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.

A summary of discussıons about open and distance learning

 INTRDUCTION

            Thanks to the rapid advancement of technnology, online learning became a part of education around the world. With courses available in almost every subject, and flexible time tables to suit almost every lifestyle, students are increasingly turning to online learning as an altenative to on- campus study. It allows students to study abroad remotely, at a university not in their home country.

Advances in technology now allow students to study entirely online while still socializing with classmates, watching lectures and participating in subject-specific discussions. Related to this developments, this term we discussed some topics for our Open and Distance Leaarning lesson. In this article there are some key points about this discussions.

CONTENT

We discussed four article releated to online education. For each week we had basic topics. These are ; online teaching and learning, forms of presence in online enviroment, online learning engagement, and  flipped classroom.

In our first video we disccused about online teaching and learning. First of all we focused the term of “technology”. We thought that using technology in the lessons makes students more motivated and it is an encompassing. We defined synchronous and asynchronous learning. Synchronous learning is online or distance education that happens in real time, often with a set class schedule and required login times. Asynchronous learning does not require real-time interaction; instead, content is available online for students to access when it best suits their schedules, and assignments are completed to deadlines. (STAFF, 2021)  Then we gave examples for web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis and showed our blogs related to this tools. ( kahoot , metachart, storyboard, padlet, wordart, voki, quizlet, blooket, second life, flippity, socrative, pixton, wordwall, prezi, photogrid, jamboard, tolks, answergarden, whiteboard, mentalup. Baamboozle, etc.)  Then we mentioned about seven key competences for a successful online language teaching. This is a pyramid.

Level one is (At the bottom of this pyramid) there is; Basic ICT competence

 Level two; is Specific Ttechnical Competence for the software,

Level  three is ; Dealing with Constrains and Possibilities of the Medium,

 Level four is ; Online Socialization,

Level five is; Facilitating Communicative Competence,

Level six is; Creativity and Choice

Level seven is; ( at the top of the pyramid) Own Style

At the end of the our meeting we decided that “there is a critical need not only pedagogical innovation, but for sustained attention  to how new tools and environments function from the point of view of learners, and through careful scaffolding to extend the value they can derive from technology‐mediated distance language teaching. (WHITE, 2017)

            Second week we discussed  forms of presence in the online environment. We defined “presence” which means the sense of ‘being there’ and ‘being together’. Briefly , interactions with others in online environment and being aware of students and the teacher are present at a location remote from their own immidiate environment. To create presence in the online environment, we need to think, feel, and behave differently than we do in the face - to - face environment because we have to make an effort to be aware of the intentions of others and their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors when they are connected to us via technology (BIOCCA, BURGOON, & STONER, 2001) . When we become aware of and understand the differences between in - person and online interactions, we are better able to select appropriate technology and design learning environments that help create a sense of presence. (Lehman & Conceição, 2010) After that we talked about the effects which is related to ability to be social in a virtual space. And explained social presence, immediacy, degree of awareness and willingness. Also we talked about “how we can possitively effect the social presence” then  We watched a video about the importance of teacher presence in online education. (eteachonline, 2020)

Finally,  the concept of presence is not easy to understand  and I think it is hard to create it in online lessons. Because the instructor and learners are not in the same physical space. Presence is result of insteraction of thought, emotion and behaviour in the online world and the outer world. Therefore it has different aspects. Such as; social, psychological and emotional. In today’s world we need to create an online learning community. To create an effective online community we can not ignore the importance of social, cognitive and instructor presence.

            In our third discussion we talked about online learning engagement. We start the topic trying to find a key term for engagement. Such as; interaction. Interaction between learner-learner, learner-instructor and learner content. Then we talked about the importance of engagement for Language classes. And we touched behaviour engagement (reflecting in manipulation of the interface through actions such as clicking, navigating, submitting,scrolling)  and cognitive engagement. ( reflected by students thinking about and working through the learning meterial at a deeper level) (Kennedy, 2020) Finally we talked about fake engagement.

