A Useful Tool: Pixton

 

Hi everyone! Welcome to my last post of this academic year! Believe me, i will continue to share lots of ideas about English in my blog. As for today's post, i am going to introduce a useful tool called Pixton for your English teaching. So, What is Pixton? It is an online comic creation tool that allows your child to be creative and, at the same time, improve their reading and writing skills with both pictures and words. Using  online comic creator, kids can create professional-looking comic strips while learning about composition, illustration, and color.Your child may also collaborate with other members of the Pixton community around the world, to create comics and stories together.

How to use Pixton? Creating a Pixton comic is quite easy.There are a few basic concepts you should understand before you begin. Each comic you make is made up of a series of panels or scenes. Everything you do to create a comic is clicking buttons or directly clicking on the objects in the panel. What's great about Pixton,you can only see the buttons that relate to what you're doing. So, if i select a character, i will see a different set of buttons to select speech bubble, prop etc. Another key concept to understand is what we call ''modes''. If i click once on a character to select it, i now see five  different coloured buttons along the left side of the panel. Each of these buttons switches me to a different character mode. The mode that i select determines what happens when i click on the character. Anyway, you can get more information about this site by watching the video below.

 

I think, it is so funny to create comics via Pixton. I strongly recommend you to use it. Trust me, you will never regret integrating it into teaching and learning.

 

 

 

Zimmer Twins

Hi everyone! Today i'm going to introduce a tool called Zimmer Twins. I presented it with my partner Beyza in the classroom.It is really simple to use for both educators and kids.Now, let me make clear What is Zimmer Twins. Zimmer Twins is Children’s website.It helps you create animation videos for kids. The site's movie-making tool is designed around elements of sentence structure and creative expression, which reinforces reading and writing skills.The Zimmer Twins is known for its unique format which combines online participation. Its animations enhance almost any curriculum subject. 

  And how to use the Zimmer Twins? I am going to try to explain it step by step. Firstly, when you open the page you see a screen and you need to choose one of the two  options(kids or educators). We chose the second one. It isn’t a must to sign up the website but unless you sign up you can’t save your movies. In order to start to create your movie you need to click ''make a video''. If  you need to get some help you can click ''how to make a video'' and watch the introductory video. Or you can click ''make from scratch'' directly and proceed to make a video.You can change the character but you just have three options Edgar, Eva, 13( the cat). You can also change the background. Let’s pick an animation clip. There are four different types of clips to choose from. First, you can use the talk bubble clips to make the characters talk.These action clips let your characters walk, run, dance and more. Close up clips let your characters act surprised, happy or even scared. I mean you can add expressions to your characters. Let’s check the star clips. You can find headlines to use here. You can also arrange your animations on the timeline. If you change your mind about the order of your clip, click and drop it the new location. If you want a longer animation just add another clip right after.  After all, in order to save your movie you can click ''save movie'' and you can give a name to it.

  Furthermore you can add students to your class . With a free membership, you can add only up to five students to your class. As for classroom implication of Zimmer Twins, it is a fun way to incorporate technology into the classroom. Watch your students, become junior movie producers, practice proper writing habits and expand their vocabulary.
Here is an example of animation video created by Zimmer Twins.

 

Unfortunately, there are some limitations of this site. You can add only up to five students to your class, create maximum of 12 movies,  make pre-scripted comments.There is simple content moderation and no sound clip in the videos. Also, students can't edit their movies with free membership and it is not possible to embed your video. You can only share it with e-mail. Consequently, We as future teachers, definitely recommend you to use it for your edutaining.
Here is a video to learn how to use Zimmer Twins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


   

Introducing an app

Hi everyone! This week's task is introducing an app that can be downloaded on mobile phones and makes individuals' learning English easier. As you know, we are in Technology age. So people are trying to benefit from technology in any area in their daily life.Learning English is just one of these. I've searched for many apps and finally decided to introduce LinguaLeo.

