Technology as an inseparable part of teaching and learning.

Hello everybody,
How are things going?

We have dealt so much with technology on this subject, we have mentioned its advantages and disadvantages, we have talked about multimedia and its importance. Now, it's time to focus on technology tools that may help teachers to create an interactive atmosphere in their classrooms. Integrating technology in a classroom can be more beneficial than face to face or online learning alone.
"Technology will not replace great teachers, but technology in the hand of great teachers can be transformational"-George Couros.
This quote shows that technology is important while teaching but only if it is used carefully. Teachers who know how to use it in class, attract students' attention. This results in students' engagement and better performance.

Let's take a look on the past and see if things have changed or not.
Teachers, but also students used to be very happy just because they had some computers at school. I can still remember how excited we were on the 'Informatics' classes, even though we never used the computers to learn something.
I don't know why, but most of the time they were broken, the mice were missed or any other problem. Even when they were alright, nobody taught us how to use computer at its basic concepts. We used to play games on these classes or we stayed at class doing nothing.
Now students have more opportunities  because they can even learn individually from their computer or mobile phone. We didn't have such devices then, only some who were called 'lucky' had.
Technology didn't have the impact it has nowadays. Now it is a standard. It's kind of strange because at the moment we get used to a tool or program something faster and better appears.
It's the same thing that happens with our phones. Before, there were Nokia 3310 or Samsung, later BlackBerry was produced, now there are smartphone and iPhone of high technology. We see that technology is advancing day by day.
Think about your English classes.
Did your teacher put some music while you were reading?
Did your teacher bring extra materials rather than just textbooks?
Did your teacher present a lesson via technology using pictures, videos, interactive whiteboards or PowerPoint presentations?
Let me guess, most of them didn't.
That's mostly because teachers were not used to technology before.
There are still traditional teachers who just only explain the lesson and ask students to tell it by heart, but I've also noticed that there have been some changes. (Not sufficient ones.) There are teachers who use PowerPoint presentations or bring images to students, but interactive whiteboards are still missing. Our schools and universities still use the blackboards. Interactive whiteboards are really effective because they allow multiple students to collaborate using a touchscreen to annotate content or to take notes. It is an easier way to structure lessons, to make students engage and have fun at the same time.
Isn't it sad to see how no investment is made in education?
But, teachers can try their best to integrate technology in teaching. Instead of fighting the use of technology in our classrooms, we can interpret it in a meaningful way using different tools such as:
•Socrative, Kahoot, Hot Potatoes, Google forms to create different kinds of quizzes. They are all easy to use and very interactive. They allow all students to take part. If you asked me which one I would choose, I would say Kahoot as the most appealing one. It is colourful and allows teachers to create their own learning games and students to have fun while learning.

•FlipGrid is a tool that increases students' engagement by recording and sharing short videos in a collaborative way.
In every grid teachers can post questions and students may answer by sharing videos.

•Edpuzzle is another educational tool in which teachers may add text and voice questions. Teachers may do this in existed videos or they may upload their own videos there. It creates an interactive environment in classroom, but not only. It is interesting and students focus more.

•Dyknow is a helpful tool for teachers to monitor what their students do during the class. This allows teachers to notice if students are really working or they are wasting their time playing games or on social media. In this way, teachers may 'control' the class, in order for students to be more attentive.

•Students need constant feedback. Floop helps teacher to share feedback faster and in a more specific way. Students have the possibility to send to their teachers their uncompleted work and ask for suggestions. The teacher controls it, gives the recommendations and send it back to the student. I think this is very useful because allows teachers to be in continuous contact with their students' progress and it also enables students the possibility to edit their work in order to improve it.

Let's recap the advantages of technology in teaching and learning.
•Technology enables us to connect with other students and teachers.
•Technology helps students to engage mostly in a self directed learning. At the same time  they are responsible for what they learn.
•Technology raises students' interest and attention.
•Encourages collaboration, since students can work in groups or they may share different materials, opinions and assignments together.
•Technology has no limitations. It provides us with everything we need.

In my opinion, what technology offers us is endless. What we can do is to choose the positive and effective part of it. Let's make a change together because as John Dewey said: "If we teach as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow."

I hope you find this post helpful!
Thank you! :)

Assessment/Evaluation.

Hello everybody,
I wish you all good health!

Today's topic is about the assessment/evaluation.
First of all, I would like to mention that the assessment focuses on the process, while evaluation focuses on the product (grades).
We all need feedback for what we do.

