An Optimal Solution To Share Your Information: VISME

Hello everyone. As you know, today, among all these technological wonders, text has become an almost outdated method to share your ideas with others. There are many easier ways to convey your ideas and information to the people. Infographics, presentations, recordings and videos that become more popular than articles.As we all know, The materials that provide visuality and hearing makes understanding simple enough. That is why, today we prefer these kind of materials to convey our ideas. And in this technological age we can say that there are many and many tools to make understanding easier in education.Now, i will introduce one -and the most amazing of them which is called Visme.So let's begin!

Visme is a web-based tool which enables anyone to create visual content like presentations, infographics, banner and product demos. But unlike other devices that enables accomplishing similar things, Visme has many and many advantages that the other tools do not have. First of all, it is very easy to use. And it serves several content options at the same. As we said before Visme  has presentation,infographic, banner and product demos.It enables creating all of these on the web with an extreme ease.You can also download, print and share the works you ve done on the site. Now, we will have a look on these different sections of Visme.

To create a presentation, you start by selecting a template after you click on the ''presentation section''. Visme has a ton of templates for you! Once you’ve selected a template, you can see the fully-fledged presentation creation section of Visme, which will look like image that follows.

You can manage content of each slide as if you are doing the same in Microsoft PowerPoint but there are a number of features that differentiate Visme from PowerPoint. For instance, when you want to add some images to the slides, you can use the integrated search engine to find free images. Also, there is a collection of wonderful vector sets that does make enough sense.

Similarly, just as you do in Microsoft PowerPoint, you have the freedom to apply animations to objects and slides in a way that the presentation would be interactive. Once you have finished creating your slideshow, you can embed it in your site by pasting the code.


Infographic creation is, perhaps, the most useful solution from Visme, because creating an infographic is a task that requires deep knowledge in designing. Using Visme, however, the process can be done in 4 steps — select a template, manage elements according to your requirement, preview the infographic and publish it in your site or get it as an image or PDF. Resembling the case of presentations, Infographics section of Visme consists of different templates to choose from. Also, you have a huge collection of interactive elements such as charts, graphs. Thus, it does not matter whether you have experience in creating infographic, but you can create awesome infographics using Visme.

As i've stated before, creating infographic is the most useful and attractive facility that is done on Visme. When you click on the Infographic option it offers several creation field such as science,health,formulas,education etc. It offers you some related templates and this is,also helpful for creating such a difficult design, What i try to state actually is that, you can create many and many amazing infograpfics which you can use on the classroom environment and you can be helpful for your students to achieve some confusing and essensial things which are difficult to remember  by the help of this amazing website. You can provide visual aids that will enhance your students' learning and awaken their interests over foreign language learning. Here are some examples created in the aim of education. They look astonishing huhh?? Very useful :)

And finally, when you come to the Banner Ads section, you will find this section of Visme to be extraordinarily useful or essential. This part of Visme can be used to create stunning banner ads, in different sizes, using either your own style or from templates that are available in Visme collection.Since you can use this banner in your site by pasting iframe code, you can insert animations to your banner as well. It is a noteworthy feature, because your banner ads will become more interactive. Nevertheless, if you want to get the banner in HTML5 or PDF form, you will have to subscribe premium plan of Visme. By the way, for the all elements of Visme you are supposed to buy the premium version of the website. But thing to remember, it is really fairly cheap and definitely worths!

To simply put, Visme is a very advantageous web-based tool for every person especially for teachers,i think. You can enhance your students' learning by the help of this kind of tool very easily and effectively. It has free and premium version but not much for the charged version as i stated before. It definitely worths and i think it is the best alternate to create useful materials for your learners in such an easy way.I strongly recommend using it and im sure you will have many works that will excite your students' interests on this site. Now go and try. You will love it :)

PIXTON

Ready For One More ??Now,  Click and Drag My Article J

Hello everyone. Every passing time, one more tool to teach English. For a while, me and my fellow worker Ümran Omaç have been studying on a website called Pixton ,which was assigned to us  by our Material Designing Teacher. And this article will be about our study on this amazing website. First of all, I can say that it is totally a technological wonder! I really enjoyed using it and i am sure you will, too.It is very easy to use and it  only orders you to click and drag actually as it says in its tag line. So now,it is time to  click and drag my article to learn more about Pixron!

