Flipgrid

         Hi everyone! Today I want to mention ‘Flipgrid’. Flipgrid is a website that you can use for sharing short videos. It is better than any other video sharing websites or programs as it is not complicated. Your videos can be maximum one and a half minute long.

         Flipgrid is great for using with students as they do not have to share videos to public. As a teacher, you need open a classroom in Flipgrid and share the code of the classroom with your students to invite them. Everyone who has the code can join the class and see the videos of the members.

         Flipgrid can be used for the times that you do not have enough time to make speaking exercise with all the students in the classroom. You can want your students to upload videos as a homework. They can both develop their speking skills and get used to speak in their target language. It would be much more fun to record a video of themselves rather than any writing activity.

I also record a video to show you how it looks at the end. You can click here to watch it.

I am aldo adding the code of my class, so you can watch both my and my classmates' videos :451d2191

Augmented Reality

         Hi everyone! Today I am going to mention ‘augmented reality’. You may not heard about it before, but I am sure you’ve had chance to experience it.  It is basically an interactive experience of a real-world environment. You can show the virtual objects as if they are real, or the objects that reside in the real world can seem as they are virtual.

         I tried the app of ‘Ikea’ which has augmented reality feature. It gives you the chance of seeing how a furniture would look in the place you think for. The only thing you need to do is to choose a furniture or decoration item; a bergere, for example, and direct your phone to the corner that you are planning to put it. On the screen of your phone, it will seem like the bergere is really in there. ‘Pokemon Go’ and social media apps like ‘Snapchat’ also can be given as an example.

         You may think that it is not about the language education but the point is to get the idea of what is augmented reality. Because this technology can be used in language education as well. Using augmented reality in the classroom can turn an ordinary class into an engaging experience. AR technology provides virtual examples and helps students better remember the information they've just learned. It can be used even for increasing the motivation of the students.

Task Based Language Teaching

        Task-based language teaching is a type of instruction that relies on the use of authentic target language to do meaningful tasks. TBLT is also referred to as task-based instruction and can be considered a branch of communicative language teaching. The notion of tasks is central to this type of instruction. The assessment of learning is mainly based on task outcome and not only on the accurate use of the target language. For this reason, TBLT is believed to be effective in learning target language fluency and developing student confidence.

Community Language Teaching

          Community language learning is a language-teaching approach in which students work together to develop what aspects of a language they would like to learn. It is based on the counselling approach in which the teacher acts as a counselor and a paraphraser, while the learner is seen as a client and collaborator.

Advantages of CLL

-  CLL is an attempt to overcome the threatening affective factors in EFL and ESL.

-  The councelor allow the learners to determine type of coversation and to analyze the language inductively

-  The student centered nature of the method can provide extrincic motivation and capitalize on intinsic motivation.

Disadvantages of CLL

-  The counselor/teacher can become too non directive. Students often need directions .

-  The method relies completely on inductive learning. It is worthwhile  noting that deductive learning is also a viable strategy of learning.

-  Translation is an intricate  and difficult task. The success of the method relies largely on the translation expertise of the counselor.

Padlet

          Hello everyone! Today I want to mention ‘Padlet’. Padlet is a website you can create a board in any theme you want. You can design your boards as you wish, change the backgrounds, add videos, images, gifs, texts etc…

         You can share your board with your students or you can want them to design one. Creating a board in padlet would be a perfect homework or lesson activity idea for your students since it is a creative and fun activity. They can make varieties of canvases with different themes. They can create one by using the topic of the day as a groupwork.

        I just created one to show you how it looks at the end. You can click here to see.

Virtual Reality And How We Can Use It In Education

          Virtual reality is a environment that you can contact with other people in virtual world. There are some programs that you can experience this environment. Most of them are game based programs. It is great that they are professionally game based programs because this feature makes them both for children and adults.

          I tried ‘Second Life’ for now, but there are other options that you can use. For example, there is another program as ‘Avakin Life’. Its concept is almost same with ‘Second Life’. Another example is ‘Stardoll’ which is much more childish version compared to others.

         The common feature of all these programs is they give you the chance to interact with other

people in other places. The only thing you do is to go to the site (or download the program if it’s necessary), then to register and to create your own character/avatar as you wish. Then you can do almost everything that you do in real life. For example; you can hang out with your friends, go to a party, travel around the city or abroad, meet with new people etc. When you sign in the game, I mean when you are online, other people see it, so you can communicate with other online people and have a real chat.