I personally want not only good comments and compliments ( of course, everybody loves them), but I also want suggestions and good critics. I say good critics, because I think everybody's learning is personal and we can't say it is wrong or not, but we may give recommendations.
I have previously said that assessment is an ongoing process. It has to do with the gathering of information about students' progress and achievements. Through it, we may understand what students know or lack, which are their needs and interests, but we can also improve ourselves as teachers.
The most important types of assessment are:
•Diagnostic assessment - it helps the teacher to 'diagnose' what students already know or what they don't know. It is done at the very beginning. This helps teachers to change what is wrong.
•Formative assessment it happens all the time. Teachers monitor students' learning. It can be done through quizzes, discussions, continuous projects and so on. Through them, we understand what a student is learning throughout the course.
•Summative assessment this is more a kind of evaluation, because it happens only at the end. It can be in the form of midterm exams, final projects or portfolios etc. Through it, we understand what a student has learned throughout the course.
•Self-assessment in which students give feedback about themselves.
•Peer assessment in which students assess each other.
We have practised both, self and peer-assessment in university.
During the first semester in 'Psycholinguistics',  we were divided into 4 groups and the 'Evaluation Group' had to give feedback for other students.
While assessing others we should make sure the feedback is in the sandwich form.

1st, we start with something positive.
2nd, what we would suggest.
3rd, something good.
We should not be rude or unethical.
Our professor used Mentimeter to create a poll and we assessed our peers in anonymous way. Kahoot can be used as well.
Below, you can find a short video about top 10 technology assessment tools.

During this semester after delivering the presentation we gave feedback for ourselves. Even here we should be fair and objective.
Assessment is really important, because it provides teachers with the right information about what students understand or not and how to improve their way of teaching. It also provides feedback to the students. It informs students of their progress and enhances their motivation. When students deliver self or peer-assessment, they are more:
•engaged
•objective
•critical thinkers.

Nowadays, it is widely used the E-assessment, which has to do with the use of technology to deliver the assessment.
It can be done through different forms.
•We can submit an assignment or essay virtually, via email or via 'Classroom' platform.
•Online quizzes are a good way of doing this. Since now we are attending classes online, even the assessment is done in this way. In a subject, our teacher shares every week an online quiz with us. We fill it and we submit it.
•E-portfolio, which is owned by the students. It is student-centred.


How does E-assessment help us?
•We get rid of papers since now we can submit our assignments in virtual platforms such as Dropbox.
We are doing this way of sharing tasks, and our teacher also comments on our work.
•So, the other advantage is instant feedback can be provided.
•Work is safely stored. We don't have to think if we took our paperwork with us or not.
•It costs less. Since nowadays most of us have internet on their phone we can use it even for our assignments, so we don't have to print them.
•When we share our tasks online, we can prove to our teacher that we have already submitted the task. Because there may be cases when an assignment or exam can be lost and your teacher may somehow accuse you of not having done it.
•Diverse activities such as online quizzes(multiple-choice exercise), fill in the gaps, crosswords, creative activities such as creating our own exercises.

To sum up, the assessment should be done continuously. Students need feedback, but not an offensive one. They need to know if they are doing right or not. And teachers are one of the most important persons to provide it.

Feel free to give your comments. I would like to hear your suggestions as well. :)
Thank you!

Develop phase. Media components

Hello,
Hope everything is fine!

If you remember, last time I said you I will talk about the other phases the following weeks.
Today, I'm going to deal with the Develop Phase.
It is very important, because here we start pulling together all the materials and elements we have found and we support the framework we built on the design phase.
In this phase, the presentation takes form.
It assembles all the elements of the media that include: text, images, animation, audio and video. The focus is on what elements of media and technological tools we are going to use.

First of all, we should choose what kind of program/tools we are going to use for our presentation.
The most common one is the PowerPoint presentation program which is used for projects which are presented to a big group of people. It has been improved and now we can make our presentation interactive by using different effects. Action buttons, which may direct us to other slides or files are widely used nowadays. We can add videos, images, hyperlinks, online quizzes and other effects.

