G O O D B Y E

 

When I look back on how I came in contact with English lessons in my school days, technology rarely played a role. At most, videos were played in English class, or a CD of the teacher's songs was used to introduce us to the new topic. Before this 'Educational Technologies' course, I had never recorded a podcast, created a storytelling video, let alone created an entire blog. I think at this time it is important to integrate technology in the classroom. Students of all ages are in constant contact with technology in their private lives, be it on their iPad, cell phone, or thanks to video games. So why not use their interest in technology in a simple and fun way for learning purposes? In many cases, I think access to technology learning is also hindered by parents and teachers. Especially at my old schools, before I went to university, the teachers were often a bit older and couldn't even get used to interactive whiteboards. They simply weren't ready to educate themselves technologically and pass on knowledge with the help of technology - there were always only worksheets and their information came from at least 10-year-old index cards that were almost falling apart.

I really enjoyed the course and even though we were given assignments it didn't feel like we were limited in any way in our creativity. I loved that the teacher introduced us to so many helpful websites from all different learning categories, as I didn't know many of them but found them very well constructed and even recommended them to my mother who teaches English at an elementary school in Germany.

My favorite assignments of the whole course were creating the movie poster and infographic. I can't really explain why, but I was able to let my creativity run free and were only bound by small guidelines when it came to the design or the information. The tasks I didn't like so much were the blog entry about 21st-century learning because it seemed a bit stiff and boring in contrast to the other tasks, and the storytelling task. Not because of the assignment itself, I thought that was great, but because I really haven't gotten a foothold in video editing yet and couldn't meet the time limit either.

As a small note to improve the course, I would only suggest that the students can decide for themselves whether they want to complete each task in groups or individually (except, of course, for tasks where group work is not possible). However, this is only a personal opinion, because I, unfortunately, do not like group work at all and have had only bad experiences for years. Otherwise, it was a very great course, without stress with a lot of fun and a great, friendly, and open-hearted teacher. 

Thank you for a great time!

See you soon, 

ONCE UPON A TIME ...

- Storytelling - 

Today I would like to talk about my storytelling assignment. I did the task individually.

Our teacher gave us three different storytelling projects to choose from. I chose Project 1 - Creating a Public Service Announcement (PSA). These are short announcements/summaries that are meant to inform, educate, and in the best-case scenario, move humanity to action.

The teacher told us to think about what facts we want to include, what target audience we want to address, make sure that our topic is brief but its reason is clearly stated, and what goal we want to achieve or what we would like people to do after watching our storytelling video.

I chose to create a video about the environmental pollution issue in turkey through waste with the goal that people take their own action on the chosen issue. My biggest obstacle was to stick to the given time span of the video (60 sec.) which, as you can see from my video, I did NOT succeed in. It was simply impossible for me to limit this topic to 60 sec., even though that might have consequences for my grade.

For creating my storytelling video I used the platform 'Vimeo' which offers a great selection of templates, stickers, short clip videos, and general design editing sectors. The website was easy to use, editing went without a hitch and the video was downloaded without a problem. I then recorded my voiceover, looked for some quiet piano music, and played both audio files onto my video using 'InShot'. InShot is a great mobile app to edit and recreate videos, super easy to use, downloads work without problems and it offers a good quality as well.

Storytelling is helpful for the language classroom because it is a place to practice English language skills as well as communication skills in general and it builds a community (perhaps if people would like to share their opinion about your storytelling topic because they feel personally attached to it). Creating the video could increase computer skills and knowledge about helpful designing tools on the internet.

Furthermore, the creativity of the students is stimulated, the topics and possibilities of interpretation are multifaceted and, to a large extent, the students work on something they have chosen themselves.

So, what do you think about my chosen topic for the storytelling?
Let us chat in the comment box below!

See you soon, 

NEWS ABOUT INFOGRAPHICS

 

Today I want to talk about infographics. According to Wikipedia, infographics are “[…] graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly“.

Our teacher gave us the possibility to choose between three different infographic approaches, so I decided to create my own infographic on how to be/become a good teacher. I didn’t have any clear instructions which makes it a wide and creative task because I’m able to decide what I want to include and what not and how to design it supportively. Of course, Infographics should include images, graphics, diagrams, visual data, etc. So this is what I had to take care of. 

 

I used “www.canva.com“ as my creating-an-infographic-tool because (as mentioned in my last blogpost) Canva is a great online design and publishing tool that deals with the creative design of presentations, posters, flyers, cards, videos, collages, worksheets, as well as infographics. It provides all kinds of great templates which are easy to fill with information and easily editable. For my infographic, I used a given template from the free example section and edited and filled it with pictures, facts, useful information, and my research sources. 

In my opinion, creating an infographic is useful for language learners because it functions as a great “summary“ work underlined with important facts in form of numbers, diagrams, statistics, etc. It requires good research and professional sources and the strength to present these information creatively. Furthermore, the teacher is able to give any instructions he/she wants because infographics could be basically about anything and could be involved with every topic. 

What are your thoughts about my infographic? Anything that you would like to add? Let me know in the comment box below!

See you soon, 

MOVIE POSTERS - THE RIGHT APPROACH?

 

My task was to create a movie poster about a book I read which (in my imagination) will be made into a movie. The poster will be part of an advertising strategy.

I chose “Five feet apart”.

The poster should contain the title of the film in large visible letters while being the center of attention. The names of the author as director and the name of the producer (me) of the film should be mentioned on the poster. The focus of the poster should be an attention-grabbing illustration or collage that reflects the idea of the film's story without adopting the book cover 1-to-1. Furthermore, quotes from the actors as well as a certain 'tagline' should be added to increase the attention and interest of any person who saw the poster (doesn't matter if they read the book before or not) to watch the movie. Lastly, the poster should also have a rating or commentary as a critique.

To create my poster I used the website "www.canva.com". Canva is an online design and publishing tool that deals with the creative design of presentations, posters, flyers, cards, videos, collages, worksheets, etc.  It offers templates that can be filled in and used directly (e.g. worksheets for teachers) but can also be modified further. After that, various download options are available, although one must keep in mind that not all designs are free of charge.

I think the assignment was great and well-implemented (even though I think my poster version is a bit overloaded, due to all the information it must contain). For later, I can very well imagine incorporating this task in my "eventual teaching", because as I also mentioned in previous postings about the other tasks, students can spread their creativity in any direction they want with the help of technical devices and interesting ways to present their ideas and creations.

What are your thoughts about my movie poster? Any tips on how I can improve my work? Let me know in the comment box below!

See you soon,