         We can use these features for education. We can meet at a place (in the game) with our teacher and classmates and have a lesson online. It lets us reach to the lesson from whereever we want, in any terms and even clothings we want. It is also great chance for students who are too shy to attend to the lesson. As no one sees each other with real faces, everyone can talk however they want with their virtual character.

          It also give chance to attend to the lesson for disabled students who struggles with coming to the school.

        The people who lives away from each other also can benefit from this technology. When meeting in real life is not possibble or easy, students, techers or students and teachers can have a meeting in virtual life.

         Language students also can use these world to improve their language skills by communicating with foreigner people around the world.

Powtoon

          HELLOO! I want to mention ‘Powtoon’ which is a website that you can edit creative videos! You can choose any subject you wish, and design the pages of the video in your style!

          You can add pictures and music both from your computer and from Powtoon. It is possible to find too many background, gif, prop, sound, image and video options!

          You can create informative videos for your students! In a lesson, you can prefer to use a video rather than telling the topic to them.  It may be helpful for taking the attentions of the students.

I created a video about ‘community language learning’. You can find it down below;

HotPotatoes

         HotPotatoes is mainly a program that you can prepare classic, multiple-choice tests and transfer them on the web. You have to download the program to your computer first. Internet connection is not required to use the program.


         HotPotatoes software does not require any programming knowledge. There are six modules that you can prepare with HotPotatoes programme. Each module is designed to prepare different kinds of exercises. JCloze, JQuiz, JCross, JMatch, JMix, and The Mashe. 

        It is quite easy to download the program. You can download it from its website.

Kahoot

          Hellooo! Welcome back to my blog, today I am going to mention ‘Kahoot’. You may have heard about it as it is common worldwide but if you have not, it is a game based learning platform. 

         As the teacher you create or choose a multiple choice quiz for your students. All students in the classroom opens the quiz from their smatphones and answer the question in the time chosen by the teacher. Questions and answers are seen on the board. All answers (like A-, B-, C-, D-…) has a color and a shape. On the phone, students see only the colors and shapes of the answers.

         It is possible to use it only in classroom. Students can not do it at home or the quiz they want. They can be involved to quizz only by using the code the teacher shows.

       It is helpful for taking attentions of students. It helps to memorize and learn vocabularies. It can be used for evry kind of lesson and content. However, it is used mostly for language aducation and vocabulary memorization as it is suitible for short answers.

Pixton

          Hellooo! Welcome back! This time our topic is an incredible web site named ‘Pixton’! As a teacher, you must know this website especially if you are working with kids and teens. Okey, let’s start with what is Pixton? It is a website that you can create short or long comics! However you do not have to be good at drawing or something! This website includes everything you need to create one. You can create yours in minutes! It is also not a old-fashion website, it is cutting-edge and veryy easy-to-use!

         You can create one for your students, show it during the lesson just to change the atmosphere or help them to learn the topic better by visualing the informations. On the other hand you can use them to make an activity in the classroom. When you do not want to be a part of creating process, you can still make your students benefit from this website. You can want them create one as a homework, or during the lesson as an individual or  group. It may help to increase their creativity  and makes focusing the lesson easier!

         I created one basic comic just to show you how it looks at the end. You can click here to see it. However do not forget that there are so many other options, backgrounds, characters in the Pixton’s website. Do not forget to check it out!

Blackboard

          Hi everyone! This time I want to mention ‘Blackboard’. Blackboard is a teaching system that allows teachers to communicate with their students on the internet and create lesson activities. Teachers present course materials electronicaly.

          The site has everything you need for distance education and allows you to enrich the courses offered in the traditional campus with electronic contents and activities. Blackboard can be used from any computer where users have internet access and a web browser. Users can access their course in wherever they want with a username and password. Since it is a system that needs password to sign in, it allows users to see only the contents of the courses they have registered.

          I am not sure how common it is worldwide, but it is commonly used by universities in Turkey.

Storybird

          Today, I am going to mention ‘Storybird’. Storybird is a free, book creating site. It is another easy-to-use website. It a super beneficial website especially for language teachers. Their students can read the stories, or they can write their own stories and poems. It is possible to find stories in different languages and genres. It is also suitable for students of all ages and all levels.

          You can give homework assignments that they can make as an individual or a group. Students can read each other’s stories and comment. Authors can be subscribed and articles can be followed. Students can create their own library and share in other settings. It is one of the safe sites for students. It is also available on ‘app store’ and ‘google play’.

I wrote a short story suitable for A2 level children. You can click here to read.