TED-Ed Lesson

I have created my first TED-Ed lesson today, and I must say that the website is very easy to navigate, and you can use these TED-Ed lessons for a lot of purposes. In this lesson, I imagined that I am teaching adult English language learners. I designed this class as a pre-reading task for my students to complete before we read an article on what minimalism is. In the video, Graham Hill talks about what he means by "Less Stuff, More Happiness". It is about 5 minutes long, which is good for a pre-reading task. Students are expected to watch the video, answer two detail questions and discuss what minimalism means to them.














Below are my objectives:

1) Students will be able to relate what they know with the text they will read.
2) Students will be able to listen for details to answer the comprehension questions.
3) Students will be able to understand what minimalism is.

I could test the first and last objective by reading their response to the discussion question. Their response to the discussion question will show how much they relate to their background knowledge, and what they understand from the concept of minimalism. I could test the second objective by looking at their answers to the comprehension questions as they will show if students were able to catch those details.

Flipped Classroom

I think the idea of flipped classroom became popular a few years ago (Dear readers, please leave a comment below if you think I am wrong), and I have just found out about it this week! These articles here and here summarize the flipped classroom approach very well. It is a new approach to teaching which is reversing our understanding of traditional teaching by having students learn about the subject at home, and classroom time is used for exercises, projects, and discussions. 

I love the idea of flipped classroom as a teacher and a student! Here are a few reasons. First, each student learn at a different pace and flipped classroom strategy gives them freedom to learn at their own pace. If they are using a video as the instructional material, they can rewind and watch again if need be. Second, classroom time is precious, and with this strategy you use it to solve problems and strengthen comprehension, which I call a better use of time. Third, flipped classroom promotes learner-centered classroom where a lot of time can be allotted to collaborative exercises.

I also have some concerns about this approach. First of all, flipped classroom means students will need technology outside of class. Not every student has a computer and internet at home. Second, flipped classroom means that students will need to spend a lot of time in front of their computer. If all their lessons are flipped, it means hours and hours of studying at home. Lastly, it will sound selfish but will my students think that I am not needed anymore? I understand that flipped classroom is more than assigning videos to students, but what will parents think? It is not always easy for people to embrace something so untraditional like this. It is a big change!  

Twitter for Professional Development and Education

When I hear "professional development courses/certificate programs" I immediately think of travel and accommodation costs. Professional development is very important to me as I don't want to lag behind while things are changing so fast! I want to know what is out there and what is happening, what the new trends are. I am always curious about other teachers' classrooms and what those teachers are doing differently, what works for them, what their opinions would be on my classroom struggles. I have recently found out that Twitter can be used for this purpose. We can still benefit greatly from those professional development courses and all, but Twitter is a gold mine for educators. Many educators today are using microblogging to talk about many different topics which we can all relate to, and they are sharing invaluable tips and amazing ideas. It is very easy to follow and you get a lot in an hour. I will recommend this to all my colleagues who are not aware of twitter chats.

You can also use twitter for educational purposes. In their article, How Twitter Can Be Used as a Powerful Educational Tool, Alan November and Brian Mull mention that Twitter can be used as part of the learning process by any classroom. One of the activities that he explained amazed me. A teacher from Texas posted a twit to her students along with a picture from a game and the picture was her holding a soda cup in her hand. She asked students to come up with questions based on the picture, and reactions from the students were amazing. They were very creative and came up with a lot of questions. What was amazing was that students stopped whatever they were doing and rushed to respond to their teacher. This is a great example of sharing learning opportunities with others outside of classroom




 Another way that we can use Twitter for students is we can have them collaborate on writing a short story. It is a fun activity where one person starts it and another continues. It can take a few days, weeks or even months to complete it, but it is a fun activity and very good for improving writing skills.

Twitter Chats

This week I joined two twitter chats: #ELTchat on Wednesday afternoon, and #langchat Saturday morning. This has been my favorite professional development platform so far! It is a treasure! I use twitter on a daily basis mostly to keep up with trending topics in my home country Turkey and in the world. I also use it as a news source quite often. But, little did I know that I would some day use twitter for professional development.  

