or choose your own avatar, there are many options! I decided to give it a shot with the purple haired character!

    Also, once you joined Second Life begins to give you instructions to how to play, move around and change your settings if you want. For example, you want to use W, A, S, D or the arrow keys on your keyboard to make your avatar move and turn. There are also other ways to move your avatar, press Alt + Shift + S to sit/stand, press Home if you’d like to fly/land, then Ctrl + R for always run!

     Aand here are my avatar’s visiting Istanbul Uni Erasmus place! 

    If you would like to be a part of this 3D virtual world, go create your account, download Second Life to your computer and you are ready to begin your second life!

    Thank you for reading!

My Telecollaboration Experience!

 

    Hello friends! In this post I’d like to talk about my experience with the VALIANT virtual exchange project which me and my classmates were participants of!

     In our Instructional Technologies and Material Design, our teachers Mr. Can and Ms. Işıklıgil had been mentioning us that they were preparing a virtual exchange project with the teachers from Malaga and Complutense University in Spain, and when they finally introduced the project and explain what we will be doing throughout the project I was feeling very excited as it was a new experience for me. Then I grouped with my close friends on the student list with the Complutense University, and our task was to create a storybook. Then we began to wait for our Spanish friends to join our group on Google Docs, we sent mails to each other and we arranged a time for our first meeting which we were supposed to introduce ourselves, so I prepared a presentation by using Canva.

     In our first meeting, we made our introductory presentations in which we talked about our background, our hobbies and a few facts about ourselves. We were shy at first but then as we talked we began to get along and talked about the differences between our languages, the pronunciation, dialects, education and culture, then with the ice breaker game we had so much fun. For the second week we discussed some issues in education and brainstormed for the topic and plot for the storybook that we, Turkish students, will be creating. For the third week we presented storybooks that belong to our own cultures, the storybook that I had presented was about one of the adventures of Nasreddin Hodja. We also talked about the moral of the each storybook and what it meant in our own cultures. 

     Then, until our final meeting, we began to prepare our storybooks and at the 4th week meeting, we showed the draft of our storybook to our Spanish group friends, they gave us good feedbacks about the whole story and its ending. At the end, we all said that it was a pleasure to collaborate and get to know each other. After a few days we continued working on our storybook and finally we completed it! At that moment we sent it to our virtual exhange group chat and our Spanish friends said they really liked our storybook, its plot and the photos that we edited.

    This project made me think that with collaboration, our learning and teaching abilities began to improve faster as we shared our opinions and experiences with each other, and I felt less isolated. We also learned how to use some digital learning and teaching tools much more extensively such as Zoom, Google Drive, Google Docs, Canva etc. Also the Valiant surveys that we have completed before, during and after the project were well prepared and made me have some realizations about how I think and feel.

    At first I was anxious because I didn’t know how it would go, talking to people from another countries and language, what if we can not get along and things like that but it was a relieving feeling to know that we could actually have nice conversations and discussions about some topics, and it gave me more confidence to express myself. And in two Zoom meeting me and my friends joined the meeting side by side, together so it was also very fun and felt more relaxed. The only problem could that the time arrangement was kind of hard for us and our Spanish friends due to all of our schedules and lessons, but we managed to find the available time for all of us.

    Overall, it was a very different and beneficial experience for me, I would like to show my appreciation to our teachers Mr. Can and Ms. Işıklıgil for giving us an opportunity for collaborating with student teachers from other cultures and improve our skills, and i would also like to thank my groupmates for all their hard work, determination and kindness :)

Hope in the future we make more intercultural telecollaboration like this!

Thank you so much for reading! 

Our Storybook— Adventures of Luka: First Day At New School!

 

    Hii everyonee! Today I would like to share our storybook that we, as Turkish students, have created for our telecollaboration project: Adventures of Luka: First Day at New School! The story is about a little parrot named Luka and his experience at the first day of school after he moves from forests of Germany to America with his family. Throughout the story we see the changes of Luka’s thoughts and emotions about the school, language and some struggles he has. 

    We created the storybook by using Canva, it is a very beneficial site for designing many types of projects! We really worked hard to find lovely and suitable pictures for our storybook and usually put many images together to make the scenes look like just how people read it would imagine it to be. When we showed it to our Spanish friends, they really loved it and gave us positive feedbacks and some further ideas if we want to turn it into a series!

     So, I’m sharing the link of our storybook below, don’t hesitate to check it out, hope you’ll enjoy it and we’d love to hear your thoughts as well :)

https://www.canva.com/design/DAFAwx8RY_k/crXqwl2pgqwUfwGEvoQpfQ/watch?utm_content=DAFAwx8RY_k&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Google Docs!

 

 

    Hi everyone! In this post I’d like to talk about this useful free tool, Google Docs! Google Docs is actually a part of the Google Workspace, and it allows teams to chat, collaboratively create and share the document with others! 

    If you ask how to use it, the first thing you need to is that you should be logged in to your Google account and go to Google Docs site or download Google Docs to your device from Google Play Store and Apple Store. When you open it, click on the “+”  and start a new document and you can start editing your document! You can also share your documents, files and folders with people and choose if they can view, edit or comment on them. 

    Another great feature of Google Docs is that you can continue to work on your document even when you are offline, so you can still edit your work when there is no internet connection.

    When you are done editing, through Google Docs you can turn your document to a Word, PDF document without any other site.

   I think Google Docs is a very beneficial and practical online tool for students and teachers! Teacher mihht give students some group assigments and Google Docs could be used to make brainstormings and also could be the base for the actual document for the assigment since the students easily will be able to work synchronously in the same document and share it with the others or their teachers to see their process!

Thank you so much for reading! Hope you liked Google Docs!

    

  

Quizlet!

 

   Hello everyone! In this post I’d like to introduce Quizlet, a free learning tool especially for students containing digital flashcards, study and game modes. It was created in 2005 but, Quizlet is still a popular tool among students. 

    In order to start practising on Quizlet, first you need to sign up with your account, then you can access to the content. On Quizlet, there are two ways to get your study flashcard sets, whether you can create yourself with terms and definitions or find the sets that other users have made and try them! But if you’d like to create your own click “Create” on top and select “Study set”. In that way you can write your definitions and tems and add images from the Quizlet’s free image library as well!

 

    Then when you are done preparing your flashcard study set, you are ready to practise them! Flashcars are great for quick material reviews and memorize some new words with the repetitions, which is could be very beneficial for students’ language learning process and it would help them to prepare for their actual quizzes!

    Thank you for reading! Hope you liked Quizlet!