Week 10- Mission Completed ;)

This week we learned different models of technology integration and the diversity of the models gave me a chance to see the different visions.

There is a misunderstanding about technology integration into education: "People think that we kill the creativity in children and they see the way we teach like this:

What I know is that it is not the way I teach. If we are 21st century educators, we need to know that we should be facilitating our students' learning. We shouldn't be spoon feeding them. 

To me teaching is just this:

The important thing is we must be able to see them all together ;)

This is my last post for this program, I know that I will keep in touch with you ;)

I enjoyed every moment of it.

Thanks for everything, every supporting comment and every one of you ;)

Especially my dear partner ROLANDA and dear DONNA <3

Aysun Güneş

Turkey

Week 9- We're so close to the finish line ;)

Dear colleagues,

This week we discussed the learning style of our students and the best thing in our discussions is that we shared our little secrets about how we define the learning styles of our students. Rolanda , my dear partner ;), applies a test to her students to see their learning preferences and styles. She also shared the links of the tests. I shared the link of the website where I find my test as well. My link is this:

http://www.educationplanner.org/students/self-assessments/learning-styles-quiz.shtml

What's more we tried to deepen our understanding about the learning styles. While surfing on the net, I found this:

Photo credit: http://aae.boisestate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/multiple-intelligences-infographic.jpg

The last thing is that we share the final version of our projects. Yay ;)

I'm so happy to be a part of this great training program.

Aysun Güneş

Turkey

Week 8- Project reports

Dear all,

We're about to finish the course and I feel terrible about the course's finishing. I wouldn't believe if someone had told me that I would be sad about a course's ending, but I feel so attached to the course and its requirements.

This week I chose my partner- Dear Rolanda- and we shared our plans and projects with each other. At first I thought it would be easy because I had my drafts and notes from my journal, but when it came to write it down I felt a bit confused. Then the plan template and the questions it it helped me organise my ideas in a meaningful way.

What's more, this week Idid a great activity on Padlet with my students and they enjoyed participating in it. Also I implemented my project activity on Thematic.co with my students and they did great presentations with the web tool. They filled out a survey about the web tool and the activity, and most of them agreed on the usefulness of the web page. 

This week was very hectic but great anyway.

Have better and happier weeks ;)

Aysun

Turkey

Week 7- A very fruitful week

This week I learned the essence of one computer classroom. We all tried out new ideas and posted some articles on Padlet about learner autonomy.
My bonus for this week was that I started implementing my project to my class. It was about the improvement of the speaking skill via web tools. The web tool I chose is a website: www.thematic.co
Unlike a power point presentation, you are not allowed to put a lot of writing on the photo slides-only one ortwo sentences. I believe that this will push the students to TALK.
We'll see the results in a week, and I'm so excited now;)

Aysun
Turkey

Week 6- Fostering speaking skills through web

Dear colleagues,

This week was very busy for me, because I was out of town for an exam duty. I'm also working as an oral examiner for  Cambridge University Exams. Finding time in such asycronised courses becomes more difficult if you are working at the same time like us ;) Thegood thing is: 'I am fully motivated in this online course- of course with the helps of my virtual classmates' supportive comments'

This week I started to implement my web tool- which is a website called www.thematic.co

At the beginning of the week, I explained the reasons and the expected results of the use of this site to my students. The first thing I did upon expaining them why was to show my example and do a model presentation by using the website. Then they immediately searched for the address of the website from their mobile devices and they asked about some details like the content of it.

The task I prepared for them is:
'Find pictures about one of the topic below and prepare a similar presentation on www.thematic.co and publish it on the web site. Then share the link on the page of our class on Edmodo. Here are the topics:

1. Favoutite music band, music genre or musician
2. Your hobbies
3. A person you admire
4. An important event for you
5. Your favourite animal
6. Your favourite city, country,food

Your presenations-likeI did in the class- will be next week.'

I'm looking forward to getting their links to see what they've done.

I want to add some more points about interactive power point presentations. I tried to do my best in this task and I enjoyed preparing it. Reading the comments of Chi and Donna made my day. Thank you so much

Week 5- Right in the middle!