To my surprise the topic in both chats were the things we have been studing in my linguistics and literacy classes over the past few weeks. ELTchat had people join from many different countries. They discussed pronunciation teaching, why teachers skip it, what are some good sources etc. It spoke to my heart! I am personally not confident teaching pronunciation mainly because of my accent. It was great to see that I was not the only one feeling this way. Topic in #langchat was collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines. Moderator posed discussion questions and people were so generous sharing their experiences, concerns, resources, ideas etc. At the end of the chat, moderator asked what people took away from the chat, which was a great summary of the conversations. I mostly observed both chats, but I learnt a lot in a very short time! I loved it for many reasons, but here are some:

1) It is a free professional development platform you can join in your PJs from your home.
2) Conversation topics are very well chosen and discussion questions are to the point.
3) You get to meet genuinely enthusiastic professionals from many different places and build a network.
4) You learn a lot in an hour! You learn a lot of practical tips. This week someone from NC said she has her elementary school students use voicethread to describe the self portrait they did in art class. Amazing idea to how how you can collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines!
5) They are so welcoming! They don't mind if you are just there to observe. 
I loved twitter chats so much that I will definitely be a regular.  

ePals

This week, we explored an online network for teachers and students where they can connect with many other students and teachers from around the world: ePals. I should admit that it took me a while to figure out how it works, and I made use of e-Pals is Global Education in order to see how people are using the website. You will see comments from other users on the right side of this page.

There are a lot of things you can do on ePals. You can find connections from around the world to collaborate, and while looking for connections, you can narrow your search results by choosing the country, language, student age group, average class size, subjects, interests, grades taught, and specializations. I was really  happy to see that there are many connections from my home country, Turkey. If I had known about ePals when I was in Turkey, I would have definitely used it while teaching English to my students. It would provide us with opportunities to connect with native speakers of English, and participate in projects with classrooms from around the world. Needless to say, this would contribute so much to my students' cultural awareness and communication skills in many ways.

I especially loved the Explore Experiences feature. I liked the idea of School Swap project, where you can have your students partner with a classroom from another country. Through this project, students will be discovering the similarities and differences between their classrooms, activities, campuses. As a culminating project, it is suggested that the students create a video presenting facts and info about their partner school. It is a very interesting project where students will have the opportunity to communicate with native speakers of the target language and use this info while creating their video. I also loved the Taste of Culture project, where students exchange recipes and examine what the ingredients tell them about the other culture’s location and climate. Food is always fun, and you can use this project when you teach imperatives in English as the recipes always have directions.

The Educator's PLN 

This week, I learnt about a social networking website where teachers from all around the world come together and create a network of educators. You can sign up for free, but your membership needs to be approved before you can view some features of the Educator's PLN.

Signing up for this website, you can make connections with teachers from all the world no matter where you are. It currently has more than 18,000 members. You can use this website to ask questions, chat about classroom problems, share your resources and expertise with others, find out what is going on in other classrooms, learn about teaching strategies and educational issues.   

21st Century Learner

Today, I read A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Siemens. It was a very interesting article where I mostly enjoyed the comparisons between learners today and learners in the past. A learner today is like a doctor. I believe that the reason I came up with this analogy has a lot to do with the fact that I have been watching the TV show Grey's Anatomy for a few months now. When you think about doctors’ offices and their equipment 20 years ago, it must look very different from the ones we see now. There is a lot of new information, illnesses/treatments have changed over the years, new treatments are in effect, and there is a lot of digital equipment they are making use of in order to diagnose and treat patients. When I think back on my times as a middle school student, I cannot see a smartphone, iPad, computer, kindle, social networking sites, smart boards, online blogs in my room or classroom. I do remember a lot of books and notebooks. The way learners acquire information has tremendously changed.

Siemens states that experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. This is where I should emphasize the significance of our networks. In today’s world, we are all connected to each other through technology and learn from each other constantly. A doctor should constantly update themselves in their fields, be aware of developments, attend conferences, talk to other doctors about their experiences so that they don’t miss anything important that would leave them behind. We learn not only from our experiences but from many sources. Siemens elaborates on this in his video the Network is the Learning where he says that the particular network I create is what enables me to stay current in my own field. Today people connect with each other in numerous ways. It is very easy to keep in touch with people from other cities, countries and even the far away ones. We should make use of this in the best way possible.