Happy birthday Webheads!

In this post I'd like to wish Webheads community happy birthday. I am really glad to be a member of this wonderful community . I have been a member for two years and it has changed a lot in my career. Thanks to this wonderful community I really discovered what I want to do , broadened my horizons ,learned a lot about technology and met wonderful,helpful,creative educators from all around the world.

Thanks for inspiring me Webheads. Happy birthday!

An interesting activity to be used in language classes

Hi again,
In this post, I would like to share an interesting activity to be used in language classes. Two months ago my friend Rita,an English teacher in Argentina, asked me if her sts could make an interview with me about Turkey. I accepted her offer and her students
interviewed me in June using yahoo messenger and another voice recording tool. After that they compiled some information about Turkey to be be displayed on their class wiki.They also did other interviews with other language teachers from different countries to get some information or learn things they wonder about them.I found this activity both purposeful,exciting and fun.It is also a good example of how technology can be integrated to language classes.As students need more productive activities,this activity can be integrated to many language classes or programs as speaking or presentation tasks. The link to Rita's class wiki is below.

http://caeb2008.pbwiki.com/Beyza-Yilmaz-Interview



What do you think about such communicative,purposeful activities? If you have done such activities , do not hesitate to add it in the comment section.
Have fun!
B.

Exploring Voicethread

Hi again,
EVO sessions are over but I'm still lurking behind.I still have tons of daily digests to read and digest:) in my mailbox. I 'm planning to go over them slowly whenever I find time. I'll comment on the tools I found useful in all three sessions I participated. I want to start with voicethread. To be honest, I wasn't so aware of some nice tools to record students' voices and create a discussion. In BAW we explored some other voicetools but the most impressive one is voicethread. It's very user-friendly both for the students and teachers.It doesn't take a lot of time to sign up.We did some acitivites about it both in BAW and Advanced Tips &Tricks and I loved voicethread .However, I needed to try it with my students so I created a voicethread about online advertising and embedded it to my new class wiki in order to see how my sts would think.They just loved it and it didn't take a lot for them to get used to it. I'm also planning to use some other new tools to see which ones are more suitable to my teaching context.I want to ask my readers some questions in the end of my post.
1-If you use voicethread or other voicetools how do you use them?
2-Do you know any other voicetools which have better features than voicethread?
3-Can you post some voicethreads or discussions that you created with your students?
(The one I created is embedded in my class wiki.You 'll find it if you can visit http://bahcesehirb1h.pbwiki.com/online+advertising
and leave your own comments there.
Looking forward to your ideas
Beyza

Five things B4educators participants don't know about me

Hi again bloggers ,

I'm a little late again to post this assignment I guess.It was really nice to discover the importance of tagging and RSS feeds in week3 .In this post I'm going to mention five things that you don't know about me .

The first thing that will make you surprised is that I started to speak when I was only six months old.Not only my mother but also other people who know my childhood say this is true.They also note that I started to utter sentences instead of single words.I know this is unbeliavable but I remember as got older (when I was two),I started correcting everyone's grammatical mistakes.Maybe it was a sign to show that I had the potential to be a language teacher:))

The second thing that you probably don't know about me is also about my childhood.I was a really strange child.Instead of watching cartoons,I preferred watching news .Therefore I knew all of the prime ministers and presidents of almost all countries.I remember people asking me the names of some countries' prime ministers and presidents:))
The third thing that you guys don't know about me is that,I was really good at science and maths when I was an elementary and a high school student.Many people were surprised to have seen that I have chosen a different career rather than being a scientist.

Another thing that will surprise you is that I never wanted to be a teacher.Instead of being a teacher I wanted to study political science or international relations.Even when I was a sophomore I thought I could change my deparment and study something different.However,I liked teaching English when I was a junior (thanks to my professors) as it was a part of my teaching practicum.I really dicovered that teaching was the thing that I really wanted .I 'm really to happy to have changed my mind.I love teaching.

The last thing that will make you surprised is I'm addicted to sports.I think I can't live without doing sports.I used to play basketball,voleyball and swim. It's the way I get rid of my stress and worries and feel refreshed.I'm really into fitness these days .I go to the gym whenever I have free time .It's really hard as I have quite hectic schedule but impossible is nothing,if you really want to achieve something.

I hope you find the five things I mentioned about myself interesting :)I'm looking forward to reading your comments.Please keep my blog posted:)

Happy blogging &Best wishes
Beyza

RSS feeds

Hi again,
Omg! I think I've fallen behind . I need to complete lots of assignments and prepare my own presentation. This post is to complete my assignment in blogging for educators. I've watched a video about RSS and read an article related to it. I'll answer some questions about RSS in this post.The first question I need to answer is about what I understood and didn't grasp about RSS.
In my opinion RSS is great tool to check what's new on your favorite blogs.After reading the article I mentioned in the beginning of my post,I created an account in bloglines and subscribed to my favorite blogs.It was really nice to have seen all the new posts on one page.

Another question I need to answer is about how it's important in the classroom.Well,I need to mention a mistake I made last year while blogging with my A2B class. Apart from our class blog, I asked my students to create their own blogs to post their assignments and reflections.Of course I needed to check them. Can you guess how I monitored their blogs? There were twenty blogs and I checked them one by one by going to their blogs every night!! Therefore I wasted a lot of time checking and commenting on their assignments.If I had known RSS readers, I'd have spent my time on the other things. In my opinion it's important in the classroom both for students and teachers.If there 's a class blog and the students are required to keep their own blogs, the teacher and other students can subscribe both to the class blog and students' blogs . They can check whether there's something new or not without wasting time( unlike the way I did it:). Students can also subscribe some other blogs related to EFL and check their RSS readers whether there's something new or not in a really short time.

Finally,I definitely believe it can be helpful in my blogging experience.I'll definitely use bloglines to check what's new either on my favorite blogs or on my students' blogs to save time and learn how to set up an aggregator to help people who are interested in my blog in order not to make the same mistake again:)

I hope I answered all the questions successfully.I'm really looking forward to reading your comments:)

Happy blogging
Beyza

EVO 2008

Hi again,
Time has flown. EVO sessions started last week and I'm really excited about them. This year it's really different from EVO 2007 as I'm in three different groups and I will co-moderate some sessions in Advanced Tips &Tricks Group in week 5 . As I'm a member of three groups, it is taking a lot of time to check daily digests and digest:) ,boomark or respond to them.I feel much secure about some tools as I tried to use them last year so I think I will focus on details more this year. I hope to make more use of webtools with my students after the sessions end.I will try to update this blog about my adventures and reflect upon the things I will learn.

My ideas about wikis

It has been a long time since I last reflected on my experiences and new ideas about web 2. I'used a wiki with my students and discovered new things about them .It seemed very boring in the first glance when compared to blogs but as Iand my students became more proficent in using them, we discovered more creative ways of using them together such as story completion as a whole class.It's also important to to note that they all felt confident as they had the right to change the content of our class wiki. My colleagues also helped me to come up with new ideas about how to use wikis in my presentations. Nearly all of them are now eager to use wikis with their students. I think they will also discover new activities to help their students work colloboratively &learn from their mistakes like me and help me to reflect them here .We all love wikis:)

Beyza