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AI-integrated Teaching Material

Hello my dear readers,

Today, I want to talk about our task of creating an AI-integrated material. For our assignment, my partner Elif Karagöz and I were supposed to prepare an AI-integrated material that includes pre-task, target task, and post-task sections. We chose the "Heroes and Heroines" topic from the MEB textbook and created the material to help students improve their writing skills. The students were asked to correct their essays using feedback from Grammarly. In the end, we prepared a lesson plan for our material.

By using Grammarly, students can get instant feedback and study independently. It also is time-saving for teachers. However, since AI cannot consider students' personal needs and can only provide feedback on limited areas, such as grammar rules, it can just be used as an assistance in the learning process. When it is used in a controlled way with an understanding of its limits, we can maximize the benefits of its use.

Thank you for reading.

Click here to see our AI- integrated teaching material!

Click here to see our ASSURE lesson plan!

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Goodbye 🫂

Hello dear readers,

I am writing today to say goodbye. This is the end of our course. Throughout this course, we have learned how to use technology in the most beneficial way for our students. In this course, I learned how to use corpora, prepare an ASSURE lesson plan, apply the flipped classroom approach, and use augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence for the benefit of students. I don't think the course had any weak points, but it was quite busy and exhausting due to the frequent assignments. Moreover, my least favorite task was definitely using the corpus. Extracting information from the corpus and preparing relevant materials was complicated and time-consuming. I also think my students might find using corpora boring. Instead, information can be easily accessed with the help of artificial intelligence and advancing technology. 

On the other hand, preparing an instructional video for the flipped classroom approach was my favorite task, and I will apply this method in my future classes because it increases in-class interaction, engages students actively and addresses students' differences. It also promotes cognitive depth through in-class activities rather than simply directing students to memorize the information. In addition, the course could be better if examples were provided for all assignments. The lack of examples for some assignments made it difficult to complete them and confused us. I want to tell all students who will take this course that they are lucky. We live in a technology-driven world; therefore, being able to integrate technology into the classroom is valuable for a teacher. This course has helped me gain technological skills that prevent me from falling behind as a teacher, make my work easier with technology. It will also help me to teach my students the most efficient ways.

Thank you for your time 🙏🏻😊

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Augmented Reality

Hello my dear readers,

Today, I want to talk about augmented reality and my augmented reality integrated material preparation task. Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that combines the real world with the virtual world using sound, digital images, and other virtual elements. It enables interaction between the real world and the virtual world.

We were supposed to create an augmented integrated teaching material for our course. We should choose a city abroad and introduce two landmarks, a museum, and another well-known aspect of this city. My group partner, Elif Karagöz and I chose Berlin. We made the 3D image of the Brandenburg Gate accessible to students via a QR code on our worksheet and prepared questions based on it. Additionally, we provided the 3D image of the Natural History Museum and asked students to explore it and answer the questions on the worksheet based on their discoveries. Moreover, since we couldn’t find a 3D version of the Berlin Cathedral, we used a video on YouTube so that students could explore it as well.

Since Berlin is famous for its street food, we provided a QR code on the worksheet that gives access to a video of two tourists trying street food for students, and they were supposed to answer questions related to the video. At the end, we asked students to write a letter to a close friend about these places based on all the activities.

Since our students are high school preparatory class students and their level is A2, we selected videos and questions appropriate for their level. The hardest part of this task was finding 3D images of landmarks and a museum for any city. Therefore, we kept changing cities and searching for landmarks, museum videos, and 3D images. Once we found the content we wanted, completing the assignment became fun. My group friend and I prepared the worksheet together using Canva. Finally, we created an ASSURE lesson plan for our material.

We found the food-related video on YouTube, the 3D image of the museum on Google Arts and Culture, and the Brandenburg Gate 3D image on the CyArk website. I believe that using materials with augmented reality in lessons will make the information more enjoyable and memorable for students. That is why I support its use. As a teacher candidate, I will also use it in the future.

Click here to see our material!

Click here to see our lesson plan!

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Flipped Classroom Approach And Creating Instructional Videos

Hello my dear readers,

Today, I would like to talk to you about the flipped classroom approach. Unlike the traditional classroom setting, this approach advocates for a learning model where students learn the topic through online instructional materials, such as lesson videos, reading materials, or online modules, in a pre-class learning format. Thanks to this teaching model, students will not be passive listeners in the class. Instead, they will engage in learning through discussion, interaction, and group work, where they communicate with both their peers and the teacher. Moreover, students have the opportunity to watch lessons whenever they want, at their own pace, and as many times as they need.

