Make a movie to teach !

  I came again to introduce a very fun website Zimmertwins. This enjoyable site was presented to us by our classmates Kader and Burcu. This website helps you make a movie about anything. There are three main characters Eva, Edgar and their black cat named 13.

                                                        How to use ?

 After going to the homepage you first must click on the Make a Movie button and then Make from Scratch.

  You can add talk bubble, action, close-up, star clips to make your animation look lively and creative. When you finish with that, click the Save Movie button. In order to save your movie you have to have an account. And unfortunately there is no way to share your movie but in the classroom you can show and watch movies from the internet.

How to integrate it into the classroom ?

• As a teacher, you can prepare a movie and show to the class, students can guess its ending and beginning. 
• An activity may focus on specific grammar practice and vocabulary skills. Characters just use some tenses to strengthen their knowledge. 

  Like all other tools and websites Zimmertwins has many advantages, it gives free lesson plans for teachers, it is fun and motivating for students. It all depends on your imaginative power and creativity. If you want to use any technologic tool in your classes, options are endless and waiting for you in somewhere. 

Thank you, if you have any idea or questions about tools, please leave comments. See you :)

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Let photos talk !

Hello everyone, sorry my late blog post but we have been busy making and watching presentations about very useful and effective tools and now I'm going to introduce to you some of them. 

We've had very good weeks while learning about them, as we, teachers of the future, always find a way to integrate technology into our teaching. 

My friend Aynur and I gave a presentation about blabberize and fotobabble. They are different sites but they are both used to make talking photos. They are very simple to use. These make an ordinary photo more attractive and unique.

 Just by following some basic steps you can make your talking photo. 

How to use them ?

For both you have to have an account to save your outcomes or to share it. And again for both, you simple upload a photo and record your voice or add a recorded voice, here there is. 

In blabberize: You can add a mouth and while listening it, it moves. It's so fun actually especially when using animal pictures etc. 

Blabberize

Advantages of these tools 

Students can make their pronunciation better as they have to record their voice and listen it. Their teachers can also hear all of their voices. 

Teachers can conduct different activities in their classes.

Students feel confident while using the language.

Some task ideas

Making greeting cards: Students can add a photo like new year themed photos and wish their friends happy new year.

Introduing the family: They can add a family photo and give information about their families. 

Of course there are many task ideas but these are the ones that come to my mind. These tools can make your classroom enjoyable. It's also important to use and try before carrying it to the class. We should give step by step instructions so that our students can benefit from it easily. 

If you still have a question about what it is here are some examples. 

An example for blabberize - An example for fotobabble

Thank you I'll continue in my next post, I'll be glad to see your comments, see you soon :)

Everywhere I'm learning!

   Hi! I’m here again with a really purposeful tool for our everyday routine. If we are interested in learning any language or any subject, there are many options to use while we aren’t at home or with a computer. Instead we can learn with the help of our mobile apps. The tools are very functional and full of activities which are easy to follow and entertaining. Furthermore most of them don’t require any Internet access.

   

   Let's talk about Semper effortlessly learning app. The integrated version of learning into daily life. You don't have to be motivated to study or concentrated as it breaks your phone flow. I'll show how it works. You can simply download it to your phone. You see that it has many language alternatives. After you select the languages, you see test options. For example I chose "Essential Words for the TOEFL" then a pack came to my phone and the application so that I can see the related questions.

I like this app because , a new word comes to the most used applications and your lock screen, you answer that question and you hear the true pronunciation then you can start using your applications or keep going to answer questions.

                      

                                                                                                                                             The application is full of study choices. After selecting a pack, three study modes you see. In the practice mode you see matching and multiple choices avtivities.

          

                               

    It is a really useful app, as a teacher you can create a pack and add vocabularies and your students can follow it and exercise at home or anywhere.







Get the app: 

 

The introduction video:

Also you may want to know this. 

" In 2014, the University of Potsdam ran a study analyzing the effectiveness of Semper. The study examined more than three million responses to math questions and found that users’ performance – including accuracy and speed – doubled over a two- week period. " https://www.getsemper.com/story

   I hope this post is helpful to all learners and teachers. Is there any app you're using and and like ? I'll be glad to see your comments. See you soon :)

Come Here! I have a story

     Here I am with a new project. I am so excited as I've missed writing posts for you. Also this week's project is full of fun and something you are already familiar with. Let me be clear, it is traditionally story telling. We can't ignore educational side of it. Digital version of story telling allows you to share your own story, your experiences, through digital media production. It is engaging and efficient learning activity for students and teachers.

    Creating a digital story telling is not difficult after you decide in what subject do you want to make. While narrating something, you can add animation, add visual effects, sounds, photos, texts. They make your story unique. We were given a task to create one. My pair is Zerrin Akgün we worked collaboratively. There are many digital tools to use, we preffered Microsoft Movie Maker you can have much information by clicking it. We were asked to tell about our friendship, our story. It is always full of fun doing a pair work, as you help each other and make a brainstorm while deciding. First we wrote a text. After we choosed some pictures and recorded our story. Then we added a background music so that it won't be boring just listening to our voices. Joining all of them, we did not forget to add some animation, effects. We didn't have much difficulty. Lucky us :)

    As a teacher, to use digital story telling in a classroom can have many positive effects on your classroom environment and students' moods. We may want them to create a story about a celebritity or a family member, or a process, or just a fictional story. Options are various. They have to try to find many resources, write a beautiful script, pronounce truly, discover technological tools. Just a simple task may make contributions to many skills for just a student. If you give them a pair work, collaboration among students will increase. Students learning digital story telling learn how to share their opinions, emotions and express them. Once they learn it, they can use it for the rest of their lives.
  If you want to broaden your students' creativity, I strongly suggest you to use it in your classroom. You will not regret!