Pixton is a technology that gives anyone  the power to create amazing cortoons and comic strips on the web.It is also  a kind of a social networking site where you can read anyone’s comic and share yours too. When you log in the website you can also see some comic strips published by other people using this site. So it also enables you to spend your time by reading these comics even if you dont want to create one of your own.And the most important thing to remember is that -it is the most attractive feature of Pixton- it is such an extremely easy-used website that all you need is click and drag motions! See one of our examples below we've created on pixton .

Pixton is actually made of a series of pannels and each of  pannels has its own setting buttons around. Pixton enables you to choose characters and properties among many and many options, give them any positions and facial expressions on the each of the pannels.Furthermore it has great many options to add any backgrounds and many options again to make some editions on the color,looks, proportions of the properties and the characters. It is such a well-designed and an easy-used website that all you need will be click and drag motions while creating your comics.It has some tutorial videos for all the settings one by one.So that will help you when you need.Moreover, you can download, print, share and save your comic to continue later. It is really amazing ! You want to see??  Click here to visit Pixton.

Actually, Pixton has some different usage options for fun, for school and business as you see on the screenshot below. It can be a good option ‘’Pixton for schools’’ to use in the classroom.It is for teacher and students use in the classrooms.It provides grading and assessment tools and also voice recording settings for the characters to enhance learning.

Pixton is free or fairly cheap.There is no much differences between its free and pro version but, Its pro-version  gives you more pannels  and also some more setting options for your comics. It is really cheap it is easier to use, i think  and definitely worths! But still there is no big difference between them you can also use its free version with your students.

To come to its educational benefits we can surely say that it is very and very advantageous.One of the facts for that is that,  it’s really easy to use and really cheap. This ease of use will surely give your students a big fun and maybe, that wil save them from the boring English learing styles.Furthermore,by the help of this kind of website you can success on making your students more engaged.I am sure they will enjoy creating these kind of cartoons on the web. And you can also prompt their engagement by grouping the students and so, providing them an interactional learning. It is also a good tool for personal learning actually.Students can create and read English comic strips on this website  so that they can improve their language skills on their own.That will definitely improve their creativity,too. And finally, you can make them proud!Enabling your students to make these king of activities will encourage them. I am sure when your students see tangible works on their hands,which they created on their own, that will give them a feeling of proud and this feeling of proud, will bring them more fun and engagement.I really and really recommend using it. I am sure you will enjoy and it will give you an ease and many more advantages while teaching your students.Now, go and try it! :)

APPS

English:Just on 

The Fingertips !

Hello everyone!

This time, we study apps ! As a tool of English language learning and teaching. As we know, by the development of technology,we can attain whatever asked for, just by the means of mobile phones anymore. As well as the specialities that our phones have, they also enable a great affordance for applications that can be puchased and also for the ones free of charge actually. We can find educational ones among them too.By the bucketload! Sure language teaching based ones..So now why not turning them into our routine English laerning tools ??

As i mentioned before; there are a great many of language learning apps,too and now i want to introduce just one of them, tell about how does it work and what can be the possible benefits of this kind of application in English language education and so on. While i was just searching for language learning based apps i came up with one of Cambridge English Learning apps called Cambridge Starters 4. Actually It is formed of three different versions called Cambridge Starters, Cambridge Movers, and Cambridge Flyers according to their proficiency levels. And each version also has several stages as like 1-2-3.. in accordance of their difficulty level again.Now, let’s begin to introduce content of the app in detail.

When you log in the application you see 3 different tests which contain a series of questions and activities. And an ‘’About’’ section which informs you how to use the application. Each test of Starters is made up of three papers developed as Listening, Reading&Writing and Speaking papers mainly.And each of papers has several parts that contains a range of activities again.So let’s click on one of the tests and try it out !

