A Journey To ELT

You know that this blog has been opened for our Technology and Materials Design course and now it's finished. I can say that this course and this blogging process contributed to me a lot in technology and ELT.  Thanks to this course, I learned to make a podcast, create a page on wiki, the place of the digitalstory in education, tools that can be used in classroom, how to evaluate a website and when searching for a site to evaluate I found many different and useful sources related to english teaching which it will be very useful in the future. Also when looking for a mobile app for language teaching, I discovered a lot of useful applications that i can recommend to my students in the time to come.  Generally, I gained a lot of knowledge about my field and I got a chance to improve myself. First, it was not easy for me to do such things. As time passes by, I got used to it and the process of blogging started to be fun. I really enjoyed in this process and in...

  Almost everyone needs to express their thoughts and ideas to an audience in the form of content. Visual content such as Presentation, Images and Infographics are highly engaging forms of content over text. But tools generally based on an outdated technology and often limit users to create engaging contents. So, in this post I want to introduce you an online web application that   simplifies the ability for anyone to easily translate their thoughts and ideas into engaging content. Visme   is kind of a tool that helps the users in making visually appealing interactive presentations, infographics, banners and it is free to all users. When you login to Visme, it takes just a few seconds to register and start creating your first project. For our Technology and Material Design course, we were supposed to create a infographic. So, im going to talk about some features of infographics.In the infographic part, there are different templates, whic...

Hello everyone, In this post, I’ll share my experiences about creating a digital storytelling. First, What’s digital storytelling? It is a short story created by combining a recorded narrative with images, animation, video, text and music or other sounds.       For our Technology and Material Design course project, we were supposed to create a digital story with a partner. Azra and I decided to create a fictional story and also we wanted that this project includes some teaching purpose. So, we decided to create a story which  appeals to young learners and we came up with lots of ideas but we didn’t know how to do it. After searching for hours, we decided to use Animaker for this project because we thought animation can be more attractive for young learners.     We chose the characters that fits our story in the Animaker but this program requires upgrade for some parts and this limitated us from some aspects. We designed...

Hello everyone,    In this post, I want to introduce you a mobile app,    ABA English. ABA English is like a academy where students learn English with a learning approach that inspired by the natural method. It consist of learning through total language immersion. That way, first students listen and comprehend and then they start to naturally speak and write. How it works? When you login your account, you choose your course level. Then you’ll see a menu which consists of a lot of units from easy to difficult. After you choose the unit that you want to learn or you can progress step by step, you’ll see categories. step 1 Step 2 step 3   First, you should watch the ABA film , then you should study the dialogues. In the speak section, you’ll listen a sentence and repeat it by recording your voice. Then, you can compare your pronunciation with the true one and you can correct yourself. In the writing section, you’ll listen...

Hi Everyone,   This week, I have evaluated Dave’s ESL Cafe for our assignment. This website is related to teaching and learning English. On its home page you can see the purpose of this website in this motto “The Internet’s Meeting place for ESL+ EFL Teachers + students from around the world”. So, it is a good place to get together with teachers and students. The website, which has been in existence since 1995, has slowly grown to be one of the largest resources for ELT. As you can see from the name and it also writes on the website, it is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling who has a BA in Psychology from Pepperdine University, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from California State University. You can reach more detailed information about Dave on website or from interviews.   The home page includes general listing, a drop down menu and at the bottom of the page you can see when the site has last been updated, 2017. The website consists of stuff for teac...

Hello everyone!   This week, I have experienced  creating a page on wiki and I want to share with you. First, I’d like to briefly mention about what the wiki is. It is a kind of website that allows users to freely upload, edit and delete content present on a webpage collaboratively.  For our assingment, we were supposed to choose a film that won at least one academy award. We were also supposed to review it according to instruction and create a page on wiki. My pair, Azra and I worked in this project collaboratively and we decided to watch Black Swan which I always wonder. After watching the movie, we created a page on wiki that includes some basic informations, reviews and a pilot about the movie. We made recommendations and commented on the film, its musics, costumes, actresses. Also, we wanted to enrich our page with pictures, a gif and a trailer.  Working collaboratively made the process easier. We created and edited the page simultaneously. But someti...

  Hi again, I want to share my first podcasting experience with you. First of all, let me say that it was absolutely a challenging task for me. It was given by our instructer for our material class. As it is a pair work, Oğulcan and I worked  together.To the given task, all we need to do is choose to one of the three options and make a podcast about it.   We chose to create a sound rich story and narrate it. It looked like fun and easy. Actually it was. First, we wrote the story using some key words and made a plan. Later, we started to record our voices and this was the challenging part. We made little mistakes and had to start over and over again. Also, we had a lot of difficulty when we were adjusting the sound effects.     Despite some difficult parts and our bad lucks, I really enjoy this process of podcasting. It was a good experience for me and I got a chance to use my voice differently. And of course Oğulcan’s partnership made ...

Technology,Internet,Innovation,Media,DigitalPlatforms.     These are the terms that come to my mind first when i think about 21st century. Today, we live in a world dominated by technology.Our interactions with the world and with one another are mediated by computers,tablets, and smart phones. Of course, this developing technology have affected the education and learning environment. Now classrooms are full of many technological devices. These devices are helper of teachers for many aspects. Such as they can add a lesson-related videos and this provide a better understanding of the subject and it is also less time consuming.     To catch up these developments, 21st Century learning students are expected to more creative, collaborative and effective. Also, they must be critical thinkers and have some communication skills.    Besides, education in the 21st century offers a huge variety of learning options.Students are more active and they have acc...

Hello everyone!     I always thought about how it would be if I had a blog, and there it is. Even though I am worried as it is my first blog, I get excited when I think about things I will do on this blog. Generally, I will be blogging about my experiences in ELT and  Technology & Material Design course. I will also share my opinions, some informations and latest news with you and  I will provide some advices and helpful tips, to the best of my knowledge.   I really hope you enjoy it. As i just said I’m new to blogging so any criticism or advice will be much appreciated. You can contact me and feel free to comment or ask me questions.  I’d love to hear them. Many thanks, Hande Nuray