P.S. Don't forget to watch our story. I'll be here with a new post next week. Keep following.

Let us be "Evaluators"

This week I am here to talk about websites. Websites are really purposeful and beneficial tools for almost every business. But its benefits of EFL is undeniable. In today's education every teacher is using web tools like websites, podcasts etc. the ones who haven't started to use, must start using it before it gets too late.

For this week's task, I will evaluate a website which is used by ELT teachers and designed for ELT teachers for you. It is "Designerlessons " As you can guess from its name, it is all about lesson plans categorized for each stage of learners (pre-intermediate, intermediate..)

Pre-intermediate plans

It is founded by two english teachers George Chilton and Neil McMillian who are both English teachers and teacher trainers. According to them, lessons should be fun, inspiring. Every lesson plan has its own aims, stages, focused skills. Stages are mostly like discussion, video comprehension (optinal), questions, activities.

While looking a plan in detail, you have a chance to see related articles and which type of learners it is suitable for.


They say "So these lessons…
Aim to engage and promote conversation in a semi-controlled way. Ultimately, the teacher is responsible for guiding and correcting the language production in class. So we hope these ideas give a decent-enough framework and help to create  an energetic, spontaneous environment in which to teach."

I think it is a good example of ELT websites. As it is full of fun and successful mainly because it really does serve its aims. That enables students love learning english and have fun while learning. Furthermore, not only just students but also teachers have fun while teaching English. As teachers you can use a plan according to your groups of learners. One negative point is that we can't say this website is up-to-date as the last post that has been posted is on March 1,2015. Posts are appropriate for the target audience, the site may not seem colorful but plans are supported with appealing visual aids and pictures.

Teachers simply copy or develop the plans and use in their classroom. From the "contacts us" section, they can even communicate with the writers and ask their opinions.

That is all for now. Please share your ideas and comments. Bye :)

Keep updated with RSS

Hi everybody! I am here to introduce a very simple and beneficial tool for following blogs or sites which are about our personal interests, jobs, experiences. If you are not a blogger or any blog user, don't worry. You just download and add your favorite blogs and BUM! Whenever they post, it comes to your feedreader. Okay I am going into the details, you'll  find out how to do it.

  What is it? 
It is RSS or "Really Simple Syndication". It is an easy communication tool between publishers and readers. RSS feeds are not time consuming, you won't waste time checking or visiting the sites. When the new contents is published, you'll be notified about it. And even you can categorize them according to your interests.

There are many RSS options, you can download to your personal computer if you wish, or just simply use it online by signing in with your Facebook/Google account. I am using Feedreader. It is very simple. You can choose some different groupings like according to their tags, sources etc.

Here you see a screenshot of my feedreader. I follow some ELT bloggers and my friends' blogs. The number of the updates I haven't seen are shown in parentheses. And you see a post of one of my favoruite blog: All at C.

All at C is a blog kept by two bloggers who are very facilitated ELT educators. They share lesson plans focus on videos on their blog. Posts include a video and a theme, activites about it, for whom it is suitable, also teacher notes. I strongly recommend it to all ELT teachers and teachers-to-be. It is a very entertaining blog for not only for students but also for teachers. You have a lot of alternatives for your students' level.

This is all for now. I hope this post will be useful to you. And if you have a favorite, I'll be glad if you share it with me. See you next week :)

Let's talk about movies!

Hello again, here I am with a new project. For this week's project my friend Zerrin and I created a wiki page to write the review of our favorite movie 'The Martian' .

A wiki is a website which allows collaboratively sharing and editing its content. It is easy to use and follow also it allows anyone to edit. Teachers can assist their students in their learning processes through using Wikis. But don't forget to be careful as anyone can edit and there may be a problem with its reliance. Anyway you can have many benefits of using wikis.

We wrote our review on Wikispaces created by our teacher. This was a rather easy task as we both like watching films and when it comes to our favorite we almost had no difficulty in writing its review. It is always fun to do a task with a friend as you can help each other and enjoy at the same time.
If you wonder, you can see our review here. I hope you'll like :) See you next week!

Listen and Learn: Podcasting

Dear All!
My friend Zerrin Akgün and I recorded our voices for the first task. Podcasting is a form of audio broadcasting on the Internet. You can simply download it to your personal audio player, computers, phones etc. In order to suggest our students to do it, we have to learn how to use it effectively. With this purpose, we wrote a short story and recorded it added sound effects changing according to its mood. Our word choices and subject are suitable for A2/B1 learners and mostly teenager EFL learners. Of course there are difficulties, we had difficulty in creating a creative story with limited words. Hearing our voices is very terrible and achieving the most satisfying record took almost 3 hours. Despite all of these, it was so much fun. I believe that it is very useful once you get used to it, you can have many benefits of it. I strongly recommend it to all students and teachers if they are looking for something new and technological. It may help students improve their pronunciation, raise their interest in language learning. Furthermore it is free and easy to use!

Our story is named "THE FEARFUL MISSION"


I HOPE YOU'LL ENJOY IT.


Record audio or upload mp3 >>

Welcome, Great to see you!

Hello everyone! This is my very first post the bloggers' world. I am studying to be a good English teacher who can use and keep pace with technology in her teaching career. Because we all know everything we use is becoming more and more focused on technology. I feel lucky as language has so many opportunities for it and we'll learn it together. I'll share my weekly tasks about my course "technology and material desing". You can make me really happy by sharing your comments. Thank you and see you next week! :)