Technology and Materials Design: The purpose of this course is to train prospective teachers of English in selecting and integrating computer applications in the process of English language teaching.
On this page, you will find some notes about my lectures, you will follow the anouncements and you will communicate with me and with your friends. There will be some discussion questions and you are expected to contribute to them to make our teaching and learning process more interactive.
Below are the links to the documents about the internship opportunity in England. If you are interedted in it, please read the docs carefully and email the contact person (Aishah Ismail- aishah.ismail@dbslaw.co.uk).
I am also attaching some part of our conversation to inform you more about the opportunity. As I mentioned before, I do not know the people or company. They contacted me and sent the emails, so I can't accept any responsibility.
Good luck
Hello Gokce
We accept both graduates and under graduate students. The students do not have to have graduated.
I Hope to hear from you very soon.
You may forward the CV's of interested students to me.
Kind Regards
Aishah.
Hello Gokce Kurt,
Yes, knowing English is enough.
You will build up on your English skills plus you will do general office administration.
This is a fantastic opportunity to work in an international company and improve your English skills.
This website is a perfect tool for all people who deal with English studying. Teachers and students can find something useful in this site. Teachers can find lesson plans in order to use them in their lessons on this site. Students can study English through this website. They can find what they look for easily. In addition, the website is being constantly updated so people can find what is new on it. The website either navigates its users to different websites or opens a page in itself when clicked on its sections. It is an advantage of the website because it helps you to reach a wide variety of sources. We suggest our friends to use this website especially for podcasts.
http://esl.fis.edu/
This website provides advantages of improving ESL students’ language abilities for teachers in effective and enjoyable ways. There are also some advices for teachers and parents to help the students to learn English as a second language better. Learners can benefit from this website on their own while they are not at school. They can check their knowledge, reinforce the subject that they learn in the lesson, learn much about the subject; understand the part that they have difficulty in. This website is beneficial for reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar skills. They get feedback immediately to their answers while doing exercises. Also teachers can enhance the lesson by using this web site and can suggest this web site to their learners.
http://www.eslcafe.com/
Using the target language, the language is taught efficiently with the help of quizes, activities, videos, podcasts, cues, available links, and forums. So many people contribute to the site by leaving their comments and sharing their ideas in forums from all over the world.
www.englishpage.com
The website successfully attracts learners by providing them basic and vital concepts in terms of language learning. Grammar and vocabulary exercises which are involved in the website offer developing the language skills to the learners. Listening and reading activities are also useful for the learners because these activities navigate the learners to universally known websites such as BBC, The Observer and USA Today etc. Learners can take so many quizzes and tests in the website. This site can also be used by the teachers who want to revive the lessons which are labeled as ‘boring’ by the students.
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en
The website is a child friendly site; children can use it by themselves as it is easy to understand. Every skill has been emphasized on in parts such as “games”; children can choose any topic and play whatever game they like, this part also includes popular games played by others, games from friends and games to play with a friend, children are able to enjoy the games by playing them with a friend. Another part is “listen and watch” where stories are told with videos and stories and includes little games and puzzles for children to enjoy. “Reading and writing” includes subjects that children can write about and writing games and a forum where children can comment on topics. In the “make” part children are able to download material to make; cards for friends, masks, objects and so on. Teachers can also use these downloads to include in lessons. It is easy to explore the website as it has a part “explore”; the website has been updated recently so there aim in this part is for users to easily find what they are looking for. It explains where everything is, what is new and helps new users to explore the website. As mentioned before, the site is updated very often, which can be seen as a strength but it could be considered as a weakness as you cannot find an activity that you have done before, which could be a disappointment to the user. The updated parts replace previous games, stories, etc. and that can be overwhelming for studentswhen finding the related activity.
www.englishclub.com
The website gives users different perspectives to understand and teach students with learning disability. It is complete guide with immediate application, well organized and full of tricks. The topics are pertinent, the texts are easy to understand and the visual presentations are clear. All of the links work properly; it is not time consuming. In addition to this, they are all free of charge. Shortly, this website helps learners improve their English in an exciting and a funny way.
http://www.tolearnenglish.com/
This website is designed for kids and beginner level learners to develop their target language. It is accurate for young learners and enjoyable with some pictures. In the index page the content of the website is written and students can see what they can get from that website. The home page includes five sections in relation to replacement tests, lessons& exercises, club, leisure time and useful tools which help learners to make more practice in order to improve the target language.
http://a4esl.org/
This website is very useful with all the contents it has. Of course, there are some weaknesses like inadequacy of visuals and sounds. When compared with the disadvantages and the disadvantages, anyone who wants to learn English as a second language -- whatever their native languages are – can find and make use of the activities in this site. We, as language learners of English, strongly advise all the learners to visit the website. They will learn English better when they visit the site and do the activities.
