Endings Are Just New Beginnings

 Hello, everyone! I hope you are doing well. I am writing this blog post to mark the end of this term.

It was by far the most draining semester I've ever had. Nevertheless, I've learned so much this semester, and I even got some experience on topics I thought I'd never try, such as podcasting! ( I do not think I will ever try podcasting again, thank you very much.) I enjoyed writing blog posts and digital stories the most, to be honest with you. However, we must conclude this journey of mine right here, as we are entering the summer break. 

It was the greatest opportunity to meet all of you and share my experiences on different instructional technologies. As much as I do not want to end this here, not everything lasts forever, right? If it does not last forever, we must conclude it, with pride on our faces for accomplishing so much.  I accomplished many things during this semester and for once in my life, I am so proud of myself. These experiences showed me the different ways of teaching my students, different materials to present and different approaches. I am happy that I get to have this course, regardless of all the hardships and mental breakdowns I faced. 

We may be ending our adventures here, but rest assured and do not be sad. 

“Endings are never really endings, only new beginnings.”

May we see each other again in a new beginning.

Today's Education Tools: Artificial Intelligence!

 Greetings, my fellow friends! How are you today? 

My day was nice so far, aside from the final exams approaching quickly. Everyone who is preparing for the exams, I wish you a successful exam week! However, today's topic is not the exams; it is AI. 

For today's blog, our teachers gave us an AI task, which included talking to a Character chatbot and using a writing feedback tool. My overall experience was fun, especially since I got to talk with my favourite fictional character of all time! I loved the experience and how AI managed to remain in-character in many of the situations. I also liked the way the writing feedback tool worked; it certainly gave many correct suggestions about my writing. I used some of those suggestions to make my writing better in many aspects, such as flow and coherence.

I believe these AI chatbots can be used to strengthen our writing skills in a language, but we must be careful. We need to supervise children who are using AI, since it can affect their emotional well-being. I'd definitely give such tasks to my students, but I would make sure the bot remains safe and does not give students any dangerous suggestions. I might also use AI in my own teaching experience, but not to the point that my creativity and autonomy are affected. To be honest, I love to use AI as entertainment rather than a tool.

AI, overall, is a great tool to use. However, there are many concerns we cannot overlook. It lacks emotional intelligence, which humans crave in everyday life. It, unfortunately, can make people lazier since human beings tend to look for the easier solutions. It can lead to job displacement; however, I do not believe it can take over the teacher's job since teaching does not only involve transferring knowledge. There are also many advantages, such as availability, enhanced decision-making, etc. Whether the AI will be useful or not depends completely on your AI literacy, so it is crucial for us to educate ourselves. 

They were my brief experience and comments. You can use the link below to have access to my document on my AI experience! 

Take care and do not forget to drink water, stay safe!

My AI Task

A Masterpiece: Dead Poets Society

 Hello everyone! I wish all of you a happy and peaceful evening. Today, I want to talk about my experiences with collaborative writing. 

Me and my friends Melis and Gülşen made a film review on Dead Poets Society and our peers Elena, Berdin, and Baran expressed their thoughts after our writing process. The assignment that was given to us required us to review the movie accordingly, and we did the task together with communication and distribution for the tasks. You can see some of our peers' comments on the screenshot below!

Overall, the task was very fun to do, especially since I love writing. With open communication with my friends and the beauty of the film itself, the writing task turned out to be a fun and engaging activity. We used Google Docs as the collaborative writing tool, and to be fair, it is one of the best writing tools that you can use with your friends to do such activities, I highly recommend you to make use of it. It is very easy to use and allows you to comment on the writing. The only concern is, you may have difficulty in communication and may not want to do it from there, as you may not always see the comments on time. You probably need to use apps such as Whatsapp for quicker communication, but other than this it is amazing!

That was it for today's entry. You can find the review link below. Also, do not forget to check my peers' and reviewers' blogs! 

Thank you for reading!

The Review Page

The Melis Approach

Educational Diary of Sevgi

The Reviewers: 

Elena

Berfin

Baran

Story Time, Everyone!

 Hello, hello! I hope everything is going fine for all of you, dear readers! Today, I will share the experiences of video material preparations that I had. 

 For this new assignment of ours, me and my dear friend Melis made a storytelling video, using our own drawings. The story is about the solar system, and we intended to teach the planet names and the distance between the Sun and the other planets. Overall, the whole process was both fun and challenging. I enjoyed the drawing and character design process, even though it took so much effort and time. I am not 100% confident about my drawings, but it was nevertheless entertaining. However, it was also the most challenging part. My back and neck are still aching from the hours and hours of drawing. Even though they were simple drawings, they took a great time. The easiest part was to integrate the drawings with the sounds; it felt like nothing compared to whatever we did during this process. 