            At the last week of the discussions we talked about Flipped classroom. We start with bloom’s taxonomy about flipped learning. (Kurt, 2018) according to this taxonomy; Students listen to the lesson and takes notes. And basically understanding remembering all the information that the lecturer told and then teacher gives a homework . so students go home and writes a comperative essay about the topic. When students doing the lower order thinking skills now the student starts begining to analyze and apply the new knowledge. So student begins to apply his knowledge and use it. Students do the lower order thinking skills at home so that they have got the basic remembering and understanding of something. In the class we can do more of the higher order thinking skills. We can begin to do more group work and pair work and analyze and discuss the knowledge. After we explain the flipped learning we mentioned about it’s activities and effects on language teaching. We talked about it’s benefits and challanges. At the end of the discussion we realized that despite it’s challenges such as; giving a lot of responsibility to learners , sometimes lack of students discipline, finding and reaching resources, lack of internet access (ResourcEd, 2018) we need to use it because of it’s benefits such as: free classroom time, opportunities for personalized learning, opportunities for more student centered learning, increased motivation of students, a continuous connection between student and teacher.

CONCLUSION

The goal of this discussions is to provide a brief  outline of how we can do much better open and distance learning. To do this we read some articles related to online teaching and learning, forms of presence in online enviroment, online learning engagement, and  flipped classroom.

Thanks to this articles and our investigations we reached some outcomes. This outcomes might be simply be summerised as:

·         The need for ongoing attention to learner support that adds value to individual learning agendas, attention to community and affikiations within that, feedback on individual and collective activity, and careful consideration of the affective aspects of distance language learning. There is a critical need not only for pedagogical innovation but for sustained attention to how new tools and enviroments functions from the point of view of learners and through careful scaffolding to extent the value they can derive from technology- mediated distance language teaching.

·         Fostering feeling of being there and being together are so important in creating online presence. Also there is some difference between presence and engagement.

·         It is hard to see engagement online, but using a range of measures and metrics we can get a sense of it.

·         Flipped language classroom not only improved students’ academic performance and cultivated their learning motivation but also developed their self-regulation, confidence, and higher-order thinking skills. the effects of external and learner factors on the flipped learning approach, students’ readiness and technology acceptance, the flipped learning process, students' interactions, and teacher perceptions.

 

NOTE: I uploded my article to my blog.

here is my blog link: http://techno-englogic.blogspot.com/

 

REFERENCES

 

BIOCCA, F., BURGOON, J. H., & STONER, M. (2001). Criteria and scope conditions for a theory and measure of social presence. Fourth Internatıonal Workshop.

eteachonline. (2020, 09 27). ınstructor presence: https://www.eteachonline.com/blog/onlinepresence adresinden alındı

Kennedy, G. (2020). What is student engagement in online learning ... and how do I know when it is there? Melborn discussion paper, 2.

Kurt, S. (2018, 05 13). educational technology. https://educationaltechnology.net/flipped-classroom/ adresinden alındı

Lehman, R. M., & Conceição, S. C. (2010). The Role of Presence in The Online Environment. Creating a Sense of Presence in Online Teaching. "How to be there for distance learners" (s. 2). içinde USA: JOSSY-BASS.

ResourcEd. (2018). How to overcome flipped learning obstacles: https://resourced.prometheanworld.com/obstacles-flipped-learning-overcome/ adresinden alındı

STAFF, T. (2021, 02 18). the best schools. Synchronous Learning vs. Asynchronous Learning in Online Education: https://thebestschools.org/magazine/synchronous-vs-asynchronous-education/ adresinden alındı

WHITE, C. J. (2017). Distance Language Teaching with technology. C. A. CHAPELLE, & S. SAURO içinde, The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning (s. 145). USA: WILEY BLACKWELL.

                               
                           Here is my word cloud: https://worditout.com/word-cloud/3574342

     Wordle is a toy for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide. It randomly positioned words, where the most important words are bigger than others. The user can alter the colours, style and layout of the word collage. It is a kind of data visualization tool which represent informations in the form of charts, maps, tag clouds, animation or any grphical means that make content easier to understand.
     Wordle has so many advantages and bedefits in many fields of study. Incorporating Wordle ,nto English classes is quick and easy. It can help to make the understanding of complex thing easier because they provide data in multi aspects incorporating visual, textual animated input and etc.