The website which I have evaluated is desinged for anyone who want to talk to someone in English.They can impove their speaking skill via this page by connecting with a teacher , a private tutor or another student. The page is divided into detailed parts. Some of the parts are index, list of topic, links, conservation partner, question, all students and register now.
Its strengths are the variety of activities responding to all level of students, the newly updates, the teacher support materials and lastly, easy access to other websites. The weaknesses of this website are the lack of the musical activities for teaching the language. They could have offered different songs with rhymes by which they teach students the body parts for example. Another weakness is the amount of advertisings on the pages. They are not only on the home page but also on the other pages. Such a variety would make the learner confused by first glance. However of two weaknesses all in all this website is a useful site for teacher and student.
www.manythings.org
This website is suited to make the learning English more comprehensible. Also, the learners who do not go on a school can promote learning through this site. However, upon examining the website we found some strengths and weaknesses. Manythings.org gives chance learners to enhance their essential language skills in terms of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation with the help of distinct materials. During the study, you never face with a difficulty such as broken links and you do not have to free of charge. Moreover, you do not have to download anything for any activities, so it will not consume your time in vain. It can be assumed as a weakness that there is no visual aid. Also, it is not appropriate for advanced learners but its color selection sometimes may not be attractive for beginners. Finally, we recommend both the teachers and learners to benefit from Manythings.org.
Efl.net
This website is useful to improve listening skill but not other skills. Learner may improve their listening skills with a large number of audio materials on the other hand there is no any activities for other skills and listening is not enough to make a language a language. Teachers can use this website in the classroom environment for the listening lessons and the students can get the benefit of this website at home to improve their listening skill on their own. Advanced learners can use it effectively whereas it is not appropriate for lower level learners. Briefly, this website can be used only for specific aims like listening activities.
This website is designed for providing games and activities for students between grades kindergarten – 12. The website is created by Scholastic Inc. and provides information for reading, writing, listening, spelling, vocabulary and grammar of students. It is a wide website that has parts for students, teachers and parents including materials to be used in learning English and these materials are available for teachers and parents to be applied to their students and children. The activity page of the website is well designed for the user who wants to find appropriate activity for learners because of the design of the activity list emplaced according to the grade levels. Teachers and parents can easily reach to the appropriate activities. Students can also find activities for themselves to improve their language knowledge through various activities prepared for their grade.
This website has wide grammar information and could be enough for beginner level students. If we were teachers, we would use this website just because it has a single grammar part, it has funny activities for students and links are useful. In short, “Zozanga” needs improvement and currency. We suggest this website for learning grammatical structures, not for skills as listening and speaking.
This website is beneficial for learners who want to reach high proficiency levels. The information it includes, the methods it use and its way of teaching have made us evaluate it as a successful website in terms of teaching English.
This web site is useful for everyday life communication in English language learning. The design of web site is simple so visitors can utilize it easily and access some specific issues about real life conversations. Also, they can listen and read these conversations at the concurrently.
By means of its content, this website is a large and rich source for English learners. With the multimedia activities and enjoying games, it draws the attention of every kind of learners. The people who established this website are also second language learner. They are Spanish native speakers. So English is their second or foreign language. It is an advantage in point of proficiency level of the learner.
Firstly, the design of this website is greatly well except the advertisement on the home page. Actually the advertisements are useful for language learning but not beautiful visually. Secondly, the content of this website and the materials are excellent not only for teachers but also students. Everyone can find the necessary materials in this website and uses them easily. The content is not only educational but also amusing at the same time. This is important especially for children. Lastly, this website is appropriate to its function. It includes many materials to learn language and all of them are useful. This website is appropriate to use for language learning and teaching.
