My Seven Week "Open and Distance Learning" Journey!

 

Hello!

In this post, I will share with you what I learned and what I did in my "Open and Distance Learning" course for 7 weeks. Let's take a look, shall we?

Week 1

In the first week, I edited my website, which I prepared in the 2nd grade upon the request of my teacher. This was the site I created in the 2nd grade, and I made a few changes here. First of all, I changed the theme of my site. The old theme seemed very childish and colorful to me, now, I preferred darker colors instead. Then I changed the fonts and deleted a few gadgets because there were so many unnecessary ones. Apart from these, I also changed the background image of the site, because it seemed incompatible to me. In short, these are the things I did and changed in the first week.

Week 2

In the second week, our teacher taught very useful things in our open and distance learning lesson, most of which I heard for the first time. In our lesson that week, we learned about useful groups on facebook/telegram, forums, digital cpds such as INGED/IATEFL and more. Our teacher gave us the exit ticket I put below before teaching all of these topics. He wanted us to take note of information that we did not know during the course, an information that we know now, I would use this information in my career and that we thought it would not be necessary. Unfortunately, I wrote this much and submitted my homework.

I also attended an online webinar and a few facebook groups as another homework for this week. The webinar I attended was "Focus and Engage: How EdTech Hardware Can Boost Student Outcomes". Three successful presenters were talking about the use of technology in education and it was very entertaining. The Facebook groups I joined were groups where resources were shared on Digital cpd's and generally useful for English teachers. You can see the groups I joined with their links below.

The links for the groups: 

Cpd updates and concerns

ESL teachers club

IATEFL

IATEFL YLTSIG

Week 3

In our lesson in the third week, we did our first group work. In the lesson, our teacher asked us to be a group with a few people and choose an online digital material. So, we formed a group of 4 with my friends and started looking for an online material. Then we found a board game on the islcollective site and used it. You can check out the game in the picture I put below. After we found this game, we talked about which level students can play, what they can learn from it, etc. Afterwards, each group went to the front and introduced the material they chose. That day, we explained that we will be processing this material with middle school, A2 level students and that they can learn frequency in a fun way through to this board game. At the end of the day, we wrote these informations on the list in the drive file shared by our teacher and delivered our homework.

Week 4

In the fourth week, what we needed to do was modify and adapt the material we chose last week. In other words, we had to make that board game we chose more suitable for our students' needs, and that's what we did. First, we grouped together again with my friends and then we talked thoroughly about what we could change or add. Then, since we did not find some pictures on the board suitable for the level of the students, we deleted them and added more suitable pictures instead. Apart from that, we started to think about how we can adapt this game online. Since this game is played with a dice, when we played this game online, we thought that we could open online dice from any site and let students play by pressing the dice one after the other, and we found a site with a dice. At the end of the day, we wrote this information in the drive list and handed over the assignment to our teacher.

The online dice: https://freeonlinedice.com  

Week 5

In our lesson in the fifth week, this time we had to prepare an online material ourselves. That day, we grouped together with my friends in the lesson and prepared an interactive video activity for students using the Lumi application. Our students were again in the 5th grade, with a level of A2. First, we chose an interactive video. In this video, a person walks the roads of Tokyo. The video we prepared lasts for 3 minutes and during this video, it will be stopped in some places and the students will be asked for directions. For example, "how can I go to Starbucks?" or "Where is the cinema?". Thus students' directions knowledge will be reinforced. After we prepared them ourselves like this, we went to the front again and presented our material. Afterwards, we wrote the information about this material in the drive list and delivered this material to our teacher.

The activity: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17Tq57f34PVfaXUKvOG0kxVaTrVSihXGR/view?usp=share_link  

Week 6

In the sixth week, unfortunately, I could not go to school and attend the class. Since I was not in the classroom that day, I could not hand over what was done in the classroom to my teacher as homework later on. However, as far as I understand from the homework given that day, an exit ticket was issued for bingo. Unfortunately, I can't write anything else for this week.

Week 7

In the seventh week, we did online teaching. Our teacher asked us for a 5-minute teaching video by choosing any application or strategy that we learned from this lesson. As a group of 4, we chose two teachers and two students. I was one of the teachers. The topic we chose was friendship and the sites we chose were lumi and wordwall. In this video, we briefly talked about what friendship is and some specific words related to friendship with these applications. We carried out a spin the wheel activity using 4 words on wordwall. In Lumi, we used a few words to do the fill in the blank activity. The video included these and our lecture took 7 minutes instead of 5 minutes, but we shortened it as much as we could. After doing this, we delivered this video to our teacher via microsoft teams.