To make a presentation appealing we may use:
Graphics which refer to information that is presented via pictures, painting or drawing.
There are some programs to create them such as: ColorIt, CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator etc.
Animations are graphic files that include movement. They are important, because they emphasize complex concepts and add excitement to the students.
Audio is an effect that can be realised also in PowerPoint. It may include a recorded narration, music or sound effects.
Music also helps students to be more interested and motivated.
So, we include the 'Suggestopedia' teaching method. It makes use of music in order to create a relax and comfortable environment for the students. I think, it is mostly used for elementary students, since it is more difficult to attract their attention without the use of such elements.
We have practised this method of teaching in 'Didactics' and it created a calm atmosphere. The students were attentive and they enjoyed the class.
(Baroque music is recommended in these classes).
Videos have their own role. We may add subtitles to them in order to make them more comprehensible to the students.
We may also create videos using our own voice, so it would be familiar to the students. There are a lot of video maker apps and tools on the internet.
In a presentation, the visual part is highly important, because it enhances the presentation and serves to illustrate and entertain.
But, we should be careful to keep it as easy and as comprehensible as possible.
Below you may find a very short and interesting video about the importance of visualization.

All in all, we have to keep in mind that a presentation without the integration of technology wouldn't be attractive at all.
If it is a traditional one, where the teacher only explains, it will be dreadfully boring.
Big applause to technology! 👏👏

Hope you enjoyed my post!
Feel free to share your opinions.
Thank you! :)

Planning a project.

Hello!
Welcome back to my blog!

Today, I am going to write about the DDD-E model and more specifically about the decide and design stages.
As I have previously said:
D- stands for Decide. In this phase, we choose what kind of project we would like to do.
D- stands for Design. In this stage, we choose the tools we will use in our project.
D- stands for Develop. In this phase, we pull together all the materials we have found.
E- stands for Evaluate. It is an ongoing process in which we reflect and assess our project.

Decide phase.
What do we do during this phase?
We determine some crucial elements such as the topic or the subject of the project, the goals or the learning standards. What are the students expected to achieve at the end of this project?
We should introduce the goals at the very beginning and we should choose a project which meets those goals. While deciding all these things, we should set the time. How much time does each activity take?
How can we organise them in order to meet the time limits?
We also decide if the use of multimedia is appropriate or not. What can we do to use it properly in order to enhance and not to destroy our project?
While deciding this, we should also think if there are all the needed conditions to display this project such as good internet connection, students should have at least basic computer skills, students should also have the necessary equipment.
We decide if the activities planned can be done individually or in pairs/groups. If a certain activity can be done in groups, we should be able to create cooperative groups, which are better to be selected by the teacher, because it ensures balance. If we let our students choose with whom they are going to work, they will be paired based on their relationships. This is not bad, but if we allow them to do this all the time, there won't be diversity in class and we should make sure to choose the groups based on students' abilities, project requirements and so on.
After deciding how we are going to deal with our project, we should teach students some social skills such as: listening carefully, being polite, sharing ideas and opinions, reducing tension and pressure, disagreeing in a polite way, without insulting the others and so on.
Those skills are as much important as computer skills because without them students can't even work together and the whole project would be a mess.
After making sure we have dealt with the first phase properly, we pass to the:

Design phase.
In this phase, we provide information about the aspects of multimedia or the technology being used for the project. It is very important because it produces a plan for the whole project.
This phase includes:
Outlining the content.
Teachers should provide students with what is expected of them.
We should specify the requirements. What is the topic that should be developed and how are we going to deal with it. What aspects are we going to include in our project? We should also take into consideration the target audience. The whole project should be focused on the level of the students we are dealing with. The topic, the activities, the multimedia used should be appropriate for the students' level.
If we are dealing with children, we should be careful not to exaggerate with the expectations and if we are dealing with the adults, we should not think that they already know everything.
Creating flowcharts. There are different flowcharts that can be used depending on our type of project.
We can create flowcharts by using
Lucidchart.com which is a platform that combines different elements such as drawing, diagramming, visualization and collaboration. It is an innovative platform.
Specifying screen design.
Here we determine how our screen template will look like. We should choose the right colour and navigation options. The screen should be functional and usable.
Writing storyboards. Storyboards are very important because they convey how the story will develop through images displayed in sequence.
They can be general or detailed ones. The detailed ones are more used and they should contain all the information needed.
Design guidelines to specify information related to text, menus, icons and buttons and colour.
We should try to create short and appealing sentences and avoid long lines of text. That's because long lines distract students.
What about the menus? How many options should they contain?
Well, at least 3-6 options on a menu.
We should also make sure to use common icons, in order not to distract students and to put them in difficulties.
It may seem like the colour we choose for our background is not important, but at least make sure not to use a red one.

The design phase is important, because here we start creating the real project. We should make sure to include an appropriate, short and simple text, mostly if we are doing a Powerpoint presentation.
Next week, we are going to learn more about the two other stages of the DDD-E model.

Thank you for reading my post!
Stay safe! :)