Starfall
It is an enjoyable and useful website for young learners, and teachers can make use of it instead of traditional teaching methods in the classroom. With its diverse animations, videos and colorful pages, it attracts the learners. They feel freer, and their self-esteem increases as teacher control is minimum. Some teachers are afraid of using technology, but this is not the case for this website as it is very easy to navigate. It encourages critical thinking skills. They transform the information they learned in the website to the activities. This website is interdisciplinary, which motivates learners and brings real-life context to the classroom.
esl.about.com
This website is a good server for English second language. It provides some excellent activities to advocate learners improve their English on the internet. For example, activities related to confused words, grammar exercises, pronunciation exercises and so on. It facilitates the learning for people who don’t engage in school environment. This website is an attempt to develop grammar, listening, writing, reading and speaking skills. Although the website doesn’t refer to every level and age groups, it presents various activities, lesson plans and free courses to particular levels. In contrast to effectiveness of this website, it has some weaknesses in sense of arrangements of the elements, number of the activities and color adjustment. Such kinds of deficiencies have big impact on its utility. In addition, it doesn’t give any opportunity learners to be in conversation with native speakers. It doesn’t focus on speaking skill enough.
This website has both weaknesses and strengths. The weaknesses of this website are that there is no authentic material especially in phonetic section and there is no feedback which is given automatically. It means that if there is no parent or teacher confirmation, the students can not be positive about the answers. Moreover, this website has not got the information of being updated or not. On the other hand, the website has some strengths, too. One of them is that the website has so many games, puzzles and projects that the learning process becomes more enjoyable for students. The second strength is that the exercises are divided into groups according to the levels of the students and this makes the teachers’ job easier. In addition to them, the design of the website is very attractive and suitable for young learners. Finally, in our opinion, this website can be suggested as an educational website for young learners only if parents or teachers check up the answers of the students.
The website examined has some weaknesses and strengths. One of its strengths is that learners can easily obtain many kinds of grammar knowledge with exercises. At the same time the website has some weaknesses for example, it does not address young learners in the way that they would best interact with the material.
This site’s aim is to help second language learners understand real conversational speech, improve their pronunciation and speak naturally outside the classroom. the positive aspects of the site are more than its negative aspects. There are some minor problems but these problems can be improved. Even it has problems, the site is quite useful for improving listening and speaking skills.
The site is both accurate and current because it conforms the certain standards and truth, and it is updated regularly. Another strong point of this site is its content of the information; navigating in the page is easy and also, there are some stimulating and authentic activities for the learners. In terms of functionality and objectivity, again, this site is above the standards due to the fact that it enables learners to have an access without paying a fee, the information is valid, and there is no bias. What is more, it is a well-planned educational website that helps the learners to improve their competence in the target language, and help them to enrich their learning process by using more real and useful materials or activities.
All learners can reach high proficiency level by using this website. When compared with other language teaching websites, there is nothing creative in this website. So we can name it as a traditional language teaching website. The methods in the links are very attractive for young learners. Thanks to its versatile features, it is very beneficial for all learners. Activities make English more comprehensible for learners.
Strong sides of the website: There are lots of links where learners can find grammar, listening, reading and vocabulary exercises. It is being very useful for everyone. It is not a dumping ground of links. Links are qualified and authentic. Weak sides of the website: It has just links in its database and has poor visual quality.
The website consists of many useful listening topics and exercises. Also it has attractive video records on different subjects. Besides, it recommends both teachers and learners extra websites which have current, attractive and useful contents. However this website is focused on listening, speaking and reading, but writing. So we can’t use this website to improve our students’ writing skills. Also the website needs a more attractive design and a lively colour scheme. As a consequent, this website has some weak points that need to be flourished.
“BBC Learning English” site is such a wide site that we can use it for each grade and each level of the students. Although this website is prepared generally for intermediate learners, there are some sections which are suitable for upper-intermediate learners and beginners and even for teachers. For example, “General & Business English” page is suitable for upper-intermediate learners because on this page, there is some news that can be understood at least by upper-intermediate learners. But as for “The Flatmates” page, we can see a lot of episodes with lots of caricatures and these are for the beginners. I strongly suggest using this website. Because, this website not only enhances learners’ receptive skills (reading, listening), pronunciation, grammar and writing but also it enables both students and teachers to make contact and share their opinions with the people all around the world by using blogs. It supplies a number of videos, podcasts and radio channel in order to improve learners’ listening skills, and with the help of native speakers, this website enables students to improve their pronunciation as a native speaker accent.