When i start the test I see a Listening test which consist of 4 different parts.Each part contains Listen&match (where the user draws a line from each object given at the out of the one big picture,to the place where it is on the big picture in accordance with the recorded conversations between a man and woman.) Listen&answer ( where the user listens to the recording carefully and write the correct answer -name or number- after each question, Listen&choose (where the user listens to five short conversations between different pairs of people and choose the right answers -A,B or C- for the questions, and Listen&Colour Stage (where the user colours the objects given in accordingly with the colour they say in the conversation)

When it comes to Reading&Writing test, it contains five different parts and again variable activities such as filling in the gaps,spelling single words,reading and comprehending activities as you see at pictures below.And finally the Speaking test has five parts again. But this time the user takes the test alone with the examiner, but someone they know who speaks their language (like their teacher) The examiner explains what to do in English and the user does kind of speaking activities like introducing the objects,telling about the pictures and so on.

‘’Cambridge Startes’’ is available on GooglePlayStore and AppleStore. It is actually a young learner English learning application and seems like most kind of a self-learning activity.But in my opinion it also can be used in a classroom environment maybe by the means of a projector and make fun of practicing English learning. And i can say that it can be a good choice as an activity in order to develop students’ listening,comprehending and speking skills in the classroom.Especially for listening developing fulfillment. We can touch upon self-learners that this apllication can be an assistant tool to practice their skills and even just by the fingertips of their own. ..

Digital Story Telling

WOOHHOOw THAT’S AMAZING !!

Yess! here is a new age on English Language Teaching and learning. One more step for a productive and a supplier education. I have one more an amazing material here you can use for your pedagogic puposes in a classroom which is ‘’Digital story telling’’ . So now, let me tell about it!

Digital story telling is a kind of  a short  form of digital media production  that allows individuals to tell  a story or present an idea. This media production also includes digital effects equivalent of film techniques like full-motion video with sound,animation,stills and audio.And  This week we have done a digital story telling project of our own  with my fellow worker  Merve Kuru. I can say that  It was really a  different and entertaining endeavor . We also think that it is extremely educational. Before mentioning  about its educational benefits  i want to tell how a process we have followed on creating a digital story telling and what was the difficulties on preparing  such a project.

First of all we had to find an animation video maker program to implement our story on.After a research on the internet we have diceded to use the program called Animaker. Click here if you’d like to visit the program. Aniamker is an online animated video making platform which is so simple to use. It has all the tools you need for an animation film (like carachters,objects,sounds, musics,frames movement tools, facial expression choices, scenes and so on). Seeing that it had all the things we needed for our story on our minds too, we began to develop our  story named as ‘’Miranda’s Christmas Party’’ . In addition we have created our voice recordings which were needed for the dialogs in the film.  The program has an tutorial video ehen you firstiy enter on it. Because we have watched it beforehand, it was  so pretty easy to create the scnenes, record or upload the sounds, set the motions and the music.  This was also the thing made the working so enjoyable actually.

  

It was first time we had experienced such an activation.And i can say that we got shocked more and more on each step where we had done some applications on the program. There was a super technology there making all the implementations easier, inspiring the user and of course providing an entertaining cooperation with your fellow worker.  Preparing the project with a co-worker was also another thing that made the working so enjoyable and easy actually. Most probobly it would be a kind of boring workind if i had had to prepare my project on my own. So i believe that even if it will be tasked, it should be done cooperatively. So, here is our digital story telling video below if you’d like to watch;

When it comes to the difficulties we had while creating this project; the most challenging part of the task was just completing some little details on the video like timing the speakers’ sound, music,object effects and applying some motions and synchronisation of the several sounds on the same scene etc. It was troublesome a little bit but of course was soluble with a cooperation as well.

So, As a result, i can say that using such a task for your educational purposes in your classrooms can be extremely fruitful.It is a greatly educational task in terms of making the students learn to cooperate, using technology, learn to create an English dialog and pronounce this kind of conversations. And because of  its English context, It can also enable them to learn more vocabularies while using the program. You can either make them use this kind of program or  have them watch your video you created yourself to provide an entertaining English listening practice in classroom. J

Click click click !

Come and Join Our Yard !

Hello everyone ! Here i have a website probably you have used it before actually. Because it is a very popular website that is used by many people interested in English learning lately. That is Speechyard. ! Actually i have been using this website for awhile now.But you, If you haven't heard it before let's come and explore that entertaining and also educating website.

 
First of all, if it is needed to explain this website, i mean Speechyard,it can be said that it is an English teaching based website for students, It is a place where English learners have a perfect opportunity to improve their English and expand language knowledge by means of educational entertainment. Learning English through movies and books and translating unknown words from subtitles and add them to your library for further learning are just some parts of activities that will guide you through your English learning process. It has even more than these !


