AR/VR Integration!

Hi Again!

            This time we made our task with augmented reality and more advanced digital tools. I and my classmate Burak worked together to create a in-class material for A2 level worksheet for Prep-class students. (By the way you can check his blog by clicking here.)

            We were tasked with using QR codes and examination required augmented reality. I think we did a good job as we really get used to integrate such materials in our work. But I cannot tell lie that majority of the work has been done by Burak. I have just completed the missing parts and revise our work by the light of the feedback of our instructor.

            Now let me summarize what this “Augmented Reality” is and what actually we integrated it by doing. Augmented reality (AR) adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. We can say for Augmented reality experiences include Snapchat lenses and the game Pokémon Go. Virtual reality (VR) implies a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world. So, if we create digital reality and integrate it into real-place and/or real-times, it becomes VR. 

            Lastly, I think I can use AR and VR in my classroom, as it is fun to use and easy to use. If you would like to take a glimpse of our work you can click here.

FLIPPED CLASSROOMS!

 

Our Flipped Classroom Assignment!

Hi All! Today I am going to present you to a blessing for one of our modern teaching approaches, if you said, "Is it Flipped Classroom Approach?" you make it right! So, let me give some information about flipped classroom then talk about our assignment.

First of all, the flipped learning is one of the methodologies that gives teachers the opportunity to prioritize the learning process of the class by assigning students lecture and investigate the materials and the presentations to be viewed at home or outside of class.

Moreover, this approach offers various advantages such as: 

• Allows teachers to spend less time introducing new lessons.
• Allows students to develop their learning skills independently.
• Allows teachers to create more attractive lessons.
• Allows students to catch up their classmates.
• Allows teachers to use the materials they have created before.
• Allows students to understand the lesson with supports.

I have finished this task with my classmate Burak (you can check his blog here). I personally find easy to complete this task as it is not complicated as corpus project. What we did well are: We organized quickly and found the concept we would like to work on. What the things are challenged us are: We may create more professional work (but we do not have access to premium tools sadly) and we may get feedback from our instructor.

You can check our video by clicking here and our hand-out from here.

My Corpus Experience!

Using Corpus in Language Teaching

    Hi All! It's me again.

    This time I assigned to use a corpus and creating a teaching material to use in my classroom. If you ever wonder what it is a corpus, I can simplfy it by defining it as a database of a language.

    To be honest this task has been very confusing because interface of most of the corpura (plural of corpus by the way) is very sloppy, and they seem very far from catching my attention as a teacher besides my students for now. If you interested in  taking a glance at the corpus I used, you can click here.

    I completed this task with my fellow teacher candidate friend. We took our inspriation from MEB English course book. You can see the example exercise below. We created an in-class material that make our students to use corpus we showed them how to use. They would need the corpus not only for doing the exercise from MEB book but also for the worksheet we integreated as well. You can see the material we created by clicking here.

    Even if this task was confusing to complete, it was a good experince to learn things such as corpora are exist. They make you feel very professional when you learn how to use them correctly. But when it comes to if I want use this material in future, my answer is no as there has to be much more simplier way to make my students inductively learn by their own in my opinion.

    Our process of preparing this material was very slow at first. After getting feedback from our teacher we finalize our work much more easier and fluently, so we integrated our focus and theme each other very well.

    And my opinion about how data driven learning could benefit language learning is that it is must not an option in our times. "Data administration" is an undeniable concept for our generation and no doubtly it has to be integrated in education as well. So corpus learning is a way our yeacher showed us. However as I said I would try finding another way rather than this method as I do not like it very much.

    Before forgetting, you can also read about this experience from my friend's blog right here.

Internet Project Experience!

 

Interned-based Project!

I was asked for creating a padlet page while using information from multiple websites. Let me briefly explain what I did for this task: It was a group assignment and we did a great job! We were asked for creating an informative page in case of using it for teaching English. (This is also the part explaining why this assignment is about “21st Century Learning”)

Using Padlet for this project was fun. I suppose I would use Padlet as a learning or teaching tool. I find it very useful and creative. While I was working on the task, I was separately searching about the capabilities of Padlet because I very much liked it.

I want to talk about how we did our assignment. We were asked for creating a KWL page (It stands for “What we know”, ”Want to know”, and “What we learned”) page and chose a topic given. We selected “Bullying at School.” As our topic and we thought and wrote about it widely and wisely.

Finally, as self-improvement for 21st Century Learning, I saw a nice opportunity to use the internet for teaching English. As this tool can be used for teaching everything, it can be specifically useful for teaching foreign languages because it is supported by the internet itself (I mean there is an uncountable amount of knowledge on the internet).

As I wrote before, I really enjoyed it while I was doing this task. You can also look at our work here.

21st Century Learning

 

21^st Century Learning

The 21^st Century is different from any other era of humanity. As humanity never advanced ever before, we experience new, surprising, and exciting events, technologies, and discoveries. Our current period, the 21^st Century, offers us drastically changed ways to live, communicate, work and learn.

21^st Century Learning is outshining other centuries by using the Internet and online platforms. With the invention of the Internet which is the largest column of our current entire community. Education also benefits from online methods and the internet itself. Both teachers and students or all kinds of learners participate in online lessons via internet connection without the need of going to schools. The teacher can give their lessons with computer-integrated useful programs and can use very extended digital material such as slides and videos. Students can benefit from online homework and online lesson independently.

In my opinion, 21^st Century Learning means digital learning, being able to use digital platforms and use the internet as many as possible. It is additionally important for language learning. As students and teachers can be united from all over the globe, we can study foreign languages ignoring distances. Furthermore, thanks to the internet we can reach any sources we demand. If we are learning a new language this can be especially useful, we can find any kind of grammar knowledge, reading or listening activities, or tips for learning that language. I have already used these kinds of things while I have been learning English. And as a 21^st Century teacher, I will be sure about my students also use them too.