Voice of America
This website with its accuracy, currency, and ease of use can be very helpful for English language learners. However there are some drawbacks in several issues. For example; the authors of the website are not educator. Thus they may miss some pedagogical facts in the learning special English section. Also, most of the learning activities are based on stories so the website develops mainly receptive skills of English language learners. However when the learners look at Facebook group of the web site they will see the population of group members and realise that the website is not completely for developing receptive skills. As a last word, Voice of America is a website that should not be ignored by English language teachers.
literacynet.org/cnnsf/
The website is rich in comprehensible input which is presented by visual and/or aural means like video players. Considering that students differ in learning styles, teachers can benefit from this site to promote learners’ reading, listening skills as well as word knowledge. Students have the chance to engage in authentic content while reading, listening or watching stories. Especially the Responses section works like a blog and enables students to interact with each other. However, this site is appropriate to be studied by the advanced adult learners due to the content of the stories, visuality of the site and linguistic level. To evaluate in regard to weaknesses, some of the supportive website links for the story and abridged story content are broken. Also, the site does not offer video for each story. Furthermore, this site is much more appropriate for independent study of learners rather than group work. In conclusion, we suggest Learning Resources website for adult advanced learners to promote their reading and listening comprehension skills besides speaking skills and vocabulary knowledge through studying authentic stories.
This website has many weakness points. Firstly, it is not updated regularly according to the needs and it demonstrates that the page’s author is not expert in creating efficient website. There are not many materials for learners that can be utilized in their academic and social life. If we want to comment on the ‘’tone’’ of the site, it is not hilarious or exaggerated. The website is not suitable for advertising and in the Contact section it has been stated clearly by the page’s author that he is not interested in putting advertising on his website. The page’s author is only interested in educational issues. There are few glossy pages and exciting pictures in the website. As to the strength points of the website, the website is a public place, open to all since it is convenient for both native and nonnative learners of English. Lastly, there are many links relevant with English language for further information. Additionally, vocabulary part of the website presents many vocabulary exercises for learners to learn easily by playing games such as word searches, puzzles, etc. Also, vocabulary part includes listening of words by clicking on the given words and pictures, in this way learners not only learn meaning of words but also pronunciation of them.
This website is designed for various levels of learners starting from beginners to advanced learners. The decoration of the website is very stimulating to explore it. Various colors and columns are used to attract especially young learners’ attention. When learners click on the site, the first page they meet includes a very comprehensive but simple menu. The evaluation of this comprehensive website shows that the designers could have prepared better the website. That’s, it has some weaknesses besides its strengths. Its most outstanding deficiency is the lack of instructions in ‘‘Courses’’ part. The grammar instructions are given in some extent, but not sufficiently.The best remarkable utility which it provides is probably the richness of activities. Furthermore, its addressing to all age groups shows its comprehensive usage. If it has positive and negative sides, you enjoy it while using.
Here you can find an example of your final project prepared by two of the students last year. For your final project, different from last year, you will choose and focus on five criteria in your evaluation.
Dear Friends,
I see from your comments to the post on final project some pairs wrote two or three websites to evaluate! Please, choose one of them and note it. You e-mail me to ask if two groups can evaluate the same website. Though I prefer the evaluation of different websites, if you do want to work with a certain one, it is OK. Tomorrow, I will put some example assignments here. The deadline for your project is the 14th of June, Monday.
For your final project (40 points), you are required to work in groups of two and evaluate a Website that intends to teach English as a foreign or second language. For your evaluation project, you may select one part of a very comprehensive website or choose a website that focuses on more specific aspects of language.
You should carry out a detailed evaluation of a website of your choice by using a checklist for your evaluation project. You can use your pack as a starting point. You should also do some research and find examples of evaluation checklists.
In the first part of your paper, you should introduce the website by providing general information about it. In the second part, you should carry out your evaluation following your checklist (You can focus on learner population, objectives, content, lay-out, technical aspects, teacher and learner support materials, graphics and multimedia, activities, theoretical basis support materials, and/or evaluation and feedback). Finally, in the third part, discuss your findings in terms of weaknesses and strengths of the program and state if you suggest your friends’ using it in their future teaching.
Your projects should be 2-3 pages long written following APA rules.
Deadline: Final exam week (the exact date will be anounced when the final exam program is ready)
P.S. Please write your names and the website you are planning to evaluate as a comment to this post.
Here are some links that you might enjoy to visit:
1. The first link is about digital storytelling: how you can start such a project
http://www.epals.com/projects/info.aspx?DivID=Digital_overview
2. This link shows an example digital storytelling project done by Turkish learners.
http://www.epals.com/projects/info.aspx?divid=storytelling_home
3. The third link is about a Turkish classroom meeting their epal partners in America
http://www.atlantapublicschools.us/1861101118113928800/cwp/view.asp?A=3&Q=293800&C=55899
Because of the automation system of our university, I have to make some changes in the evaluation procedure of our Technology and Materials Design Course.