Although this teaching model has such advantages, it also has some disadvantages. Extra responsibilities and homework may be challenging for students. Additionally, students may not have access to online lessons at home. Moreover, Teachers who are accustomed to traditional teaching methods may face difficulties in creating online lessons.

As for our assignment, my group members, Elif Karagöz and Ata Çakmakçı, and I needed to prepare a grammar teaching video and an exercise to measure our students' understanding, based on this teaching model, for our course. Additionally, as a requirement for the assignment, we had to choose a grammar topic from the MEB book, so we chose object pronouns as our teaching topic. After dividing our assignment into three parts, we began creating our videos using Animaker. The hardest part of creating the video for me was voice recording, because I stay in a student dormitory. Therefore, it was quite challenging to be alone and record clear audio without background noise.

After creating the videos, my group members and I gave feedback to each other, reviewed everything again, and then combined the videos into one single video. Finally, to assess whether our students understood the topic, we created a test using Wordwall. Although it was a fun process, I can say that it was quite time-consuming. Especially combining the video visuals and sound was quite challenging, but in the end, I believe we did a great job.

Thank you for reading, and I wish you a good day.

Click here to watch our teaching video!

Click here to see our quiz!

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My Process for Preparing a Teaching Material Using Corpus and Creating a Lesson Plan Following the ASSURE Model

Hello, my dear readers!

Today, I will talk about an assignment that I found particularly challenging. We were asked to prepare a lesson plan and a material based on a specific topic for our current issues in teaching course. First, we had to create a material that would encourage students to learn using a corpus and had to include teacher-mediated corpus usage. My group members, Elif Karagöz and Ata Çakmakçı, and I decided to divide the work among ourselves into three parts. We chose to teach the usage of time preposition (on, in at) from MEB coursebook. Moreover, we aimed to teach intermediate-level 11th-grade students. After visiting several complex corpus websites, we decided that Lextutor was the most suitable one for our task.

The material contains five parts. First of all, to measure students' knowledge, I created an activity using sentences from the corpus. It was quite challenging to find sentences from the corpus that matched both my objectives and the students' level. In the second activity, I prepared a guide showing students how to use the corpus, and I created a task for them to complete based on this guide. The "Discover" section was designed by Elif Karagöz to encourage inductive learning, while the "Exercise" section was prepared by Ata Çakmakçı to reinforce the information.

Afterward, we combined all the parts as a group and made sure everything was aligned and coherent. Moreover, we were expected to prepare a lesson plan accordance with ASSURE model. We divided the lesson plan preparation task into three parts and merged our sections together. Unfortunately, this material may not be suitable for students with limited internet access. On the other hand, I believe that it will not only enhance the students' technological skills but also teach the targeted topic effectively. However, since it is quite time-consuming and very confusing for me, I don’t plan on preparing such material again as a teacher.

Thank you so much for reading. 🫶🏻

Click here to see the lesson plan!

Click here to see the material!

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A perfect course "Instructional Technologies and Material Design in ELT"

Hello, my beloved readers,

Today, I am here to share my educational technologies and material design course process with you. Thanks to this course, I learned how, as a future teacher, I can integrate technology in the classroom in the most beneficial way for my students. To be honest, I initially underestimated the course content and thought that it was unnecessary since technology is so deeply integrated into our daily lives and all students probably know how to use it. However, although we are so familiar with technology in our daily lives, I realized that I actually have quite limited knowledge about how I can combine it with lesson content as a teacher.

I believe that I have greatly improved my technological skills through various educational activities, such as blogging, preparing infographics, recording podcasts, creating digital stories, using collaborative writing applications, and using AI in this course. Moreover, sharing the assignments we completed on our blogs made me more eager to finish them, and addressing a real audience was an exciting experience. However, the course was challenging as much as it was educational and enjoyable.

The most challenging part was definitely preparing an infographic for me. Even though infographics seem like quite simple structures, they actually have a complex preparation process. I was uncertain about which template would be most suitable and how to arrange the information boxes in an orderly manner. I definitely prefer to use ready-made infographics.

