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!

 

SlidesMania!

 

   Helloo! Today, I’m going to introduce you to SlidesMania, which is an very useful platform for your presentations. SlidesMania offers you many types of free and creative Powerpoint templates and Google Slides themes which can make your presentations look more outstanding and aesthetic! All you need to do is to search by topics or types such as education, fun, formal, interactive, or based on their color etc. and the find the one which suits the best for your style. On the SlidesMania site you can also find some tutorial videos about how to change the theme colors, create digital stickers and many things more! In that way you can make your lessons visually more enjoyable and appealing!

    Here are some examples of templates that slidesMania offer:

 

They look very lovely aren’t they :)

Your students will definitely like them!

Moreover, SlidesMania has been selected as one of the 2022 Best Digital tools for Teaching and Learning by AASL, and it is well deserved in my opinion.

So this is all for SlidesMania for now, hope you enjoyed it!

Jamboard!

 

   Hii everyone! Today, my post will be about Jamboard! Jamboard is a digital whiteboard but it is actually much more than that because it allows you to do many things with its technology in a fun way! It is a nice platform for preparing posters, maps and projects about a specific topic. All you need to do is sign up and begin to create! You can use a variety of pencils and colors to bring your ideas to life, add sticky notes or drop some images to make brainstorm sessions together and highlight objects with the laser pointer tool! The one of best feature of Jamboard is that you can use it both synchronously and asynchronously. In that way students can work on their projects collaboratively, at the same time by logging in through their own devices. With that, there will be no limitation for students to use the whiteboard in the class since each student will have their own either with a group or individually.

   As a teacher, you can also prepare different tasks and posters on Jamboard and allow your students to do their projects on it or share their responses through the sticky notes!

a Jamboard activity 

You can download it on Google Play Store and Apple Store!

Here’s a link for you if you’d like to learn much more interesting features of Jamboard: https://youtu.be/C-watrdDybY

Online Courses: My New Certificates!

  Hi everyone! Today I'd like to show you three new certificates of mine which i have achieved by joining online courses on Bilgeiş and İsmek!

  Bilgeiş is an online platform which is developped by ODTU for people, especially students to have access to various online courses for free! All you need to do is to register, sign in and choose your course. The one i chose to join is "Teaching with Techonology (E-Teach)". I really liked it and learned new technological materials that i can use in my own lessons in the future. The online lessons have many interactive activities and quizzes so it is enjoyable! If you successfully complete the quizzes and the final test, you achieve your official certificate!

  Enstitü İstanbul (İSMEK) is also an beneficial site for all people who would like to join courses in various fields, and you have options for face to face and online education for free. After registiring and signing up, you will have option to join courses in specific periods of time, so you can choose the lesson term which suits you the best. And i decided to have the "Educational Technologies" and "How to Write a Formal E-mail" online courses!

You can go to these sites by clicking on these:

Bilgeiş

Enstitü İstanbul (İSMEK)

Thanks so much for reading! See ya 👋🏼

Mindmeister!

 

   

     Hi everybody! Today I’d like to introduce you to Mindmeister, a online tool where you can create your mindmaps! To use it, first you need to log in, for that you can use your Google Account. It is also a free tool if you choose your account to be a Basic one, which you will have right to create 3 free mindmaps. Now you are ready to create your first mindmap!

    At first there will be an bubble at the center and this will be the beginning of your mindmap. After clicking on the bublle you will see + sign and if you click on it you will have your branch! Let’s show it!

now we have our first mindmap

    It is a very beneficial tool for especially for students since it becomes much easier and fun to organize their work by using an online mindmap instead of kind of struggling with the paper. You can edit your mindmap whenever and however you want, you can change the size, order of branches and its all colours very easily. And with the sharing option, you can invite other participants to edit your mindmap, which will be a useful tool for group projects!

    If you would like to see the Learning Theories mindmap that I created by using Mindmeister, I had already shared it on my blog, just click here !

    Hope you liked Mindmeister, see you later!

Edpuzzle!

     Hello! My post today will be about Edpuzzle, another interesting online teaching and learning tool! Basically Edpuzzle is an platform which you can, as a teacher, turn normal videos from Youtube etc. into interactive ones with adding voice-overs, extra information boxes, assessment questions into the video, for students to engage with the video and answer. It is also an platform where you can practice Flipped teaching, as you can share the most of the content via the videos and the embedded questions. With that, students will be able to self-study and prepare on their own first for the upcoming lesson, ask the their questions if they are confused about the topic and there will be much more time for the activities to do in the actual lesson.

    You can whether sign up with a student or a teacher account. After signing up with a teacher account you can create your first class then you begin to search for a video to create your own lesson. (Edpuzzle can also show you the video lesson examples that the other teachers have made, if you’d like you can check their content out for more ideas.) After finding a suitable video on Edpuzzle that are presented to you by Youtube and other video platforms, choose and start editing on it! Edpuzzle allows you to cut and trim the video, so you can leave out the unnecessary parts. Then add the voice-overs, additional texts, voice notes to the video. To make it even more interactive and evaluative, during the video you can add open ended, close ended and multiple choiced questions at the related time stamp, so the video will be paused and the students can answer the questions. Besides, students are unable to skip the video so they will need to watch the video to understand and complete the questions. When you are done preparing you can assign the video to your students. So, Edpuzzle is an another technological way to track your students’ learning process, their focus on the lesson, keep notes on their correct or wrong answers.

