DIGITAL WORLD, DIGITAL STORIES

Hello, everyone. This week I'll share a digital story which I created with a partner. This digitalizing world makes us produce more content so we try to make the best use of it. For this project, our teacher presented us a variety of options. We chose to create a story with my friend. We were asked either to write a story or find a story. We tried to write one ourselves but then decided on finding one. We made the necessary adjustment to the story to fit our needs.

After preparing the story, we made a plan on how to make it a digital story. We found some images on the web rather than drawing. Though finding the images was not easy for both of us. We searched for the most proper images for hours. But not all of them were alike. To overcome this problem we used an app called Prisma. We used an appropriate Prisma effect for the images we found. The app really helped us on this issue.

We prepared a recording to narrate our story. It was a bit hard for us to find somewhere silent enough to record but we accomplished that also. I narrated the story and my friend voiced the characters. After a few recordings, the narration part was also over. The reason behind this short recording time is that we read the story a few times and tried to make our pronunciations as perfect as possible.

The final piece for the story was to find a soundtrack that fits to the story's line. It did not take long but it was just our luck, I guess. After finding and preparing every piece of the story, we used Windows Movie Maker to give the final touch. We both know how to use it but we spent a few minutes to rediscover the program. Another time consuming process was arranging the images appearing a time. We spent a lot of time on it to be synchronized with the narration. After adding the soundtrack and a sound effect, we saved our project. Now, we are presenting the project to you.

Preparing such a project is quite fun, I must say. We laughed so hard and learned so much. I suggest all the other teachers to try to apply these kind of projects, because I believe that they will learn new words, practice pronunciation etc. I hope you enjoy watching our digital story and check out my friend's blog here. I want to thank him for his cooperation in this project.

MOBILITY IS THE WORD!

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Hello, everyone. One of the topics of this week is the use of mobile apps in English teaching. As you know the growth of mobile technologies develop every passing day and this creates a huge variety of options for teachers to select and use these technologies in their teaching. A major advantage of mobile apps in teaching is that it provides you the chance to learn anytime, anywhere. As future teachers, we should make the best use of this technology.

This week I will talk about Kahoot. Kahoot is a fun service to use actually, for not just teaching English but also for any other subject. Kahoot allows you to create fun quizzes so learning is gamified and easy. You can sign up for free from the homepage. You will have four different choices: as a teacher, as a student, socially and at work. After you filled the required information such as the school, name, e-mail adress etc., you can start using Kahoot.

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Practically, this our kitchen. We can create quizzes, jumbles, discussions and surveys. At the top of the page you can see the kahoots you created or you can search for other kahoots. It is also possible to get support on how to use the website. Before you start creating quiz, jumble etc., Kahoot will ask you to fill some information about the exercise. The preperation page is same for all the exercises as one example can be seen below.

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There are some required areas as well as optional ones. By filling these spaces you can help other people reach your Kahoots more easily, if you want. You can also change the visibility from everyone to only me if you want to keep them for yourself and your class only. After passing this stage, you start writing questions using the game creator section on the page. The design of the questions page is similar to the first preparation stage. For example, you can add media sources and add your resources. Other blanks are about the question itself, the answers and the time limit.

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After you finished creating and saving the quiz, you can edit, preview, play or share it. If you choose to play it, you can either choose the Kahoot to be played classic, as player vs player, or you can choose team mode by creating groups by sharing devices of the students. This page will present you a variety of useful options. I suggest you to arrange them according to your plan. When you choose either one it will create a game pin which student type it on their device on join the Kahoot.

I tried to tell you how to use it basically, but I suggest that you use it further and understand how you can effectly use it in your teaching. For example, if you read a short story with your class prepare a Kahoot before the lesson and open it at the end of the class. Another example can be giving it as a homework, about the grammar structure you lectured that day. You can create discussions on different topics and improve your students' vocabulary. Just try to be creative, the rest will come by itself. Have a nice week.

A HELPING HAND: ELT WEBSITES

Hello, everyone. Welcome again. This week, I will share a review of a website with you. The website's name is ESL KidStuff. It is a website designed for teachers to help them in their classroom teaching and also for their self development.

The authors of the site are a group of experienced teachers and they still update the content for 15 years. The site is very easy to use. Everything is well-organized and categorized. There are not only classroom teaching materials but also there are lesson plans, articles and teaching tips for teachers. 

The site's content is for young learners. There are high quality flash cards, worksheets, games, craft sheets, songs and classroom readers. The content is printable or downloadable which is a plus for teachers. The worksheets look appealing for young learners and fun to do. I did not realize any mistakes or typos in the sheets I examined. Classroom readers are well illustrated so that children can easily understand the content and figure out the meaning of the words himself or herself.

The songs are provided both in British and American Engilsh and there are also song porsters and song word sheets. The site has 50 songs. There are also articles and tips for teachers under the teaching resources section which is important for teachers' academic development. The articles are accessible through links and there are no broken links.

Finally, this whole content requires a payment per year or two years. If you want to contribute to this hard work the price is good. You can find the necessary information in the about us section. I recommend you to check out the free samples. Happy teaching!