Before introducing Speechyard more, i can say that it is a very easy-used page that you will just need clicking on the tabs. First of all you should choose your native language that the words will be translated in, when you need. Actually the website has three main sections which are content, laerning and community as you can see the picture of them below.

When you enter in ''Content section'' which is also the home page,you will see a Categories tab on the left.It has some categorations of its contents such as video clibs, films,serials,books,documents,interviews,shows,commercials and more.


All of them consists of some related videos that you can watch and also while watching, providie subtittles of those videos. Furthermore ,There is one another good alternative that when you have a trouble in understanding the videos you can click on the word or phrase of the subtitle you don't understand and see the translated meaning and also the pronounciation of the word. You can add them to your library that you will have on your own Speechyard website and have the chance of studying them later.You can do this just by clicking on add section of the word. As you can see the picture of the process below.

When it comes to ''Learning section'' you will see some activities such as word constructor , dictionary cards listening writing and translating exercises and that will help you study English more. There are some examples showing the process below.

And finally when you come to ''Community section'' you see some friends from all over the world  that you can communicate with them and practice your speech ! :)

The Speechyard website is so very easy-used and well-organised and extremely entertaining site that i can definitely recommend to all the English language learners. It has two different versions that are free of charge and waged versions. If you would like to practice on all of its activities you must buy the pro- version that is waged and doesn't requires money much. Now, go and begin to use this amazing website. I am sure you will have fun of it. Come and join our speechyard. :)

RSS FEED

‘’ And even..It doesnt take much of time at all ! ‘’

Hello you.  Do you enjoy  reading some articles or watching videos that arouse the feeling that you are in life and prompt your desire to live more, just like me? That gives you such a pleasure that you don’t wanna even leave them. And also want to reach such kind of sources  easily and don’t want to waste your time while doing this? Yess like me! I really like doing these kind of things and now i feel that i have reached to my desires and now i definitely feel the sense that our life is becoming Just easier  day after day.

It’s been a few months that i got the fun of being on Blogger pages J Although it’s been a hard process to try to clear using it up first, i eventually got used to and i have begun to explore some really enjoyable and also educational pages in time. I began to follow some educational pages that interests me .And even..It doesnt take much of time at all! Actually while looking through those amazing pages, a question rised that How to follow all those of pages ?? And the amazing solution for it was RSS Feed. Let me explain that brillant program J


RSS Feed is a software that publish frequently updated information such as blog entries, news headlines, audio and videos depending on the websites you follow. Subscribing to the website RSS, removes the need to manually check the website for new content. Instead, your browser constantly monitors the site and informs you of any updates.


I use the sevice of RSS Feedreader of this browser. It is such a faciliating program that i easily follow the updates of the pages i follow on Blogger. I have even no need to log in my blogger page and waste so much time to look through the home page. I can easily see the updatings in my blog, choose whichever i interest and start to read or watch or listen to them. Here is a screenshot of my RSS Feedreader page.


You see that i follow many pages and groups.Many of them are based on teaching activities, language learning, some informations about school life and so on.And my favorite one is ‘’Teaching Channel’’ actually. I think it is an extremely fulfilling blog page. It shares so many videos, images and articles about teaching, teaching strategies, some suggestions all about the teaching and learning environment interviews with sophisticated teachers many and many things that educate and also entertain me. I definitely recommend it to both other teachers and also the blog users interested in educational informations.

Now, it's time to explore and create more blogs. Don' t forget to make it easy by using RSS Feed program ! :)

‘’This Morning..On The Boulder ..We Have a Very Special Guest : Aron Ralston!’’

Hello all.Do you know him? Yess Aron Ralston.I am sure he will excite you. But before being completely in his world would you like get some pieces of his advantures first?? Ready? Okay I have a super place to do it and while doing it to get some pleasure too! Come and explore the world of Aron Ralston on wiki pages! J

This week actually  we will talk about  Wiki pages and the project i prepared with the collaboration of my friend Merve Kuru. Before mentioning our collaborative project let’s talk about the wiki pages first.

