Category: EdTech

Tsundoku

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Tsundoku is a Japanese word which means to buy books that you cannot read at all and pile them up. I think it is the disease of this age. However, to be a good reader, I think it is best to be surrounded by books. To want to be a good reader is not enough, you also have to buy the time in order to read the book that you bought.

Moreover, to pile up the books that you get from a bookshop or an online shopping website is a  problem that every good reader will face someday. This situation creates a feeling of guilt,  but the books we pile and don’t read have an effect on us as much as the books we read.  The unread books remind us that we still do not know everything and thus they keep us away from egoism. If we do not keep our library expanding, our enthusiasm to read books and personal evolution will stop eventually. The unread books keep us wonder continuously.

Do not hesitate to fill your personal library with unread books. They will expand your curiosity and imagination. A library filled with books that you read will lose its power, but a library with books that you haven’t read yet will be a remarkable one. So, do not afraid to pile up some books. 🙂

Let’s Begin :)

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When I first read this motivational sentence, I spent some time thinking on it. Everyone wants to be great, no one is okay with the average. The thinking process is fine, but the way through greatness is the hard one. But, hey, if you do not start, you will never know. Besides life treats different to everyone, so who knows? 🙂

I just want to mention one or two things more. I searched this sentence both in Turkish and English pages, and the difference between them made me felt pity for my country. On English websites, there are articles about this sentence, they thought really hard on it and made comments about the sentence and the author himself, who is a motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar. They came up with new ideas and new motivational speeches after the sentence.

On the other hand, when I wrote the Turkish meaning of this sentence, Google brought me only quote sites, motivational sentences sites, adages sites, whosesentencesarethose.com kind of sites… It was really disappointing. We stopped thinking, we are not creating anymore, we are not producing. We should be motivated by these sentences and achieve greater successes, but we’d rather make show.

We must stop this nonsense, and put our reality glasses on at once. So let’s begin 🙂

Powtoon

Hello friends, in this post I want to introduce Powtoon. Using animation videos helps you to attract attention easily, especially in this era. Powtoon is a great, easy-to-use, free animation software (there is a Pro version too). You can create unique animations with the tools the site provides you or you can edit a ready-to-use animation. There are hundreds of different backgrounds, props, shapes, images, videos, and effect that you can use in your animation video, you can also add sound, music or even your own voice.

I highly recommend you to go Powtoon, and start creating amazing animation videos for your classroom.

Here is mine which I prepared it for my 7th graders to teach Present Perfect Continuous and for the educational video assignment of Multimedia class in BAU.

Enjoy 🙂

     Multimedia – May The Tenses Be With You!

Edpuzzle

Hello again, today I want to share my experiences with Edpuzzle. Last week I taught Second Conditional to my 7th graders and started to search for a way to make my students revise it. Last Thursday, in our Multimedia Design class (Master), my friends introduced a great web 2.0 tool that I can use in my own classroom in order to boost 2nd conditional. Here is the new tool that our students can enjoy and learn while using it at the same time: Edpuzzle.

Edpuzzle is a massive video platform which helps teachers to create amazing video lessons. It also ensures students learn with a high rate of participation. Teachers can pick a video from KhanAcademy, Youtube, National Geographic, TedTalks, Veritasium, and other video provider sites and edit it according to the related course for free. You can also add and edit your own videos.

Edpuzzle is the easiest way to make any kind of video interactive.

Here is the video I have just edited: Edpuzzle – Second Conditional

Enjoy 🙂

 

 

A Creative Classroom Application: “ Ask me! ” Hat

 

“Our classroom is our stage.”

Sometimes the teacher might get exhausted by the questions coming from the students. Not only the questions about the lesson but the questions such as “Can I sit next to my friend? Can I use my red pen? Which pencil should I use? Can I write it here?” These questions might seem innocent but answering that kind of questions every minute, every day seems actually a huge burden for the teacher. Moreover, the tolerance of the teacher decreases day by day through the year while they are on their favorite stage – the classroom.

However, there is a simple application that can be applied to class easily. Think that there are 4 hats – “Ask Me!” written on them – in the classroom hanging on the wall all the time. 4 students can wear hats when there is an activity going on in the class. If the other students have a question during the class, they can ask it to the hat wearers. If the students on duty do not know the answer, the can simply ask it to their teachers and convey it to their friends.

This application might lighten the burden on teachers’ shoulders for a bit and lets students take an active role in the learning process. This might also be called “peer teaching” if it is preferred to be used in that way.

Please comment below if you have any ideas more like this one.

Thank you for reading.

This post is taken from https://www.egitimpedia.com/yaratici-bir-sinif-uygulamasi-bana-soru-sor-sapkasi/

Instructional Goals

So in this post, I want to talk about assessing needs to identify instructional goals (Dick & Carey, 2001). Dick and Carey mention the significance of the needs assessment process in order to achieve the instructional goals like “skills, knowledge, and attitudes”. Designers mostly focus on acquisitions at the end of the course. The acquisitions also take place in my yearly plan (guess what? I’m a teacher 🙂 ) and they are like “students will be able to take notes while listening”.

The problem, the solution, and the instructional goal have to be crystal clear. As the authors said, “identify the problem” and find solutions about them is not an easy task.  We, as learners, have to find a problem and try to identify a solution, too. We should emphasize the acquisition part which is the main goal of instructional design.

To learn more, check Dick & Carey (2001) – The Systematic Design of Instruction, Chapter 2.

Some Notes on Instructional Design

The previous semester, I had the chance to take the Instructional Design Course from Ayhan Doğan who is a great teacher. So I want to share some of my notes here which I took before, during and after the lesson.

First I want to start with the Introduction to Instructional Design (Dick & Carey, 2001). I’m just going to make a brief summary of that chapter with some visuals I prepared.

 The first chapter starts with a traditional instructional process which contains only learners, textbooks and instructors. To teach the students already existing content in their textbook was the duty of the teacher. According to this, training the teacher would be enough to raise the learning.

 

 

 

However, the modern appearance of the instructional process includes learners, instructional materials, instructor, and learning environment. It is more systematic. In the chapter, we also have a chance to find the answer to a question: What is a system? In a system, every single unit reckons upon each other. Every unit of the system (materials, instructor, learner, environment) is related to each other. The failure of one means the hitch of the whole. The instructional system evolves whenever something goes wrong, it automatically starts to look for a solution that can make itself better. For example, if a student has a problem with the present perfect tense and s/he doesn’t understand the way the instructor taught, then a new way should be found. But on the contrary, I believe the system should change continuously. The process should improve progressively without needing a failure in order to change.

In the “Components of the Systems Approach Model” part, Dick and Carey explain us the instructional system design step by step. I think this part is to ease our understanding of the whole concept. However, as the authors said, if you are a novice, you will understand the system better when “you begin to use” it. So the first chapter crayons the aims, the utility of the instructional process and why should we use the systems approach.