I Created A Wiki Page!

Hello everyone! How are you?

This week, our topic is wikiing. For our Instructional Technologies and Material Design course, we created a wiki page in which we gave general information about a book. I have chosen Serenad by Zülfü Livaneli. He is one of my favourite authors and the book is one of my favorite books as well. There aren't any close friend of mine to whom I didn't recomment reading this book. Really.

There is the original cover of the book.

 I will leave the link for you to take a look at my page.

Thank you!

Click here to go to my wiki page.

P.S. If you haven't read Serenade für Nadja, then go to the nearest book shop, buy it and start reading it as soon as possible. You won't even realize how fast the time flies when you are reading it. Believe me.


Photo taken from there.

Podcasting

Hi everyone! 

Today, we will be talking about podcasting! For our Instructional Technologies and Material Design course, my friend Refika and I recorded an audio file. But before sharing it with you, I will first explain what a podcast is.

A podcast is, according to Wikipedia, an episodic series of digital audio or video files which a user can download in order to listen to. It can be used to talk about any topic. It's very helpful to develop your language skills. That's way there are so many podcasts for learners of a foreign language in each level.

In our podcast, we told you a story. After you listen to it, you can find out what the story is about. Let's listen to it with subtitles. Thank you! 

P.S : You can take a look at my lovely friend Refika's blog as well :) ( to do so, please click here.  )

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Teaching With Technology

Hi everyone! Today's topic is, as you saw in the title, teaching with technology. First, let me explain why we will be talking about this today.

This is my homework for my Instructional Technologies and Material Design course, and is very important for me, for a 21st century teacher candidate. Before going into details, I will define the key words first, which are teaching and technology.

According to INFED, teaching is "the process of attending to people’s needs, experiences and feelings, and intervening so that they learn particular things, and go beyond the given". On the other hand, technology is defined as about taking action to meet a human need rather than merely understanding the workings of the natural world, which is the goal of science", by OpenLearn. When the two meets each other, it makes technology much more useful and teaching much easier.

Today's children are born to the arms of technology. They know how to use it far better than adults. Besides, as they have always been familiar with technology since they were born, anything that doesn't include technology bores them. So, when we are studying with , mostly, young ones, we may need to use technology more.

You may ask, why? Why are you telling us all of these? Doesn’t it have a reason? Of course it does. When technology and teaching are  together, the outcome is unbelievably successful as both students and teachers spend less energy when they use computers or telephones. They have access to information anywhere. They don’t have to write many papers on hand, they just print the texts. These are some of the the positive outcomes that mostly concern students when technology and teaching meet. There are also many more when we look at them from the teachers’ perspective.

When teachers  use technological materials during classes, they have the videos that may help them. If students get bored during class, they can open the  videos and attrack their attention. Also, there are online classes, in which teachers can leave notes or homework for the students so that they cannot say “I forgot we had homework” or such.

However, we cannot say there aren't any disadvantages of technology at all. Some examples are as followed: if students bring their own technological gadgets such as mobile phones, tablets or computers, they may be distracted easily as they may get a text from a friend or they may say "I'm searching for some information" and they may surf on the Internet. The teacher may not be able to control all of the students.
So, when technology is used correctly, the benefits of it cannot be counted as there are so many.
If you ask me if I will use technology in my classes, I will definitely use it. Because why not! A teacher must not ignore all the help the technology provides. If they do, they will be very tired at the end of each class, believe me... And if they take the precautions that may prevent the students from surfing on the Internet, they will surely enjoy the class. 

I will close the post  with a question, do you think every student  would want to mix learning with technology? Why?

Thank you for reading ! see you on my next post! 

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Historical Development of CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) and Technology in Education

In this post, we will talk about how did technology integration in education proceed. What you will have learned by the time you finished reading this post is the historical development of CALL. If you ask why I'm writing this post is to show you how luckier we are than students or teachers in the past in terms of language education.

CALL has been developing gradually for the last thirty-fourty years, and has focused on different aspects in different time gaps. Behavioristic CALL, communicative CALL and integrative CALL are the names given to different areas, respectively. Now, we can look at them one by one.

Behavioristic CALL dominated the 1960s and 1970s. It was based on habit formation and contributed to teacher instruction. However, by the end of 1970s, communicative CALL replaced behavioristic CALL, because it was meaning focused and there were no assistance to the instructions which in turn makes learners more active in learning environments and at that time, microcomputers were invented and created many possibilities for learners as well. But these were also not enough. Today's CALL, integrative CALL arose in the middle of 1990s because still, teachers were the main characters in classes. It has everything the learners need in order to learn actively. The students' needs, the skills they need to develop and also the environment where interaction can happen meet in one model. With the help of the developments in technology used in education, learning takes place more easily and learnt items stay in mind longer.

If you want to see the developments in a more detailed way, you can take a look at the time-line below.

Let's stop here with a question. Have you ever thought that if these technological items have never been invented, at what stage would you be?

 Leave your comments below this post. Thank you for reading. :)

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Twenty First Century Learning and Technology Integration

Today, we will briefly talk about the twenty first century learning. This is something we hear from the students and the teachers the most these days.

Twenty first century learning has become a very important phrase that concerns mostly teachers and students. It can simply be defined as the context in which students are capable of doing things that are learnt not only in a classroom but also in an environment where teaching and learning take place non-stop and is completely  different from the traditional education system. A framework for the twenty first century learning has been created with the help of educators and experts to clarify student needs.

 The framework mostly focuses on the skills the students need to have and the key subjects needed to be learnt. 

In the framework, the skills are divided into three groups. These three groups are listed below as:

1-Learning and Innovation Skills (4Cs- critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication)

2-Information, Media and Technology Skills

3-Life and Career Skills

But what these skills can be used for are the key subjects, which refer to world languages, arts, mathematics, science, geography, history etc. These are not enough for learning to take place, though. Only if the standarts, assessments, curriculum, instruction, professional development and learning environment meet the key subjects and the skills required, can students be educated.

See you on my next post, thank you!

Inspired by this. 

Welcome To My Page!

Hello everyone! This is the first post of my blog. This blog will be all about  instructional technology, educational knowledge and English. The three of them are what you will find in every post.
I hope you enjoy reading them and while reading, if you have any suggestions or ideas, do not forget to leave a comment below. Thank you!