OTHER EFFECTIVE WAY OF TEACHING

Hello everyone!

We are addicted to use mobile devices every moment in our lives especially mobile phones. In fact, we can’t think a life without our phones now. This is the case in education, too. We always explore new materials related to technology so why don’t we use the mobile phones in our lessons? If our aim is to teach English to students, then we should try all possibilities. I think the students will love to use their mobile phones during the lessons.

I would like to introduce an app that can be installed and used on a mobile device, Learn English with Epic Language Games.

It is an app which includes fun games to expand English vocabulary. It is designed for Iphone and Ipad. Your students will never be stuck with the games. They can always keep playing and will automatically learn the meaning of the words and their pronunciation. There are levels both words and sentences. Also, there are three difficulty levels(easy, medium, high) that can be customized from the settings page. It is super easy to use for all ages. Your students can unlock new levels playing at home and track their progress.

When we come to the lessons, you can use it to practise your student’s vocabulary. For example; when you open this app you will see this page.

               

  

There are sections locked and unlocked. The first section is about foods including words and sentences parts. Click the section and play the game with students. While playing the game, students have to choose the right answer and during the game they can only choose the wrong answers three time. Also there is a time limit. These may challenge them but they will enjoy it. When they see they can pass the levels they will want to use the app out of the lessons. They can also improve their pronunciation, grammar skills besides vocabulary skills. 

Hope you will like this app. Enjoy!

AN EDGE OF TEACHING AND LEARNING: DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Hi everybody!

I am very excited writing this post because I have done an enjoyable, impressive and purposeful task this week, with my friend, and I want to share it with you immediately: it is "digital storytelling."
Have you heard about digital storytelling? If you haven't then you probably guess how it means or how it is used. I will explain anyway. Digital storytelling is integrating sounds, images, videos and creating a short narrative story. You can create your own story; it can be a personal story, historical events or a special topic. After you finish, you can share it.  How amazing it is! Technology definitely develops without stopping.

For our task we have to work collaboratively and I have worked with Kader. Our teacher asked us to choose one option from three options. We chose the third option, creating a fictional story. Actually I was lucky because Kader has good paintings so she drew the pictures and I wrote the story that we narrate. Then, we recorded our voices and finally shot the story with a camera and created it. We used Movie Maker to arrange the whole materials. We had no difficulty in either creating the story or drawing the pictures, but while recording our voices and filming the story we tried a lot. As it was important to be able to give the emotions to our target audience, lower intermediate students, we tried again and again while recording our voices. Moreover, we used sticks to move our two characters and controlling them was a little bit difficult for us because at the same time we had to shoot it with the camera. At the end we were surprised with the outcome after we created our digital storytelling. According to us, it was perfect; our narration, the sequence of visuals, movement of the characters, the background music... They were all in harmony. To see the outcome which we did own made us happy.

If you are now interested in using digital storytelling in your lessons as a teacher it can serve a lot of affordance to you because children fancy the technology today. You can create your own digital storytelling and use it in the classroom to make the learning permanent. Furthermore, you can ask your students to prepare their own digital storytelling. Even you may cooperate with your students and other teachers to make well-designed digital storytelling. Both you and your students will enjoy this process and it will improve their language skills; writing, speaking and listening. As the day goes on new teaching materials come out and we should know these materials because teaching and learning are rough processes and in these processes we should make teaching and learning fun but at the same time efficient and permanent. Digital storytelling is one of the most important material I will use in my classroom easily. So, I recommend you to use it. Remember the importance of technology in teaching and learning process and apply the technology in your lessons.
Here is our digital storytelling, strongly advised to watch! See you soon.