ideas and experiences worth sharing: December 2016

On December 15, 2016, I made a presentation on what I learned in the great course I attended in York, England. All my colleagues were invited so that I could share what I had learned from 'Making use of ICT Skills' course. I believe it was a nice, fruitful presentation an I was really happy to show my colleagues the easy-to-use and effective ideas concerning technology use in EFL classrooms.

Because what I learned in the course was already in my previous blogposts, I won't talk about them again. However, soon, I will be sharing the ones that I use in my classes in detail and please feel free to comment on the posts if you have any questions or if you try different things related to these ideas in your classrooms. Let's share!

Hi everyone!

Today is a great day because I found the opportunity to learn new ideas to use in classroom. My colleagues who also participated in the Erasmus K104 project are sharing what they have learned in the courses they attended.

We started the day with my colleague, Deniz Saydam's presentation on Aurasma.

https://www.aurasma.com

It is a very interesting application where you can share images or videos in an attractive way.

Later, we were introduced 'Autonomy 4D'. Wow! My colleague Basak Agin Donmez shared it and we practised it together. It is impressive!

http://anatomy4d.daqri.com

Then, my colleague, Yeliz Akel shared her classroom experience in her English 101 Writing Classes where she uses Google Docs to give feedback on her students' paragraphs. The attractive thing is that students can also give feedback on other students' paragraphs. Great opportunity for peer feedback!!!

https://www.google.com/intl/tr_tr/docs/about/

My colleague, Canset Gecer talked about the nice city 'Cardiff' ; its history, the bilingual life in Cardiff and modern Cardiff! She shared the top 5 places to visit in Cardiff.

One of the most environmentally friendly parliament buildings in the world is in Cardiff.

http://www.cityofcardiff.com/senedd.html

top 5 places to visit in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales

Now it is the time for my dear friend, (bro :)) Mustafa Yaman to talk about what he learned in the course he attended in Scarborough, England. He focused on two applications: Padlet and Plickers

In padlet, you can create a classroom and create an online blackboard, on which students can all share something and their ideas will appear on the online blackboard immediately. You can use it for: Predicting Activity, Bell ringer activity: (To check whether the students remember what they learned on the previous day) ... Actually anything that you as a teacher can do on the board without tiring yourself :) It will also be a great opportunity to target our students who are born into technology! :) What is better about this online blackboard is that students can also share images and links to videos on this blackboard too! https://tr.padlet.com

How about plickers? It is a student response system that uses a teacher's android tablet or iPad in accordance with a series of QR codes which are assigned to each student specifically. It is really exciting! No need for a pencil or pen ?!?

We created a mini class and tried it ourselves. It was fun. It worked and it was really easier than we thought. Here are some photos of it:

Now it is time to learn different activities with our indispensable application: Whatsapp! My dear colleague Dilek Çeltik, who has been to York in Erasmus project, shared her insights on how to integrate whatsapp in our EFL classes. You can check the following link to learn about these activities:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0AmSk7p1J8tdkJUTkxWRlBGME0/view

Last but not least, my colleague Şükran Saygı is presenting what she has gained in Cardiff during the two-week-course she attended.

Screencasting Jing Project:(https://www.techsmith.com/jing.html)

What can we do with it?: You can record your feedback on your students' products and share it with your students. You can record something maximum for 5 minutes. Şükran gave feedback to a sample paragraph to show us how easy it is to give feedback to paragraphs via this website.

www.polleverywhere.com In this website, after you sign up and create an account, you can create polls very quickly and share it with anyone you like.

here is the sample we tried today:https://pollev.com/sukransaygi680

www.newsinlevels.com This website shares the news in English for all the levels. Its motto is 'world news for Students of English'. I am so happy that I was introduced this website. I will immediately share this with all my students!
http://l.georges.online.fr/tools/cloze.html: This website is cloze test creator.
www.cueprompter.com: A fun way to practice skimming skills! You can also use this to practise reading fast.