Help I Lost Myself in Corpora Concordances

 Salutations, dear readers. How have you been since our last encounter? 

For me, I've been a bit tired lately due to sheer amount of homework and the exam week I survived. However, I kinda signed up for this while enrolling in this major, so I'll endure whatever they throw at me without trying to be stabbed from my tenth thoracic vertebra. Let us dive straight into today's topic. 

Today, I want to talk about my experience with corpora and GenAI. Even though I know GenAI and how to use it, never in my life that I ever heard of corpus, let alone using it, so seeing the whole thing detailed this year was a bit of a new territory for me. I actually remember learning about it in my previous year, but this year it is more detailed and it focuses on how we can use it as a teacher. So, we did and our homework was actually about corpus and GenAI! Me and my group mates Elena, Berlin and Melis worked on a lesson plan and a teaching material on learning the difference between mustn't and don't have to. I have to say, it was a pleasant experience for me, since it's always so nice to work with them! We used Canva to make our worksheets and we selected ChatGPT as the GenAI and SKELL as the corpus we selected for the students to use and learn. We aimed to teach the students "mustn't" and "don't have to" with using ASSURE model as our guide. Oh, and we used Google Docs while preparing our lesson plan! 

Overall, the experience was fun, but the timing was ABSOLUTELY BAD for me. I don't think I'll recover anytime soon at this rate, thank you very much. 

But besides the fact that I'm about to lose my last remnants of sanity with going through 33,550,336 cycles of pure torture, I think the usage of corpora could be very beneficial for our students. It's authentic, and it lets students discover things by themselves such as grammar rules, sentence structure etc.  The AI, though? Well... I'm so in-between. I get that AI has many benefits, and trust me, I'm aware that my future students' Google will probably be ChatGPT. But excessive usage of it will only lead us to a downfall. I don't think AI will be in my top 5 priorities list when it comes to preparing materials or showing students new technologies, but regardless I'll be sure to follow the advancements to know my students better.

Aside from the corpus and AI, I also believe this can cause some problems tech-wise. 

Come on now, we all know not everyone or every school can get access to technology THIS MUCH. Let's be real here. I know we did all of these with assumptions of everyone has access and all, but we all know it isn't the case. If we want this to be the case, we should work on how we can make students gain access to such things, even though we casually restrict all kinds of technology in the schools sometimes. 

That's all I have to say for today, and I hope you enjoyed reading my entry! Don't forget to consume H2O and take care of yourselves! 

Don't forget to check out my friends' blog posts and our work down below!

Melis

Berfin

Elena 

Our Lesson Plan

Our Worksheets

A Brand New Start

 Welcome back, everyone! How's everything going for you? 

In the last blog post, I mentioned that the endings were only the new beginnings. And today, we're starting a new beginning with a brand new course! But before starting, let mFe introduce myself once again! 

My name is Buse, and I'm a student in Marmara University ELT program. Currently, I'm a third year student and I'll continue keeping this blog, but this time for another course. (Oh wow, I'm already in third year. Help.) This year's course feels like a continuation of the last semester's, in which we will do the assignments in the teacher's perspective. The course is named Current Issues in ELT, and I'll keep this blog to show my progress. 

I look forward and don't look forward to this semester. Even though the course is similar to the last semester's, the thought of the assignments scare me a little, especially considering I have bunch of assignments from other courses as well, and I fear they may pile up on me like a building wreck. But if I managed to survive and pass my assignments until now, I think I might as well survive another semester. After all, this major won't finish by itself, will it? 

That's all for today's blog. Make sure to keep checking for updates to see what I did! 

Have a good day and don't forget to consume H2O! 

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