Wiki is a web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove,edit and change some avaliable content,sometimes without a need for registration.It is started by one person and it is like having a publicly accessible word processing document available online,which anyone can edit.

This week we experienced this  web site with my co-worker . We’ve created a wiki page about ‘’127 Hours’’ film review. It mentions all about the life of  an advanturer Aron Ralston, which is a real life story.  Aron Ralston gets trapped in a boulder.The film shows the experiences he has while he is in that trouble. Now, i want to talk about how we worked with my friend to create this filmreview wiki page.

First of all we’ve used Wikispaces which is a wiki web site for our project. We’ve determined to create the review of 127 Hours. We had to do some researches,collect some informations about the film. After doing all of these we started to write it. Here is our filmreview page if you'd like to check.

It was really easy process to create a wiki page. We had almost no difficulty while doing it actually. There was  advantages of being a collaborative work.It was fun to prepare this project. To collaborate with my friend ...to discuss the film,exchange information,try  to make some effective explanations about the film and stuffs. It was really really fun.

And while working on this project i’ve  realized that wiki pages can be also a beneficial assignment in teaching. The key point of this task is collaboration actually. It is a totally different asaignment from  a basic writing task. By the help of this kind of assignment  you can provide your students not to be in a passive position but to communicate  try to organize and create with the help of collaborations.

As i mentioned before; a wiki  page is an accessible word processing document. You can use it as a tool for your students in the classroom and make them more interactive and creative learners by providing them the access of adding editing and changing an avaliable content in this kind of web site.I am sure they will enjoy it! 

Hey! By the way, click here to watch the trailer of the film 127 Hours. To get some pieces more J

PODCASTS: An Attractive Way To Make Them LOve ! :)

Have you had any "best story" in your life ? In your childhood?? A story that taught you much? Most probably. Here is a new way to create your a taughtful and super remindful own story for your learners. PODCASTING ! Let's explore it!

Podcast is a kind of programme that you can record your own podcast on a particular topic and you can listen or watch it whenever you want to. It can be on any topic and can consists of music or video. It can be used for many puposes. It can be also useful for the aim of teaching and learning! How?? Let me explain it by introducing the process we went through with my groupmate Merve Kuru. First of all we decided to create a podcast as a creative teaching technic in terms of providing second language learners an enjoying and also educative exercise. Our target group was young learners. We created a story and recorded it by using a podcast programme named Vocaroo. You can listen our podcast receording by clicking here.It is so an easy-to-used programme that we can certainly recommend it to you.

Now, i want to tell about our story that we've created and why we think that will be an instructive and also amusing practice for young learners. As i've mentioned before; the target group of our work is young learners as a second language learning. Our story includes many basic and also needed words for the young learners. At the same time;with my fellow worker, we tried to pronounce these words clearly to understand as much as possible. That will help the learners not to have trouble while listening and also to be able to get pleasure of the task.On the other hand our podcast includes some notifier sounds and and intonations that related to the vocabularies passing in the story that will attract the learners notice and make them understand the story even when they don't know some specific words. These sound effects and intonations will also help the learners to get pleasure.

As well as it is an enjoyable and certainly an educative tool there are some difficulties to create that kind of task actually. It can be difficult for you to find suitable sound effects for your story. You may have trouble while trying to use the exact sound that you want them hear. You may have some difficulties while setting the exact intonation... stress you want them hear..maybe have to repeat it again and again..and even that process can sometimes make you crazy !

Anyway; I certainly recommend it to other teachers. Because I think it is a very good way to help young learners practice the listening exercises and also to make them fun! C'mon go and make one of you own. This story can be one that your learners will never forget !

Here We Go !

Hello everyone!

This is my first post on my blog. I want to introduce myself and mention about the things i will share with you on this blog.I'm taking Technology and Material Design Class this term.Most of my researches and projects will be related to this class actually and i will share them and some observations of mine about them on this process. In the meanwhile i would like to make some researches and studies of my own about English teaching and learning, and some different technics that can be implemented on this aim. As i mentioned before; i also had an English teaching experience one time i also feel like to share some thinkings of that with you. I think it will be a fulfilling, inspiring process. Hope it will be same, interesting fulfilling and entertaining enough for you too. C'mon Enjoy the "English Without Borders!" :)