    I’ve put a link of a helpful tutorial video for you, if you’d like to see what is Edpuzzle and how to use it: https://youtu.be/pS2zv-iNiSc

Thanks for reading. See you!

Pear Deck!

     Hi everyone! In this post I’d like to write about an interesting, different kind of tool: Pear Deck! It is an interactive presentation tool which is used to engage students in both individual and social learning. With Pear Deck, students become more active and have important contributions to the lesson instead of only listening to the teacher’ speech in a passive mode. The things you should do is that firstly activate the Pear Deck add-on on your Google Slides, then share the code with the students so that they can connect to Pear Deck through their own devices as well. Then yeah, you all are ready!

      Pear Deck actually has two lesson modes: Student-Paced Activity and Instructor-Paced Activity! If you are connected with your students in real time (virtually or face-to-face) choose Instructor-Paced Activity to guide them in the lesson and observe their responses synchronously.

      With the Instructor-Paced activity, Pear Deck helps students to integrate into the class by the activity types such as text responses, multiple choice questions, numerical responses, drawing an answer and dragging an icon. For instance, when the teacher has just finished talking about a subtopic and wants to know the students’ focus and knowledge so the teacher may activate the questions through the Pear Deck and get all the students’ answers . Or you might wonder if they are enjoying the lesson so far, so with this template of Pear Deck, students may drag their button to somewhere between how they are feeling. In that way, every student gets to give responses to questions. After the class is finished, you name the Session in order to review and examine the students answers later on.

By the way, you can always switch back to Student-Paced Activity, if you want to give these slides to your students in order for them to work through their lessons at their own pace, asynchronously.

Here’ s a link for you to find many more templates that you can use in Pear Deck: https://www.peardeck.com/templates

Here’s a tutorial for Pear Deck: https://youtu.be/9PJgsa-fnmA

Edmodo!

 

   Hi! In this post i’m going to introduce Edmodo, one of the most popular learning management systems. Edmodo is an online platform for managing your digital classroom and communicate with students, parents and collegues as Edmodo allows joining with whether a teacher account, student account or a parent account. So after signing up with a teacher account and creating your profile, you are now ready to create your first class! Then with the class code you have created, students can join the class. You can begin to share the various materials (videos, powerpoints, images, links, videos, PDFs etc.) with your students, you may organize the materials in different folders so it would be easier to find them when needed. 

   There are opportunities for making the student to teacher communication easier by sharing announcements, creating polls and asking for students’ opinions, you can send and receive private messages. Moreover, it becomes easier to assign homeworks, exams, quizzes for a specific of time and lock it as well, then you can make evaluations and give feedback. One of the best part of Edmodo is that it allows teachers to divide students into smaller groups and enable student to student communication with collaborations.

Here is a photo of my class that I created as a teacher:

Here you can see the Home page, where you can see your collegues’ and students’ and your own posts that are shared (kinda looks similar to Facebook, isn’t it :) :

Lastly, my advice is that you should keep the materials that you had uploaded even the class is finished. Don’t delete the classes so you can reach to the sources and the activities incase you need to check them out, make some adjustments and reuse!

You can access to Edmodo by clicking here, or you can download the app from Google Play Store and App Store.

If you are interested, here is a beneficial video about Edmodo: https://youtu.be/CSG5ha9DMIM

Thank you so much for reading, see you in my other posts!

Duolingo!

 

   Hi everyone! I’d like to introduce you a wonderful app that I’ve been using since last year, it is Duolingo! 

   Duolingo is an app which was created for learning various languages in a very fun and efficient way. It has many units, exercises and activities which develop your vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. First, you need to sign in with your account and edit your profile so you can check your progress. Then select the languages that you want to learn, there are many language options for English speaker learners including Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Dutch and even High Valerian :)  And now you are ready for your first lesson!

  Duolingo encourages you to learn the language with the exercises of intorducing you to some simple words first, writing down the word that you heard, making up short sentences, pronouncing the written word and as you progress and level up, the exercises become much more challenging and you can’t wait to study more! At first a 5 minute study is enough and for each day that you study you gain streaks, if you don’t study you lose your streaks unless you have a streak freezer.

   And here is my profile! I’ve been using it since February 2021, and I’ve been trying to learn German, Russian, French, Spanish and Japanese! I know it seems a lot but using Duolingo makes it a lot enjoyable even if I learn just a few words. Nowadays I can’t seem to find time so as soon as my summer holiday begins, I’ll go back to continue my language practises!

   The only thing that i would want for this app would be more language options for Turkish speakers, because there are only English, German and Russian options for them. I can switch to English speaker part so it is not a problem for me but it would be much better if they could add some more language options for Turkish and other language speakers! 

    So, you should denifitely check this app out if you are looking for different ways to learn a new language, I am sure you’ll like it! You can download it on Google Play Store and Apple Store!

Thank you for reading! See y’all :)