Material Use in Teaching English

I know, I know... The ones I talked about before on my posts were amazing tools that can help in our teaching, but you also need to check this!  Sutori is another interactive teaching tool that lets users create story timelines that can include photos and documents. If you are using many presentations in your class, Sutori is just for you! Or you can make your students prepare presentations or story timelines about a particular topic. This will help them work collaboratively and provide an entertaining atmosphere in which they can both learn & enjoy! Students can add a range of media and the simple visual design helps make complex ideas more approachable.  With a super-simple design and tons of flexible features, this is an appealing and intuitive way for teachers and students to organize and share class content. There are premade stories and templates which include some excellent details and embedded resources, and it's worth spending the time to dig in and find content that m

 In this post, let me introduce 'Canva'. Canva is a graphic design platform which is used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content. The app includes templates for users to use.  You can choose Canva to create your logo, posters and many more things with ease and fun! They were once time-consuming tasks, but now they will only take a few minutes. Teachers can use Canva to create wonderful posters to catch students' attention. For example: Here are some samples from the website of it:  

Powtoon is a visual communication platform for creating engaging, animated videos and presentations with zero design skills or technical background. Users can choose from a range of over 200 ready-to-use templates and customize them with company branding, content, and visuals. You can create animated videos for personal, educational or business use. It is free, web-based (with options to upgrade), user- friendly software that creates presentations via three simple and easy steps: writing a script, recording a voiceover, and adding visuals.   It's now so easy to catch students' attention to the course! PowToon has the potential to be a powerful animated presentation tool. Whether teacher or student-created presentations are the plan, the slide-based format allows presenters some control over how they present their information. Powtoon offers energetic and vivid way to present your ideas, reports, assignments etc. In my opinion every class should make use of it! Here is a video t

I have an amazing tool for you which we, as teachers or future teachers, can use on our English teaching/learning journey. It's called 'Storybird' aka Artful Storytelling. '9 million writers in more than 100 countries around the world use Storybird to tell their stories. Read the best writers, publish your work, and get expert feedback from teachers, professional editors, and authors.' These are from the original website of Storybird. Well, they got me. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It is basically:  And here is an example for you: PROS * Without requiring any artistic ability, students drag and drop characters and images onto a digital storyboard.  * A visual representation of their thoughts can now be transformed into wonderful writing. Students can use the finished Storybird to write a paper that expands their abstract thoughts into a traditional essay. * Students now can experience writing formal essays and expressing themselves in a meaningful manner. * With a tool such as Storybird

Virtual reality is an experience that can be similar to or completely different from the real world. It enables a person to interact with an artificial three-dimensional (3-D) visual or other sensory environment. I'm sure you all are familiar with a picture of a person wearing goggles and enjoying the time. Yes, I'm talking about this. A user can tour a simulated rooms, experience different viewpoints and perspectives that are related to his own head turnings and steps. Electronic devices such as special gloves with sensors provide the sensation of touch, user can even pick up and manipulate objects that she/he sees in the virtual environment.  Virtual Reality in Education Traditional methods used by traditional teachers are out of date nowadays. There needs to be new approaches that entegrate technology into our teaching/learning journey. So what are the options, then? We can make use of this amazing technology in our field since it has the power to engage and inspire students

Augmented reality (AR) is an enhanced version of the real world via technology. It is an experience where the parts of users' physical world is enhanced with computer-generated input. Augmented reality uses the existing real-world environment and puts virtual information on top of it to enhance the experience. AR experience includes 25% digital reality and 75% existing reality. It means it doesn't replace the complete environment with the virtual; rather, it integrates virtual objects into the real world.  The most commonly used AR applications these days use smartphones to display the digitally augmented world: users can activate a smartphone’s camera, view the real world around them on the screen and rely on an AR application to enhance that world in any number of ways such as: *  Adding real-time directions * Inserting labels * Changing colors * Changing the user's or their environment's appearance via filters on Instagram, Snapchat and other apps Augmented Reality

  Hello everyone, I want to share my certificate I received from Coursera on 'Teaching English: Foundational Principles'  Coursera is massive open online course provider. It works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, certifications and degrees in a variety of subjects. I highly recommend you to go and search an online course on Coursera which is suitable for your choice!