As for the activity I enjoy the most, it's hard to choose, but I can say creating a digital story. I've always wondered how these stories were produced. I acquired a lot of knowledge on this topic with this activity. While preparing this video, my colleague and I had a very rewarding time and underwent a delightful process, including character and event selection, voicing the characters, and editing our story video.

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to learn so much about the integration of technology in education, and I think that the course has been meticulously planned and effectively implemented.

Thank you so much for spending your time.

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Now, it is possible to interview with Abraham Lincoln!

Hello my dear readers,

Today, I want to talk about the Magic School artificial intelligence tool and my assignment that I completed using this tool. I believe that this application demonstrates how much artificial intelligence has advanced and will keep progressing in the future. In our course, we were expected to choose an actor, a historical figure, or a character from a known story and have a conversation with this character through the Magic School character chatbot tool. I prepared some questions for this dialogue and decided to interview Abraham Lincoln about the presidency and American politics. After transcribing the interview, I wrote a report on the points that I considered important in the interview. Finally, I uploaded the report to the Magic School writing feedback tool for providing comments and corrections.

The preparation process was fun but also challenging. I spent a lot of time learning how to use the application and preparing the report. However, I think it is a beneficial artificial intelligence application in terms of providing easy access to information. I also believe that for students, the use of artificial intelligence applications is educational and developmental in terms of keeping up with the times and reaching the necessary information without wasting time. However, AI also has some drawbacks for students. Easy access to artificial intelligence tools can blunt students' critical thinking skills and cause problems, such as students completing assignments by plagiarizing without fully understanding the subject.

From teachers' perspectives, artificial intelligence tools can create advantages, such as doing various enjoyable activities that increase classroom participation and preparing tasks according to each student's level. At the same time, the use of AI tools may also have negative consequences for teachers, such as excessive reliance on artificial intelligence in preparing lessons and reducing student-teacher interaction.

As a teacher candidate, I aim to include the use of AI in my lessons in accordance with the requirements of the period, taking into account all the pros and cons of using artificial intelligence in the course and trying to minimize the negative aspects.

Thanks for reading! 🧚🏻

Click here to see the interview and report

Click here to see the picture

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A perfect movie suggestion " Thelma the Unicorn"

Hello my dear readers, I would love to share my experience of making a movie review. My friend,@elifkaragoz, and I collaborated on a movie review assignment. We thought that watching an entertaining animated movie could help people escape the stressful rush of daily life, so we decided to review the new animated movie "Thelma the Unicorn".

We chose to use Google Docs as an online collaboration tool to easily see and edit each other's writing. Actually, searching for information about such an entertaining movie was so much fun. We divided the writing task into parts so that both of us could contribute equally. After finishing the movie review, we sought feedback from our other friends in the classroom. We got feedback from our classmates, and they said they liked the movie and wanted to watch it. We also gave them feedback in the same way. As a result, I read a movie review that I wanted to watch from the science fiction genre that I love very much.

Writing a collaborative movie review was a fun process, but I have to point out that finding group members and trying to get feedback took a lot of our time. However, as a teacher candidate, I can say that this activity is an educational and enjoyable activity that I would like to do with my students as well.

Thanks for reading.

Don't miss out on watching the movie!

Click here to see the movie trailer

Click here to see the picture

Click here to see our movie review

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My digital story named " Adventures of Lina"

Hello my dear readers, I hope you are all doing well. Today, I want to share my experience of creating my first digital story video. My friend @elifkaragoz I thought it would be fun to come up with a fictional story, so we started working on our storyboard. After trying out a few different applications, we settled on Pixton as the best option for us. After we picked our characters and the main idea for our story, it wasn't too hard. The characters in the app gave us good ideas and made it easier to decide on our story's topic. Once we had written the scenario for our story, we began creating our visuals. We preferred the narration to be done in the third person because we thought that this way, the story would be more explanatory and clearer. While I narrated the story, Elif performed the character voices. Finally, we recorded our voices, added sound effects, and edited our video with the Inshot application.

Completing the assignment was not a challenging process for us; on the contrary, it was a very enjoyable and educational experience. I believe that having students produce videos is highly beneficial in terms of helping students enhance their digital literacy, foster their creativity, improve their communication skills, and encourage collaboration. Additionally, producing videos as their own teaching material offers a lot of benefits for teachers, such as contributing to professional development, enhancing teaching methods, and helping them adapt to the digital age. Using videos as instructional materials in the classroom provides real-life applications for the education being provided. It offers visual support, enhances understanding, and increases motivation among students.

