Make Learning Fun With Voki!

 

Hello everyone!

I am going to talk shortly about Voki today. Voki is an application that every student will love and definitely have a a lot of fun while using it. In this application, you can create characters such as normal human faces, emojis, animals and make them speak by typing the speech you want to make them speak in the space provided. You can decide and choose whether the person speaking is a man or a woman, his/her accent and where he/she comes from. I recommend every one to use Voki, because it's really an application that students will improve themselves and have a lot of fun.

• Here is my Voki character, you can hear it speak by clicking https://tinyurl.com/y7ydk2fu  this link.

Get Lost In Your Imaginations With Storybird!

 

Hello everyone!

I'm going to talk about Storybird today. Storybird is an application where students of all ages can create digital stories and develop their skills such as writing, creative thinking and their imagination. You can use hundreds of templates and characters in Storybird, or you can create your own template or character and add them to Storybird. Students can read the created books; they can write their own books, stories and poems. It's a tool that makes the work of book/story writing enjoyable, improves writing skills and increases the interest of the users by motivating them in this field.

• I also tried to make a short comic story, the title of it is "a surprising and at the haunted house" Hope you'll like it!

Surface Your Thoughts With Wordle!

 

Hello everyone!

Wordle is a website where you are able to create visual representations of text through "word clouds" to illustrate your message. It's a fun tool that creates a word cloud out of your written texts. You can paste a text from a document or type it directly into Wordle. The tool automatically generates a word cloud that visually represents the various words appear. Frequently used words are larger than others. The first shape is generated randomly, and you can then customize its appearance by removing less significant words and adjusting orientation, color palette, and its font. Wordle is really an entertaining alternative for everyone, especially for students. 

• I also tried to make a mini word cloud, hope you'll like it.

Create Wonderful Posters With Glogster!

 

Hello everyone!

Students can do great things with the platform Glogster. Glogster is a great creativity site. It is basically an online poster web site. You can design online posters, banners, and have your performance or project assignments done here. Students can combine text, images, graphics, videos and audio to create an interactive online poster. You can either create your own designs or you can start by using already-made templates. With this platform, which has a very simple use, students lessons/assignments can be colored and their studies can gain richness.

If you are interested in Glogster, here is the link https://edu.glogster.com 

Pin Your Interests On Pinterest!

 

Hello everyone!

Pinterest is a platform where users share and interact with an incredible number of various photos. It is, as you can understand from its name, a platform where you can Pin your Interests. I can hear you asking, 'where is the educational aspect in there?' Well, it depends on how you use it. On Pinterest, most people also share educational stuff. There are also many useful things for learning English like grammar knowledge, vocabulary, prepositions etc. All you have to do is write the subject you want to learn in the search bar, after typing, you will come across all sorts of pictures and you can save them and pin them on your own page.

• I pinned many pictures under the title 'English language learning', and added the photo in case you want to see it. 

If you would like to visit Pinterest, here is the link for it https://www.pinterest.com 

My Podcast and Vodcast

 

Hello everyone!

A podcast is a program consisting of music or speech in digital format that can be automatically downloaded over the internet. The word podcast was created in the 2000s from the words pod in the word "iPod" and "broadcast". Podcasts have been developed for the iPod for the first time. Apart from the entertainment use of podcasts, educational and business use is also widespread. There are many platforms where you can upload your own podcast such as buzzsprout, podbean, simplecast, soundcloud etc. I also created a podcast about learning language and its benefits.

• Here is the link for my podcast: https://soundcloud.com/beyza-k-l-546536641/language-learning-and-its-benefits/s-f6nrWergm6d 

Vodcast is actually defined as the video content of podcasts. As you can imagine, it comes from a combination of the words video and podcast, some people also prefer to call it "vidcast". Vodcasters produce content that goes beyond the audience, such as conveying, teaching, entertaining, and making people think about specific topics rather than the events that happen to them individually or daily. I also created an animated vodcast with powtoon about some tips for learning language. 

• Here is the link for my vodcast: https://www.powtoon.com/s/fxYMeHHEFuT/1/m 

Improve Your Vocabulary With Quizlet

 

Hello everyone!

I will introduce you to a web tool that is practical to both students and also teachers. Yes, it's Quizlet!

The common problem for anyone learning a new language is usually memorizing words. Each person develops different methods to memorize them. Creating flashcards, sticking post-it notes everywhere or memorizing them from the dictionary are some of them. These processes can start to become boring after a while, and in this case, Quizlet can be used to learn and memorize with more fun.

Quizlet is a flashcard web tool both available as a website or as an application. Quizlet can be used not only for teaching but also for individual learning. Teachers can prepare sets and open classes for students to see and study those sets. Students can study from their teachers set, use the pre-made work sets or create a set themselves. You can make learning more permanent with the cards and games in the study sets. In short, Quizlet can both help you memorize words more simply and also improve your existing vocabulary in a more fun way.

with clicking this link, https://quizlet.com/_982i9g?x=1qqt&i=2crxf5  you can see my flash cards that I created on Quizlet.

Everyone's Favorite Educational Quiz Game, Kahoot!

 

Hello everyone! 