Hi again. In this post, I'll be explaining Second Life and its use for our English class. Second Life is basically an online virtual world. Users are called 'residents' there and they can create their avatars to start. Residents can communicate through voice chat or written texts with each other. They can visit many destinations and meet new friends.  In terms of teaching and learning, Second life is useful and realistic tool. It enhances synchronous interactions and peer collaboration. It creates a learning community through which users can share their ideas and discuss on a particular topic. Second Life encourages students to take part as actively as possible in learning. Students can improve their speaking & listening skills without showing themselves thanks to it. It also utilizes 'authentic language use'. Students can get together in a room or a place, and thus, they can experience collaboration, interaction and exchanging conversations with their classmat

Here is a short summary of the chapter 1 'Social Networking as an Educational Tool' of the book 'E-Learning and Social Networking'. Social softwares have been started to be used by educators who want to experience innovative practices in their teaching by means of web 2.0 tools. The tools make use of 'collective intelligence' which basically means collecting data from users. Wikipedia, blogging and podcasting can be given as an example to these tools. Not only does the system let users create a content but it also enable them to share it through social networking. Social networks provide 'social interaction' between users so that they can work collaboratively, interact with others and create/share what they have done effortlessly. Actively participating and creating things, learners as users can construct their own learning. Students feel that they are active members of their learning community and they are open to share their ideas by commenting on blog

 Nearpod is an amazing tool which helps teachers to make their lesson more interactive. It magically turns intolarable lessons into more tolerable ones. Let's see how. You should use Nearpod because... * Teachers can add matching, fill in the blanks, open ended activities and polls to the slides as well as pictures and videos. *  The teacher has complete control of student devices.  * It provides and achieves student engagement. *  Nearpod works on any device as long as you have access to WIFI.  *  With both teacher and student-paced lesson modes, you can use Nearpod in small groups or student groups. *  Using Nearpod lessons with your class provides the opportunity to give instant and immediate feedback to your students. * You can find over 7,000 amazing ready-to-teach lessons in Nearpod’s lesson library or you can choose to create your own Nearpod lessons from scratch or existing presentations. * Once you have shared the lesson code with students, just close the panel to get star

 In this post, let me talk about Trello. Trello is a tool that organizes your projects and gathers them in one wall. It's highly recommended by many teachers around the world to create a different lesson experience with students. Why use Trello? * It is easy to use and user-friendly. * It works best for project managements, designing or marketing. * You can see your works and others' in an organized way. * Trello can be used by businesses, teachers&students and community groups for creativity and it's free. * It is very useful ground for brainstorming and planning. * It boasts productivity since it helps you see the cards and lists that you add before as a whole. * It's unique cause its layout is flexible and open-ended for users to organize any task. 'Imagine a white board, filled with lists of sticky notes, with each note as a task for you and your team. Now imagine that each of those sticky notes has photos, attachments from other data sources like BitBucket

  This one is for teachers who like to be organized when it comes to teaching. Padlet is an online board tool that helps to digitize your classroom. It makes the lesson more interactive and it also contributes to design the content. Let's have a quick look at what it offers to teachers and students:  Padlet can be used by students and teachers to post notes on a common page. The notes posted by teachers and students can contain links, videos, images and document files. When you register with Padlet, you can create as many “walls” or online notice boards as you like. Teachers and students can use Padlet to post notes on common wall. For example, as a teacher, you can add a post about yesterday's lesson (what did they learn, was it useful) with double click and you can ask your students to add their comments right below. Other than teachers, students can also add post which may include gifts, pictures, videos etc. Teachers can utilize 3 padlets for different lessons or topics, as

Voki is a similar platform to Flipgrid but it's more interesting one. It also aims to develop students' speaking skills as Flipgrid does but main difference is that Voki provides avatars and animations. Voki makes students feel more comfortable since they don't need to use their own voices and videos. It suggests an easy way to make speech practices. In my opinion, Voki makes the lesson more enjoyable and it offers different experience. You can click  here  to see my Voki I created as an example . Here is a Voki tutorial for you to watch:

