We're So Back - First Experience Creating Teaching Material Using Corpus

 

After a break from writing blogs I have came back with another post. In this post I will talk about my experience creating a teaching material using Canva and COCA Corpus.

I created this teaching material because of an assignment. I have completed this task with my friend Muhammet Berkay Seçer whose blog you can reach by clicking on his name.

Our objective was to make sure our students will be able to produce a wide range of vocabulary and sentences in the context of travelling. Our target audince were prep school level students. We focused on teaching vocabulary rather than focusing on grammar.

We first created a simple draft using Canva. However after we saw the materials our other friends from univesity created, we decided to make some drastic changes. In the draft version we only had a single tast where students needed to write a paragraph. In the final version we changed that task to only write three sentences and also added a criss cross puzzle we made using Discovery Education's Criss Cross Puzzle Maker. The material was very easy to create thanks to the apps we utilised.

I think our material can be very well implemented in a real classroom. The only problem I can think of is the price of printing the papers of the material as we used quite a bit of colors and also had a total of four pages.

I will definitely save my material and use it in the future when I become a real teacher.

Our teaching materials link.

Thanks for reading and walk tall.

The Terrifying Assassin and First Digital Storytelling Experience

 

   As another university assignment we were given a task to create a digital story. I have prepared this story with Muhammet Berkay Seçer who have helped me in most of my tasks.

   We were supposed to create a story with images or video footage and with dubbing. Our story was supposed to be longer than two minutes.

   We used Pixton to create images for our story and Vegas Pro to edit it together. We first wrote the script and created the images relevant to it with pixton. Then, we recorded our lines. I recorded my voice through the pre-existing sound recorder of my computer and my friend Berkay recorded his lines through his phone. Then we combined our voices, images and sound effects and edited it accordingly.

   Pixton was very useful for this task. It consisted all the materials we needed for our story. It was a bit complex to use at first but we quickly got used to it. We also did not have any problems in voice recording. Editing the content took longer than any other part but thanks to Berkay's experince with the program, Vegas Pro got all the things we needed done.

   Digital storytelling was the best task we have done in our course. We were able to use our creativity freely because we only had limitations on time and nothing else. I will definitely assign a similar project to my future students. With proper help and guidance I am sure that students will create extremely creative and quality content.

   Overall, I think it is a must to try to create a digital story.

   You can check out my friend Berkay's blog here.

   You can watch our digital story here.

   Thanks for reading and walk tall.

The Story With a Twist and First Podcast Experience

   Podcast have been a relatively popular source of entertainment and information since they were first produced. And recently I got to do my own podcast about a story.

   The podcast I made was needed for a university assignment. The assignment consisted of four options we could choose as a type of our podcast but I chose the one where I would write a story and voice it with a partner.

   My partner was Muhammet Berkay Seçer again, as we did all pair and group works together. You can check out his blog here.

   The story task required us to use 5 words from a list and 10 sound effects to add to the mood and then voice it.

   The whole task was overall pretty easy. The script didn't take too long to finish. Voicing the story was a bit weird. Because we are not used to hearing our own voice like how other people hear it, we couldn't help but feel awkward while listening. The editing part took more time than the others but my friend Berkay was experienced in editing so we didn't sweat a lot during that part too.

   As a future teacher, I will definitely give my students a project to do a podcast. It was really fun and helpful in many ways but it was a bit complex too. I will definitely try to give this kind of project to more older students because younger students would not be able to do it by themselves.

   Overall podcasting is pretty fun and I would recommend it anytime.

   You can listen to our podcast here.

   Thanks for reading and walk tall.

My Research of Covid and First Padlet Writing Experience

 

   Recently I was given a project from one of my courses in university. With a group of four people we had to create a Padlet page about certain topics. The topic we chose was about Covid. We had to make a KWL (what we know, what we want to know and what we learned) chart about the subject. Every person had to write 3 questions or points under each headline. 

   The project was enjoyable and did not take long to finish. We had to use trustable websites as a source and such websites were not hard to find. We definitely learned quite a bit about Covid and Padlet after the project. 

   Padlet was useful in allowing placing information in an aesthetic way but it did not allow the user to put multiple images or videos in a single post. This handicap did limit us but other than this Padlet was a pretty useful tool in helping us what we needed to achieve.

   This project was also pretty helpful in improving our collaboration and digital literacy skills. As we had to do the project together as four people we organised our questions and sources together and this definitely helped our collaboration skills. In addition we searched a lot of websites for reliable information and this helped us to learn what to look for in a website. Overall the project was very much helpful.

   Thanks to my friends Bora Sarakurt, Muhammet Berkay Seçer and Eren Kızıltepe for everything they have done in this project. They all have blogs like this which you can reach by clicking their names.

   You can check out our Padlet page through here.

   Thanks for reading and walk tall.

A photo of our Padlet page.

My Review of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope and First Wiki Writing Experience

   

Wikis have been an useful tool for many years whether to look up information about your favourite movie character or an extremely complicated abstract linguistic topic. Today I am very happy to say that I have wrote my first wiki page as a university assignment. It was about a movie review and my choice for that was one of my favourite movies Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.

   As part of this university assignment I was not alone. I wrote the review with a dear friend of mine from my university Muhammet Berkay Seçer who also has a blog in blogger that you can reach from here.

   Our wiki writing process consisted of planning, writing and reviewing the text. We first talked about how and what we should write. Then we got to the actual writing experience which took some time but was very enjoyable. At last we went over what we wrote and we ironed out the wrinkles a bit.

   This project gave me some insight on how useful wikis can be. It improved my already existing good relationship with my friend, helped us improve our writing and analysis skills. Wikis can be terrific tools to learn and teach others information and/or opinions with our friends and colleagues. They can easily be implemented as a teaching practise and will definitely help students improve their digital literacy.

Overall I recommend checking out and writing a wiki page.

You can check out the review here.

Thanks for reading and walk tall.

                                                                 A photo of my wiki page.