Today, I'm going to talk about Kahoot. Kahoot is platform that makes learning things easier for students and also for teachers by making it more fun. With Kahoot, you can create fun games about any subject you choose or join other people's games. In addition to its gamified infrastructure, Kahoot is very interesting thanks to its rich sounds and visual structure, making learning easier. In general, at the end of the lessons, when students are bored, teachers play Kahoot with them to get their attention back. Thus, the students both relieve their boredom and refresh what they have learned in the lesson with the quizzes and games in Kahoot. 

• I also created a mini quiz of 5 questions about phrasal verbs. You can access it through this link. https://create.kahoot.it/share/phrasal-verbs/9f44dbfa-6c7e-453a-a2c9-53ed22ce275c 

Your Classroom App For Fun; Socrative!

 

Hello everyone!

Socrative is a tool where teachers can create tests on there and give their students instant feedback by solving those tests from their smartphones or other devices. It's an application that can be very useful for every teacher and student to offer both an instructive and a fun activity right after a subject. Students can start solving the questions by entering the test opened by the teacher after logging into Socrative by typing their names or their nicknames if they wish. Tests prepared by teachers with Socrative can definitely make the lessons more enjoyable.

• This is the page that comes out when we open a membership as a teacher:

I signed up as a teacher and created my own mini quiz, if you would like to see, click this link https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#import-quiz/53957254 

In short, Socrative is a tool that helps teachers and students evaluate their learning and progress. It's an effective way to monitor assess learning, which saves time for the teachers while providing fun and interactive content for learners.

Powerful Learning Experience; Blackboard!

 

Hello everyone! I am going to again, shortly talk about an application that will be useful for teachers and prospective teachers. It's Blackboard!

Blackboard is an application for online learning, teaching, and knowledge sharing. It's an online learning tool that can supplement face to face classes. Many conventional classroom functions have equivalents in Blackboard, allowing students and teachers to emulate just about every physical classroom experience element. Students and teachers can interact using assignments, discussion groups, tests, and more.

In a fully online format, Instructors can assign all materials to the students digitally, communicate with them outside of a classroom, and have students discuss and collaborate online. Instructors can also post content, including images, audio, files, and video, in their courses. Black board is really a nice application where teachers can get in touch with their students in these corona virus times.

Online Learning With Moodle!

 

Hello everyone!

Moodle, in it's simplest definition, is a web software for creating online lessons. Moodle stands for Modular-Object-Oriented-Dynamic-Learning-Environment. We can say that it's somehow like an online classroom for the teachers and students that is designed so that it can be integrated into our education system. Moodle has also the necessary features and benefits to fulfill most of the activities that can be needed in distance learning.

As far as I researched it, many universities use Moodle for its usefulness. Lecturers and assistants can share the slides taught in the lesson, assignments and projects here. Students and faculty members can message and send images to each other trough this system. And many more things can be done in Moodle. 

If you would like to visit Moodle, you can click here https://moodle.org/?lang=en 

An Online Classroom; Edmodo!

 

Hello everyone! I will introduce a useful web tool to teachers and to the future teachers out there. It's Edmodo!

Edmodo is a web tool used to create a virtual classroom. It's an alternative platform that you can use to increase interaction with teachers, students and also with their parents. It can be used also to increasing learning outside the classroom. Thanks to Edmodo, it can be very easy for a teacher to communicate with their students outside of the classroom and send them works. With this tool, teachers can create classes, make quizzes to their students, send and notify homework and much more. Thanks to this web tool, students can gain the acquisition of the conscious use of technology, and at the same time, the usefulness of Edmodo can increase their interest thanks to the design structure they are familiar with.

• I even logged in as a teacher to try it out and opened my first class (sg7uya), It was a fun process even though I didn't have students, I understood how it works. 

MindMeister pt.3 TPACK and SAMR Models

 

Hello everyone!

Here I am with my third MindMeister post. This time, I created my mind map about the topics 'TPACK Model' and 'SAMR Model'. If you want some information about these two models, you can take a look at my mind maps that I prepared and added to the bottom.

• TPACK Model

• SAMR Model

My Journey With Coursera (+ getting a certificate)

 

Hello everyone!

I will give you some information about Coursera and tell you about my adventure with it.

Coursera is a site that offers online courses from various famous universities. We can say that it is like the online version of University lessons. The difference from the University is that these courses are open to everyone. There is no such thing as a participation limit. You can take these lessons wherever you are in the world and you also can get a certificate when you finish your chosen lesson.

• My Journey with Coursera:

About two weeks ago, I attended and finished the English for Career Development lesson in Coursera, which was presented by the University of Pennsylvania. As I said, there are many courses, but I chose this course because it caught my interest and I thought that I could learn something for my future. There was exactly a 5-week course schedule, but of course, you could finish the course whenever you want since they put the videos and everything in advance. I solved quizzes in each week's lesson, did my homework and that's how I could access the lessons of the other week. It was so fun that I finished the course in exactly 1 day and got my certificate. I can say that this course improved my understanding of a job application process, improved my English language skills and it gave me the opportunity to explore a global career path. In the end, I got my certificate, but it was a long process. Normally certificates are paid and cost 49 dollars. However, there is a financial aid article next to each course and when you press it, you write in a paragraph of about 150 words why you want to get this course and certificate for free and you must wait 2 weeks whether this application of yours is accepted or not. Of course, I applied and as my application was accepted today, I wanted to share it with you here. Do not forget that if you want a certificate for free!

• Here is my certificate :)

If you would like to start your journey with coursera, here is the link for it https://www.coursera.org