Your presentation scores will be part of your final grade. For your midterm grade, you are supposed to prepare the following assignment individually:
1.Choose a unit from a language teaching coursebook (either prepared and published by Turkish Ministry of Education or companies such as Oxford University Press, Heinemann, Longman, etc.)
2.Identify the problems in that unit (e.g., there is not enough listening, the reading text is out of date, all activities are done individually, there are no writing tasks, speaking tasks are not communicative, etc.)
3.Select three problems
4.For each problem
a.Explain why you think it is a problem (You can use the theoretical articles/chapters in your coursepack)
b.Choose a specific technological tool to solve each problem (choose among the technologies we have learned/discussed so far or read about other technologies in the coursepack)
c.Discuss, in detail, how you would use the technological tool of your choice to deal with the problem (Try to come up with creative solutions! And for each solution use different technologies).
d. Explain why you selected that specific technological tool for that specific problem (focus on the features of the tool, what it offers to you, etc.).
5.Attach the coursebook unit that you work on to your assignment.
Your assignments should be 3-4 pages long. Each problem with its solution should be discussed on separate pages. For any citation you make, do not forget to prepare your reference page. Please follow APA guidelines.
Deadline: April, 30 (no late assignments will be accepted)
If you have any questions, comment to this post, and I will answer them soon.
P.S. (For 2 C and 2 D students)
Deadline for your Classroom Management Reaction Paper assignments is April, 30, too.
Dear Students,
Here are some ideas that might help you in preparing your presentations:
When planning your instruction, first, try to identify a problem (For example, most of the Turkish students cannot introduce themselves properly in English or I want my learners to be able to use English to review a movie)
Second, with your group members, try to come with a solution by considering the technological tool your are supposed to use (For example, to improve their speaking about introducing themselves in English, I can find a podcast in which some speakers of English introduce themselves. My learners can listen to them and do some related activities, so that they learn/practice how to introduce themselves in English)
What is important is NOT to start with technology but start with what you want to do to solve a general problem. This way of thinking will help you a lot in your presentation planning process.
Good luck
P.S. Tonight I will post a lesson plan format for your presentation
Splendid Speaking, which seek to train students’ presentation skills; or Breaking News English, which includes grammar exercises based on topical subjects.
Simplified language podcasts, such as the Voice of America, use slow delivery and restricted vocabulary appropriate to beginners.
Student-produced podcasts such as Bardwell Road [http://bardwellroad.podomatic.com], provide programs where successive groups produce a weekly podcast as part of their course assignments.
Be ready to share what you have learned from these links!
Dear Friends, I want to share with you some applications that I am using to follow the contents of the blogs I am interested in such as our course blog.
In order to keep up-to-date with the blogs or websites I follow, I use RSS or Really Simply Syndication.
Imagine that you regularly read five blogs related to teaching, and another three blogs related to sports as well as some websites or online journals. Calculate the amount of time you would spend everyday going to all these sites to check on the latest postings. This is where RSS can help us cope quickly and efficiently with the large amounts of new information produced daily.
RSS refers to a way of reading content from blogs and websites. If you see that orange icon in any blog or website, it means that you can follow it using RSS. How can we use it?
There are two options. I use both. 1. You candownload an RSS reader like Feedreader (from http://www.feedreader.com/) to your computer. You can use it either in Turkish or English. I am using the Turkish version. You click on "Yeni" and choose"yeni kaynak." On the right side of the text, a search box opens and you write there the adress of the blog (elttechno.blogsport.com) or the website you want to follow. Say "tamam." You can follow the same steps if you use the English version. So, everytime you open your computer, next to the msn icon on the rigt bottom of your screen, you will see the icon of your reader. When you click on it, you will see all recent posts in our blog that you haven't read yet. In other words, everytime you open the reader, it automatically goes along to all of the blogs and websites you are subscribed to, checks for new postings and articles, downloads the headlines of these into your RSS reader, in a list format. To read any of them, simply click on the headline and read the stroy itself.
The only disadvantage of RSS reader is you can only access to it from your personal computer. If you want to access your reader everywhere you have a connection, then, use Google reader.
2. Get a gmail address (or use the one you already have), then go to google reader. It will say "abonelik ekle." To the box that appears, write the name of the blog you want to follow. Then it is ready!
Though it seems complicated, it is an easy and quick process.
P.S. If you want to watch someone starting to use RSS, go to youtube, as a key word write "using RSS" then watch the ones you like.
If you see that orange icon in any blog or website, it means that you can follow it using RSS. How can we use it?