In conclusion, I support the use and production of videos as a multimedia tool, benefiting both teacher and student development.

I hope you enjoyed reading. Have a great day!🧚🏻

Please click here to see my fictional story

Click here for the photo

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I HAVE AN IDEA TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE!

Hey guys,

I would like to tell you about my podcast homework. I am supposed to prepare a podcast about 60 second idea to make the world more liveable. I suggested that every family should have regular check-ups with a psychologist. I think this is important measure for a heathy society because many problems like crimes or bad behaviors often come from family issues. So, having regular check-ups could help prevent these problems.

I think making podcasts is both fun and helpful for students. It can improve their language skills, make them more motivated, and help them work together better. Using podcasts is also a great opportunity for teachers to create their own listening activities and listen to all their students. For these reasons as a teacher candidate, I'm thinking about giving similar podcast assignments to my students.

I didn't have any trouble picking the topic because it is a topic that I have already thought about due to the events I have observed around me for a long time. After I had decided on the topic, I did some research and prepared my speech. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I finally recorded it the way I wanted. After completing my podcast, I used the “Vocarro” program to create a link. I really enjoyed getting ready for the podcast.

Click here for my podcast!

Click here for the picture!

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THE USE OF INFOGRAPHIC IN CLASSROOM

Hey guys,

I hope you are all well. Today, I will talk to you about the preparation process of my infographic on plagiarism that I prepared for my instructional technologies course. The subject of my infographic is four ways we need to know to get rid of plagiarism. When I thought about making the infographic, it seemed quite easy to me, but the production process was not like that at all.

The part that I had the most difficulty with was finding a scheme suitable for the subject of my infographic. I could not create a theme according to the information I wanted to add, and most of the applications I wanted to use were available for a certain amount of money. I used the "Canva" website to create the final version of my infographic. Actually, I tried to do it through different applications, but after finishing the infographic, I realized that they were paid. Therefore, my previous work was deleted. When I tried to do it in the Canva website, I could only use a limited number of features, but since it was my first try, I would like to think that such difficulties are normal for beginners.

When it comes to the advantages of using infographics in the classroom environment, I believe that they definitely create more permanent information for students than simple plain text. It can be used as eye-catching lesson material that is both entertaining and educational, especially for young learners. It also provides benefits such as simplifying complex course content, providing information that can be kept in long-term memory, and attracting students’ attention.

For these reasons, I will definitely use infographics in my own classes but I don't plan to do them myself 😅. Maybe ready-made infographic can be useful for me in terms of saving time.

Click here for my infographic.

Thank you for your time. Have a nice day ✨

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Keep up with the times in the learning process in the 21st century!

Hey guys,

I'm sure we are all aware that the 21st century has brought a different update to the learning process, so what exactly are the competencies that this century provides us?

The 21st century defines the era in which digital literacy, cultural competence, critical thinking skills, and problem-solving skills must be acquired because of today's complex global framework. Therefore, it can be said that the use of technology in education prepares students to solve complex problems, adapt to changing circumstances, and process information from various forms of media to make conscious decisions. The presence of language teachers is also very important in the implementation of 21st-century learning to create an active and fun learning environment. Teachers can use digital audio, video, text, and visual materials to support and enrich educational experiences. In this way, students can take advantage of more permanent knowledge through visual video and audio recordings obtained by using modern technology.

Of course, as a teacher candidate, I support the use of multimedia in the teaching and learning process so that we can keep up with the times and benefit from the opportunities and conveniences provided by the 21st century.

Thanks for spending your time with me.

Click here for more information!

Click here for the picture

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Hello there!

My dear readers,

Firstly, I am very happy to see you on my blog page and I want to welcome you all.

As for the content of my blog, the blog will be about English education and the use of technology in English education. As most of you know, English is a language needed to be known because it is the language of technology, computers, tourism, etc., in today's world. Moreover, since technology helps save time and effort, improve work efficiency, and obtain information easily, it is used in every line of business. Because of these facilitations, it is also used in language education.

For these reasons, I hope this blog will be very useful and informative for you.

have a nice day. ✨