  In a student-centered class, all students should participate in and speak, right? Okay but how can we achieve it then? Just saying 'Please speak' ? Well, this would sound silly for sure. Lucky for you, I brough an application with me here that can solve that problem out. Let me introduce Flipgrid.  Flipgrid is efficient video discussion experience for learners. It is basically a video response platform where educators and learners have online video discussions. It aims to improve the learner's speaking and listening skills as well as communication skills. Teachers can provide feedback to students and even students can provide feedback to one another. It's a great platform to practice your English. While recording, students don't have to show their faces if  they are not comfortable with that . They can put some icons or emojis to their faces and go on speaking. Thus, students will participate more and upload their videos effortlessly. Learners can record their vid

Jamboard is one of the effective platforms that lend a helping hand to teachers who want to bring technology into their classes. It is used as a whiteboard -especially in the distant education- while introducing a new topic. What is it used for?  * It makes the topic more enjoyable and interesting and eases sharing opinion or brainstorming on the spesific topic. * It enables students to work on jamboard collaboratively. * It allows you or your students to prepare posters or group projects on a subject. * As I said below, jamboard can also be used in online classes. For example, if you use Zoom with your students, you can also sync Jamboard to your lesson. To make your lesson flow efficiently, you can divide your students into small groups and ask them to create little posters on Jamboard. Thus it will enable them to participate actively in class and they'll learn by enjoying. Another option is that you can create a dialogue with a number of blanks and give them the correct answers

 Are you one of those that think traditional materials are quite boring? Using textbooks are out of fashion nowadays, right? To integrate technology into our classes with many opportunities is simple. Thanks to some apps and platforms teachers can have interactive lessons without boring the students. Edpuzzle is one of them. I'll be explaining it right below: To make the lesson more interesting teachers sometimes consult YouTube for useful videos that can be showed in class. Here, Edpuzzle steps in:  It allows teachers and students to create interactive online videos by embedding either open-ended or multiple-choice questions, audio notes, audio tracks, or comments on a video.  What can you achieve with EdPuzzle? * It helps you customize the video content.  * If you think there are unnecessary parts on the video, you can cut them out. * If you think some parts are missing, you can add voice over to the video. * It improves students' listening skills as well as their comprehensi

If you are a teacher who doesn't want students to passively sit and listen while you are presenting a PPT, this platform is meant for you!  Pear Deck is an interactive presentation tool used to actively engage students in individual and social learning. Teachers use Pear Deck while presenting their slides to the class. As we all know, while teacher is presenting them students usually don't participate in and they just watch. It makes the class environment more teacher-centered and eventually boring. To avoid this, I suggest you use Pear Deck in your classes with ease. What are the functions of Pear Deck? Pear Deck basically offers getting active responses and answer from the students.  *  It enables students to text their responses. * It allows them to draw an answer. * It ensures teachers to ask multiple choice questions. * It allows students to drag an icon. How is it used? When you prepare a Power Point on Google Docs, you can add Pear Deck to your slide so that it could be

 Hi, I'm back with an excellent platform we can utilize to manage our classes and connect with the students. In this post, let me talk about 'Edmodo' and its reflection to English class.  Firstly, below are the features of Edmodo and what it is used for: * Basically, it is a platform to manage the class. * It enables us to communicate with students. (Sending messages/ announcements) * It allows us to upload/ download the materials. *  Via Edmodo, we can assign some exams, quizzes and homeworks to our students. * It also allows us to share content with students (ppts, videos, documents etc). * It enables both us and students to write comments to the post that we shared. * It ensures us to divide students into small groups so they can work collaboratively. How is it used?   To begin with, let's assume that you're going to create a class. It's very easy, just click the plus icon 'Create a class' and complete each of the required fields. Name your clas

  The Framework presented by Garrison and Shin basically talks about the variables/ presences that should exist in distance education to teach & learn as effectively as possible. So what are these presences? Let's look at below and continue: 1- Social Presence: Social Presence supports the idea that the feeling of togetherness in distance education should be created. As students have online lessons for a long while because of the pandemic, they haven't seen each other. This may result in lack of motivation and eagerness. Instead of anonymous names or just photos behind the boring screen, teachers can create an environment as if they were in class together. For example, it's possible to motivate students and have them actively participate in the class with warm-ups at the very beginning of the lesson. This will create not only a sense of being together but also turn the lesson into a catchy activity. 2- Transactional Presence: Transactional Presence evolves when studen