Our Teaching video: https://youtu.be/C2HWBY1YmHw  

A Teachers Must; Padlet!

 

Hello everyone!

Padlet is a virtual board where users can interactively add text, visuals, videos etc. It can be used by students and by teachers. The students and teachers can add posts, images etc. to the dashboard as they wish and edit them whenever they want. Also, teachers can do all of these interactively with their students. They just have to give the Padlet link to their board. Padlet allows everyone to insert ideas anonymously or with your name. It's also an useful tool that can be used in foreign language learning education. For example, teachers can make dashboards with the titles "writing", "listening", "speaking" etc. and they can add to these dashboards the necessary information about these courses for their students and students can follow their teachers from there. Teachers can also ask questions on their dashboards, our teacher did it and it was fun. The students can enter the link given by the teacher and write the answers to the questions. This would be more fun for them and the information could enter their minds easier.

• Here is my mini dashboard that I created on Padlet:

Augmented Reality (+ Houzz)

 

Hello everyone!

Augmented reality is a type of experience that enriches existing reality. This technology is created by combining the physical elements we perceive in our environment with computer-derived data such as graphics, video, sound, GPS. It provides real-time enrichment of the sensory elements created and their interaction with the physical world. In other words, It's a reality where the real and virtual worlds are not completely separated from each other, on the contrary, they are even more intertwined. 

Teachers can with Augmented reality, engage students in the creation of compelling, interactive, immersive experiences that support extensive language practice. With an Augmented reality app, students can scan pages of the books, showing more information about the object. AR can help students to visualize things and comprehend the concept better. It can also as I said, be helpful for language learning education. As an AR app example, Houzz offers a collection of many furnitures and home decor objects that can be virtually experienced. Such a large collection of material could create opportunities for learners to recognize and describe an extensive variety of descriptive characteristics associated with such objects, allowing them to engage in extensive vocabulary practice through speaking or writing.

Make Your Own World With Second Life!

 

Hello everyone!

As we can understand from its name, Second life is a game that makes its users experience a virtual second world. It welcomes its users with a game content that allows you to live a virtual life unlimitedly. It's an online world in which residents (the users) create virtual representations of themselves, called avatars, and interact with other avatars, places or objects. Second life isn't just a game to chat, residents can do much more than communicate with one another. For one thing, they can contribute to the world around them, creating buildings, objects or even animations. The residents can go to social gatherings, live concerts, and even college classes. Basically, they can do a lot of things you can do in real life. Second life is really an enjoyable game and It's possible to meet users from all over the world and even to improve your foreign language.

Virtual Reality (+ Mondly)

 

Hello everyone!

Virtual reality uses any technological device to simulate a real environment. Rather than showing you a scenario, Virtual reality can put you in that scenario. It also can provide interactive experiences that could be much more engaging than studying alone. Virtual reality apps can give you also valuable practice, which can help reinforce learning. You can basically use Virtual reality apps to practice and improve on your fluency or accuracy in a real-life scenario, without feeling self-conscious in front of a native speaker. It enables us to get rid of classroom walls and connect with the outside world very simply.

Virtual reality opens new doors to language learning. There are many virtual reality apps out there and I tried the virtual reality app called "Mondly". Mondly can be one of the best VR apps to use for language learning education because it's basically focused on learning a foreign language. It launches you in an environment where you can have conversations with virtual characters. While using, It can boost students self-confidence regarding speaking in real situations. By combining speech recognition and voice chatbot, Mondly offers a sense of real immersion. You get instant feedback on your pronunciation, as well as suggestions on how to improve your vocabulary. I also got a lot suggestions while playing and it was really helpful. The interactive scenarios can make the process fun and enjoyable especially for the young students learning a foreign language.

Online Lessons with Flipgrid!

 

Hello everyone!

Flipgrid is a video tool that allows teachers to post "Topics" that are essentially videos with some texts. This is then shared with students, who can respond to their teachers post. The response can be made using flip grid's camera to create videos that are then posted to the Topic. These videos can be recorded as many times as needed before uploading, and can have the addition of emoji, text, stickers or custom stickers. Using video to interact is also one of the best parts about Flipgrid, it's like being face to face in real world, but without the pressure of a real classroom. Since students are given the space and time to respond when they're ready, it can make also educational engagement possible for the anxious students that feel left out in their classes.

• I also created my own class on Flipgrid, its code is (kl1979).