Digital Storytelling: Public Service Announcement

Hello my future colleagues, today I am going to tell you about one of my most extraordinary ELT experiences: Digital storytelling!

Digital storytelling can be simply described as “a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to create and share their stories online.” I have surely experienced something like this for the first time and I had so much fun. We had three options: Public service announcement (PSA), “how to” project and a fictional story. We chose creating a PSA with two of my group members Ayşe Rümeysa Şahin and Mehmet Furkan Tekeş. It was about timber mining, which means ruthless cutting of timber with complete disregard for the future of the forests.

One of the most significant advantages of creating a digital story in a language classroom is the use of second language for sure. It is very useful for students to improve their speaking skills. Another advantage is that students can speak English without hesitation and present their projects in front of their classmates. I have experienced a personal disadvantage of storytelling, I was shy about acting while shooting and speaking on the camera because I have never done something like this before and I think also some of my classmates could not show their full potential because they were shy, especially if they have chosen a fictional story to create.

You can watch our PSA here, and can also visit Ayşe’s and Furkan’s blog.

What do you think about digital storytelling and our PSA project? Please let me know your comments. See you all!

Closing The Term!

 

Hello my future colleagues, we are at the end of the term and today’s post is going to be about my experiences briefly, and my thoughts and learning process about technology & language integration as we are mainly focusing on that while taking the Educational Technologies course.

I would not say that technology was one of the most important features while learning a new language, but my thoughts have changed positively after taking this course. Of course I was saying that technology can be useful for language learners because of the technological sources, but I wouldn’t say more. As I am going to be a teacher and planning on working with children and teenagers, briefly 21^st century learners, they are too integrated with technology and using technological methods while teaching them a new language will draw their attention to the lesson for sure. Besides using the technological sources, we can not see technology as a distant part of anything else as everything is integrated with technology, it is a huge part of our lives and it is everywhere, especially for the 21^st century learners.

We have learned so many things and have done many tasks while taking this course. I think my favorite ones were creating a podcast and digital storytelling. I had so much fun doing them together with my friends, and I enjoyed talking with other people and hearing their answers while creating a podcast.

I would definitely say that this course was very useful for me, I learned using many digital programs that I have never used before and I think I will use them more effectively when I become a teacher in the future. It was so useful for us that our teacher provided us with many examples while giving the tasks. My advice for the course would having more tasks that require communication with other people such as podcasting, because that one was my favorite.

Sharing my experiences with you all was so much fun, take care and see you soon! 😊

Creating A Movie Poster: Using Canva

Hello my future colleagues, today I am going to tell you about my Canva experience. I have created a movie poster for one of my favourite books Twilight which is written by Stephenie Meyer. It already has a movie poster so this my alternative poster for Twilight: Breaking Dawn.

Our assignment was creating a digital poster and we had two options: Creating a movie poster for a book or creating a magazine cover. I have decided working on a movie poster and I choose Twilight. At first, I was working with Picsart and I created the background myself, but it was so unprofessional because of my weak photoshop skills, so I decided to take a screenshot from the film. After I got a photo of Bella and her daughter, I continued working on my project with Canva as our teacher suggested. I have used Canva for the first time and I really liked it, it has aesthetic templates and it is so easy to use. You can see my poster here and also I am adding the photo of it as well:

I would definitely use a similar task with my future students, I had got so much fun and I am sure that they will too. I created my poster than I have seen my friends’ posters, all of them were very creative.

Have you ever used Canva? You can share your projects with me, I would definitely want to see them. See you all!