In the future, I am not sure about giving such a task to my students. It all depends on what age group I am going to teach. Young students would have difficulty in doing such a challenging task, since the process requires a lot of elements. However, I would absolutely try to make my own video materials, since it would give me an excuse to draw! I love drawing, and I want to integrate my skills into my teaching experience.

You can check our video from the link below, and please do not forget to check my friend's blog page as well!

To Reach the Brightest Star

The Melis Approach

A New Audio Experience

 Greetings, my fellow folks! I hope all of you are doing well. Today, I want to share my experiences on podcasting. 

For this new assignment of mine, I created a short story with my friend, Melis. The story is about a woman who claimed that a magician in a circus stole her earrings. The process of making this podcast was a bit interesting and sometimes hard. Recording voice was harder than I thought it would be. No matter how much I tried, there was always an issue, whether a pronunciation mistake or a loud noise in the background. Thankfully, I somehow managed to record my voice. but this time, the editing process was waiting for me. Playing with so many voices was confusing; I do not think I could manage it if it weren't for my past with editing programs. It was stressful, but at the same time, it was fun as well. 

However, I am not sure whether I would give such an assignment to my students or not in the future. They may have issues with finding accurate sound effects, as there are copyright concerns. They may also have technical problems, such as inappropriate materials and not being able to find the correct format. It is also time consuming, and making such a challenging task in such a short time might stress the students. However, it also has advantages, such as increasing creativity and collaboration skills. Nevertheless, I am unsure about this type of assignment. 

You can find the podcast link below. There is also the link to my friend's blog, please do not forget tp check!

That was it for today's blog entry. Take care and do not forget to drink water!

A Trickster's Treachery

The Melis Approach

An Urgent Issue of Today: CYBERBULLYING

 Salutations everyone! How have you been on this fine day? I hope you are doing well. 

        In today's entry, I would like to talk briefly about cyberbullying. If you do not know what it means, it means to bully someone through online platforms. Some of you might be confused or have some questions; I already anticipate that. I can list some of those questions for you. 

                                     "Is cyberbullying a real form of bullying?"

      Yes, it is real. It is more real than you can ever realize. Did you know that according to the Cyberbullying Research Center, 30% of the teens have been cyberbullied at least once in their lives? 

     People, presumably uneducated ones, always assume that cyberbullying is not a form of bullying just because it does not consist of physical abuse. But what they don't know is that bullying is not stopping with just physical stuff. It includes verbal abuse and property abuse too, and cyberbullying is just the place for that. 

         In cyberbullying, people may give hateful and harmful comments, repetitively text someone through DMs or SMS and disturb them, and even send viruses to destroy one's digital property or steal information. Unfortunately, these actions can lead to depression and even suicide among the teens, and we must start to take urgent action to stop it or at least slow it down

                    " What can we do to stop the cyberbullying?"

         To help you, I have prepared an infographic about this question using Canva. I believe it can be used in ELT classes as well to inform students briefly about some topics. That way, we could get their attention by using visuals and short sentences, since today's children do not like mundane texts. Also, by creating an infographic, we can learn to prepare visual learning tools and understand the topic we have better. For us future teachers, it is highly important to learn using such advances, so I thought to myself, "Why not choose cyberbullying to educate?".

         You can access my infographic from the link below. Thank you for reading this entry! Remember to drink water and protect yourself.

My Infographic

Why Advanced Rather Than Traditional?

         Learning has always been a significant aspect of life throughout history and it advanced as the years went on. Every period, new methods emerged and finally, we met with the technology which accelerated the pace of developments in learning. In the 21st century, learning is going forward at an incredibly quick rate due to technological development, and it has become almost exhausting to catch up with for some people. Nevertheless, it is crucial to keep up with the advances. 

           But why is it important to be updated about our century's advances?

        This century is the era of technology and AI, and of course, both of them are everywhere around the world. Everyone utilizes technology, which means our future students are intimately connected to it.  They would get easily bored with having absolutely no internet just only for an hour, which can give us the conclusion that the peers may prefer having or seeing at least a small part of techs. Think about your students in the classroom. Have you ever observed they get bored or distracted? If yes, why not use necessary technologies to attract their minds to us? The new advances give us plenty of choices, so we might as well use them. 

        I am highly aware that not everyone has a good relationship with technology, but what we must prioritize is the students' needs rather than our own comfort. The traditional methods, unfortunately do not work as much as they did in the past anymore. We are living with technology, not sticks and stones.  In conclusion, we should learn and move forward with technology for our students. 

       This is my overall view of this topic. We must update ourselves and our collagues if we want to have an effective learning process. I hope my entry is worth your time! 

   Stay well! Do not forget to drink water and eat!