Time to Say Goodbye

As you know, I was using this blog to explain the projects we did in the Current Issues course I took this term. And now that we've come to the end of this term, it's time for me to say goodbye to you. However, I would like to talk a little about my ideas about this course.

First of all, I must say that I really liked this course. Because if we want to be successful teachers in the 21st century, we must keep up with the conditions of the age. We must know how to use current technology and also see technology as a tool for our students' education. Thanks to this course, I think I improved myself in terms of integrating technology with education and preparing worksheets for my students. As for the weakness of the course, it was that these assignments took some time. Even though I enjoyed doing it, it was tiring sometimes. It was difficult at times, considering the assignments I was doing for my other classes. For me, the easy part of the course was that I enjoyed doing it. Also, thanks to our teacher Gökçe Kurt, I was able to clearly understand the assignments we need to do because she explains what we need to do in a very descriptive way.

My favorite task was the video we made for flipped classrooms. This video was also the most difficult task to do. Because it was very difficult to synchronize the video I made with my voice. It was also very difficult to find a quiet place to record audio with my friend. The task I disliked most was making Corpus-based material because it could be considered a bit boring compared to other tasks. It may also be because I do my other tasks with great pleasure.

My advice to those who will take this course next year is that you definitely know how to use Canva. I made all our worksheets from Canva, and it is an absolutely amazing site. It would also be useful for you to know how to edit videos because we spent a lot of time on the 'flipped classroom' task.

Thanks for reading. 

AI-integrated teaching material

Hi everyone!

 

Today I would like to tell you about the AI-integrated teaching material that I made with my friend Sude Özer. As you know, AI technology has been very popular since the last year and can be used for many purposes.

 

AI, or artificial intelligence, in education refers to the integration of technologies that mimic human-like intelligence to enhance learning experiences. AI in education brings various advantages. It can provide personalized learning experiences, adapt to individual student needs, automate administrative tasks, offer real-time feedback, and enhance overall educational efficiency. That's why we decided to create a material with AI for learning English. Let me briefly tell you about the material we prepared.

 

We designed this material for EFL high-school prep students. Our topic is 'Describe your room' and in this activity, we focused on listening and writing. First, the teacher explains the subject and hands out the worksheets to the students. (The worksheet we prepared is at the end of the post) Then, students describe a room in the picture given. Secondly, the teacher opens a listening passage for the students and asks them to write down the descriptions they hear. Afterwards, students will enter the imagine.art website and write what they have just written. This site will design a room picture based on their description. After this is done, the students will compare the pictures designed by AI with their friends according to the description they wrote.

 

source

Here, we wanted our students to listen to the listening passage carefully, understand it, write down what they understood on the AI website, and create a room for them. Students who can write down all the details in audio will have the closest picture.

Click here for our worksheet

Thanks for reading.

Did You Know AR Can Be Used to Teach English? I Did Not!

 Hello everyone!

Today, I am going to introduce you a wonderful material to use in your classes; AUGMENTED REALITY. First let me introduce AR to those who have never heard of it. Augmented reality (AR) is a link between real world and digital world. In fact, this technology is not very new and has been developed since the 1950s and 60s. Do you remember the game PokemonGo which everyone played in 2016? What makes those creatures in the game look real is AR technology.

I am going to tell you about an assignment in which we have used this technology. I have done this assignment with my friend Sude Özer. In our assignment, we have used QR codes to intorduce a city. We created this handout introducing the Eiffel Tower, the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre Museum, and a popular food in Paris, escargot.

You may still be wondering how to use all this I have explained in teaching English. Our aim here is to make our students feel like they are there without taking them to Paris and to take them around the places we choose. Then ask questions about the places they visited. We chose our videos from Youtube. We tour in the videos and information about this place is given in the background. Our students open and watch these videos with QR codes. Afterwards, we want them to do the activity we prepared for them. We asked them about their experiences about the places they visited and also asked them questions about the information given in the video. In fact, there were exactly 360 videos on YouTube. I would like to add them, but no information was given about the place visited in the video. That's why I didn't want to choose. When our students finished answering these questions, we also gave them homework in the last part. We asked them to write about a day they spent in Paris in their diaries.

I believe that it is a very good thing to use AR technology in teaching English. I think students will love doing this too. In my opinion, it is a very effective and fun activity as they get to know a new place and culture and do it in English. Although it is not possible now, a few years from now, maybe students will feel fully present when they watch these videos with VR glasses in the form of a headset. I'm sure this will make this assignment much more fun.

You can see the worksheets that we prepared below. We designed it using Canva. By clicking here, you can see the worksheets we have prepared on Google Drive and download them if you wish.