 

This app is free. However, you can buy more courses if you want. When you sign in the application, first you are asked for the grammar and language level that you have. The reason for that is understanding your level and proceeding step by step. On the other hand, it includes a dictionary and so many grammar courses, vocabulary tests, practices, words and TED talks. Also, all of these are classified according to the learner levels such as beginners, intermediates, upper-intermediates and advanced ones.

 

What is more, this app has so many advantages in that developing your vocabulary.grammar and listening skills. For instance, while watching TED talks, you are exposed a lot of English and also you can see subtitles that help you understand the topics. So your reading skills are developing,too. An important thing is that, the rules, courses and instructions are explained in Turkish. This is a good thing for people at beginner level.As for me, i liked very much this app and downloaded it on my mobile phone. I am sure it will be useful for all language learners. I hope you'll like it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Storytelling: The Guardian Critter

 

Hi everyone! This week's assignment was to create a digital storytelling by selecting one of the three choices in our Technology and Material Design course, We chose the third one: Creating A Fictional Story. My partner is Beyza.

First of all, digital storytelling is a short form of digital media production that allows everday people to share  aspects of their life story. The media used may include the digital equivalent of film techniques animation, stills, audio only or any other non-physical media which inviduals can use to tell a story or present an idea.

While preparing this project, actually we had so many difficulties. It was because of the lack of knowledge about softwares and technological devices again. Still, it was both enjoyable and tiring experience for us. First, we  made several researches about the programs that we would use. The second step was to explore the online software program to create digital storytelling in it. We used Animaker program. It has a lot of backgrounds, characaters, properties, effects, sounds and so on. However, most of them weren't free. So, this led us to use certain objects in our project.

What is more, collaboration is very important thing while doing assignments. We feel less stressfull when we have a partner. This motivates us and more colourful ideas can occur. We can easily share our ideas with our friend and that makes the assignment more creative.

As for classroom implications, digital story telling is very popular in our age. Because traditional methods in education aren't efficient. Learning can be more permanent through digital storytelling. Teachers using digital storytelling in their courses help their students improve pronunciation, listening and speaking skills easily. I will use it definitely and recommend it to all teachers.

You can watch our Digital Storytelling below. I hope you'll like it. I'm waiting for your comments!

 

Technology Facilitates Learning and Teaching !

Hi everyone! I'm very pleased to be here again and today i'm going to introduce a web site for you. It's name is English Club. There is no information about the web site's authors or their qualifications. The content is English Learning and the target audience is EFL learners and teachers. The purpose of this web site is to help you learn English or teach English as a second language.

It also offers free English lessons,articles, tips, videos, forums, games, quizzes, chat, pages, help and more for students as well as resources for teachers. Also you can  test your level in English and get help with English grammar, study English grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, play English games and do English quizzes online.

 

As i see the web site is reliable in that accuracy of information. The images are of high quality and appealing the target audience but there aren't many images, too. So, the young learners can get bored while they're trying to learn through this site and i think this is a disadvantage of this site. It is more suitable for adolescents, adult learners and teachers.

In my opinion all EFL teachers should take advantage of web sites to improve theirselves and to get better in teaching English. Because the web sites like this one, have so many materials, handouts, worksheets and lesson plans for teachers. I guess it isn't an option but must for better education system.
  

What is RSS ?

 

Hi everyone! Today, i'm here again with a new task. I'm going to talk about RSS (Really Simple Syndication). It is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It can be used on mobile phones or computer programs. I downloaded it on my computer. So i can easily check websites if there is a new content. Also RSS reader can be used online, too. My favourite blog is Oxford University Press and i think it is a very useful source for English Language Teaching. You can get any idea from this blog. Of course, i recommend this blog to you. Below, you can see the bloggers that i follow:



A Film Review: Mad Max: Fury Road

Hi everyone! Today i'll share a wiki which is about a film review. I prepared it with my partner Beyza. Actually, we haven't had any difficulties this time. This task is quite simple and enjoyable for us. I think, Wikispaces is another efficient tool for EFL learners and as a future teacher, i strongly recommend other teachers to use it. Remember that you should be an inspiring teacher using various techniques rather than traditional ones. I hope you'll like our wiki. I'm waiting for your comments!

You can reach our project by clicking here.