OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING

 In the second part of our course, we have covered Blending Language Instruction, Online Feedback Practice, Online Formative Assessment, Innovative Digital Tools for Four Language Skills (LSWR & Vocabulary) topics.

Q1. How did the course, weekly readings and discussions contribute to your digital teacher identity?

Q2. How did you (if you did) connect these to your practicum experience? and/or How do you plan to connect these to your future teaching experiences? 

A.1 This course have a lot of contribution for my digital teacher identity. Thanks to the second part of our course I get knowledge about Blending Language Instruction, Online Feedback Practice, Online Formative Assessment, Innovative Digital Tools for Four Language Skills (LSWR & Vocabulary) topics.

First of all I and Yağmur read articles about Blending Language Instruction, Online Feedback Practice, and than discussed them. ‘ Blended learning’ is a combine of traditional learning and independent computer based learning. And online portion of the course is essential rather than supplemental. Blending language teachers can combine the benefits of online learning with strengths of face to face classroom. So Blended learning have both advantages and challenges. A good compromise, scheduling benefits, opportunities for differentiation, technology as a motivator are it’s advantages. Also, there are some challenges; it is not a silver bullet. It relies heavily on technology, tools need to be easy to use, reliable and up-to date. It depends students motivation, they need to be motivated and organized. Despite this challenges it is a strong instructional approach as long as the course well designed, teacher well-supported and the students well-prepared to take change of their own learning.

We talked about giving online feedback. Generally most students want their teacher to correct them while teachers often have an aim of helping students to learn from their peers and be independent. Feedback is given to students at different stages of a lesson for different purposes. The meaning of feedback is” helpful information or criticism that is given to someone to say what can be done to improve a performance. We discussed some tools to help us while giving feedback in the digital world. Such us: Audacity, Jing, Quick Time Player, Knovio, Kaizena, Gmail, Microsoft Office etc. There are much more information at our video (week7-8) about feedback and feedback tools.

At 9^th and 10^th weeks we talked about Online Formative Assessment and Online Lesson Design. Formative assessment refers to on going process. Teachers design it to fit into the learning process to help a learner identify areas of weaknesses and strengths in their language. Teachers don’t report it as score or grade, we assess students’ learning. We have a lot of tools for distance learning. And I get some ideas for formative assessment at distance learning; first of all we need to know our purpose. If we want to see our students process, we can use Animato and Flipgrid, ıf we want to check the content knowledge of our students we can use Kahoot and Quizlet. Formative assessment is a process and it is important to cpllect evidenceof learning overtime. To do this we can use Seesaw we can use screenshots and also Scanning tools. Also we can do our distance lessons with two types. First one is Synchonous sessions, second one is Asynchronous sessions. Collecting of students understanding is so important everytime and as teachers we need to see our students and what are they learning. We need to control and check them. For synchronous sessions, to do this controls we can use YES-NO buttons and we can use private chat boxes. So that we can give feedbacks just in time. I think that converisation with students is the most important and meaningful way to check students’ understanding. Human connection is very important. To do this we can use Marco Polo and Flipgrid. In order to check our students distance learning we should ask question them  such as; “ What is working? ” , “ What is not working well ? “ , “ What would you recommend ? “ this is crucial because this type of learning is newer. We need to communicate with students and get some informations. And ıf some thing is useful, we need to use it. To make them usweful we need to use them.

We also discussed ‘how to make online lesson design’. Learning must be regarded as an active and collaborative process of knowledge construction; learning is to be seen as an autonomous process, to be regulated by the learners’ expectations, goals existing schemata and intentions. Learning is a process of experimentation based on previous knowledge and experience ,it is a process of socially negotiated construction of meaning and this process must be supported by a rich learning environment rooted in real life and authentic situations. I think for online lessons the usage of technology in classroom stimules learning environment and participation in both individual and group setting activities. Because technology allow the students to discover thing for themselves and access to information. With this way they can create the path for their own learning. It also helps students to learn how to learn.

In the last weeks we discussed about Innovative Digital Tools for Four Language Skills (LSWR & Vocabulary) topics. Thanks to this courses I learned how we learn a new vocabulary. How does the process work. What happens at our internal memory  process and what are our external strategic behaviours and internal thoughts. We also talked about lexical tools such as open google online resources(e.g google search, Wikipedia), E-dictionaries( web-based or localized), Lexical concordancers (e.g. BNC or COCA) for the other skills we learned new methods and tools . individual study tools, mobile and portable devices are some types of technologies. For example: online activities, dictionaries, glosses and annotations that we can use them for reading activities (e.g. Cambrigde, Oxford, Macmillian, Dictionary.com, Word Reference some dictionaries.) And also I learned some tools such as Blackboard, Pixton, Voki, Wordle, Storybord that we can use for writing activities

A.2  That was a perfect match for me. While I was taking ‘open and distance learning’ course, was doing my online practicum experience. So what I learnt in my lesson, I try to use them on my practicum experience. I used digital tools such as: youtube videos, songs, wordwall, mentimeter, Kahoot … Especially Kahoot was our favorite one. Almost every lesson students asked me that ‘ will we play Kahoot? ‘And ıf the answer is yes they shouted ‘yeaahhhhh’ If the answer is no they sais ‘okey’ but as teacher thanks to their tone of voice we could feel that they are unhappy. This tools caughtthe attention of students and made them happy. This situation reflected positively on us. Because, as we know, ıf they are positive, willing and enthusiastic, we feel it and reflect it our lessons. Sometimes they didn’t want to do lesson with us they wanted their teacher, until we get used to each other, so we used our creativity in order to focus them in our lessons. We put online activities and used online tools to attract them. Such as: Kahoot, World wall, videos, songs… And we saw that these methods tools work in our lessons. It was hard to fins these activities during this practicum session but this course helped me so much, I found a lot of new ideas to use my lessons.

In the future I guess I will need much more information about digital teaching and learning because technology is rapidly changing. It is hard to guess what will happen after ten years later. In connection with this, the age and learners, especially young learners are changing. It is a strong reason that I need to entegrate this tools in my lessons. Blended learning, planning an online lesson, giving online feedback today have a big importance.  So we need to change and we have to follow developments in this field. Life long learning becoming more and more important for us.