This is the week of trying out new tools and I loved it ;) Here some of the things I tried:


1- A web quest with Zunal:

2- An online tool to create rubrics:

Bonus of the week was our guest tutor Thalia Hadzigiannoglou , and I need to admit that I loved her responses to the posts of my virtual classmates. I believe that sharing is caring and she showed great care for us ;)

This week I had the chance to share the things that I learned from this course with my edtech team members. They loved using the tools we reviewed and they immediately started making plans  for future applications.

Aysun

Turkey

Week 4- Reading&Writing Skills

Bringing out the creative sides of students is awesome and writing is a great tool to dig out this hidden part in our students. In the age of technology, it is no surprise to use web tools to enhance our students writing and also reading abilities through web skills.

This week, we read inspiring articles on the topic and shared some of our web tool applications within the group. As I mentioned before I love using technology-apps, web sites, QR codes etc-in my classes a lot. But when it comes to planing this process, seeing some examples was very informative and trying out a technology enhanced lesson plan was a meaningful experience. I, of course, prepare plans for my teaching but I have never embedded technology in my plans that much although I use it a lot.

                                         source: http://eggl.me/jigsaw-lesson-plan-on-angles/

But sometimes activities do not go as we plan in our lesson plan, then we do this ;)

Have a perfect week ;)

Week 3- Reflections

Hello everyone,

I started the week with a new website. I had heard the site- Delicious- many times but i wasn't interested in it then. After the onset of this week, I created a page on Delicious website and really I liked it. Actually I was a bit regretful of missing a website like this, because not only sharing the ideas but also sharing your sources is a good a idea.

As it comes to aural/oral skill building through web skills, the articles chosen for us were very informative. First of all we were given a good example of how important pronunciation is in language teaching/learning.

I like using this chart in the very first lessons of mine just to give the perception of the phonics and the importance of them in intelligibility. To improve my students speaking and listening skills, I always encourage them to visit websites on these areas. From time to time I use websites about listening or pronunciation as the prerequsities of some activities. For example; I ask them to listen to some recordings from Randals Listening Lab to make them ready for a speaking activity on the same topic. I advise them to check the scripts of the listening activity if they had great difficulty in understanding the recording. Besides I always urge them to download applications about listening, pronunciation and speaking to their smart phones. The reason of this is very simple: They never leave their phones so we should make use of their addiction ;) 

Photo credit: https://carolschnei.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/oi.gif

I'd like to add some comments on one more site which is my favorite for years. It is VOA ;) Voice of America is a great site with an interesting content for the learners of English. You can find videos for your courses easily. You can choose the level and the topic for your lessons. There is also a part called "English in a minute" There you can have your students watch videos of some idioms and by doing so they will comprehend the meaning more because their using of the visual help will make the learning better. Here s an example:

That's all for this week. I hope you'll like the post, I'm looking for your comments ;)

Aysun Güneş

Turkey

Week 2- Reflections on ABCD Learning Objectives

Hello everyone,

This week started very hectic because of the workload of mine and I felt  a bit nervous at the beginning of the week. Today is Wednesday and I feel quite relieved because I've completed most of my tasks at school, in the MA program and also I was able to prepare a big birthday party for my son. 

When it comes to our tasks here, I can say that the online program is very fruitful and refreshing from the  start. In our college years of course most of us learned how to write learning objectives, but after over ten years it is really refreshing to have a look at them again. I saw that I forgot most of the jargon and for that reason I made a research on the topic and watched some videos on "Youtube" and checked some slides from "Slideshare". These helped me remember the details about the topic. 

As I mentioned in my posts on Nicenet, I'm a visual learner, for that reason I like to support my learning with videos and PPT slides.

I'd like to share the link of the video with you.

Link:

Writing ABCD learning outcomes

After watching the video, I learned that our objective should be about the outcome NOT the process. Moreover they should be SMART. 

That's all for now.


Aysun Güneş
Turkey

Greetings from Turkey

Hello everyone,
It's a great pleasure for me to be a part of this training programme. I'm Aysun and I'm an instructor of English at a state university-Anadolu University- in Turkey. I've been teaching English for over ten years and for the last 8 years I've been trying to participate CPD (Continous Professional Development) events and trainings to improve myself and keep learning.  I'm living in a small city called Eskişehir which is so close to the capital-Ankara. These are the pictures of my lovely city. If you visit Turkey or at least if you are planning to do so, I'd like to have you as my guests :)

Love,

Aysun