     Wordle is fun, visual and entertaining... have fun with your students :)

           Padlet is an application to create an online bullet in board that you can use to display information for any topic. Easily create an account and build a new board. you can add images, links, videos and more. You can return to add more later. 

        Installing Padlet Mini in your browser allows you to add the page you are browsing to your padlet and gives you a shortcut to view your Padlets. Settings allow you to make your wall completely open for public contributions, completely private or moderated by you. 

LET'S LOOK MY PADLET: https://tr.padlet.com/fly_svn90/nmmeyi0hjpo8

STORYBİRD

Storybird is a web-2 based application that you can create digital stories thanks to this tool and you want it from your students ;) So they can write poems and stories with using English. While they are creating stories they can use impressive pictures, they learn critical thinking and composed causes and results, they improve their imaginary.

You don't need extra expensive devices you can use your smartphone, pc, tablet etc...
If you wonder what can you make with Storybird;
Here is my storybird: https://storybird.com/books/85zc5crruz/

Here is an article from; Peter Bradford1 , Margaret Porciello, Nancy Balkon, Debra Backus United University Professions*, Albany NY 12212-5143

You can find this titles at the article:

• A brief history of Blackboard
• Benefits of the Blockboard learning system like; increased availability, quick feedback, improved communication tracking, skill building
• Drawback of the Blackboard learning system

link; http://uupinfo.org/research/working/bradford.pdf

ARE YOU READY TO MOODLE

Here is an article about MOODLE: Klaus Brandl University of Washington
You can find answers to your questions like;

• what is MOODLE
• How can we use it for language learning 
• How can you create sample tasks with MOODLE tools. 

link: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.113.7330&rep=rep1&type=pdf

POWTOON

Powtoon is a web-based animation software. You can easily and quickly prepare animated presentations. You can add your sound, musics pictures videos link etc. into the your presentation.
Powtoon is the world's leading, most user friendly, and most intuitive animation software. Powtoon can be used by educators to create animated presentations of content for students. There is no software to download , as Powtoon is web based. It is the amswer to boring, text filled presentations that lose audience attention after just a few slides.

Here is my Powtoon: https://www.powtoon.com/c/faHLlNEauH5/1/m

ENJOYABLE LESSONS WITH SOCRATIVE

WHAT IS SOCRATIVE

It is a tool that you can creat tests on the internet and your students can reach them with their smartphones or PCs thus you can give feedback immediately. It serves you to present an enjoyable and teaching activity in your classroom after you teach a subject. Your students could

see their names or nicknames on the smartboard. Also each students have a symbol.  In the meantime the symbol will go on when they give a true answer. So this tool will provide a competition environment. I think Socrative is good to make your students active in your lessons. Using it will solve your giving feedback problem. In this way you can give feedback to each student.
     Finally don't forget, if you want you can print your tests and hand out them your students.

This is my Socrative quiz click and see it: https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#import-quiz/38112298

SIX REASONS TO START KAHOOT!'ING

      I think Kahoot is a perfect tool. Because it is a game based learning platform. You can create a fun learning game in  minutes. you can add videos diagrams images for your questions. It helps you to create an active classroom atmosphere.

     We have a lot of reasons to use it. First of all it is flexible. In a few minutes you can creat a learning game for all ages, any topic. secondly It is simple works on any device with an internet connection. For players no account or login is required to join a game. Thirdly. It's diverse. Starting a conversation or reinforcing knowledge, intoducing new topics or encouraging teamwork and more - there is so many different ways to Kahoot. Also it is engaging. It fosters social learning, unlocks learners' potential and deepens pedogogical impact. It is global you can connect and play in real time with other players in countries. Finally it is free. Creating learning games and playing Kahoot is free for teachers and students! 

     Play, learn, have fun and celebrate together...

    To see my kahoot please click the smile: 😉

VOKI THE VOICE OF SOCIAL LEARNING

VOKİ web 2.0 is an application that you can use it in your classroom. You can create an avatar and use it to ask questions and answer the questions. It helps to establish a permanent learning enviroment thus students can easly underestand and remember the subjects that they have difficulty to learn.

     We can use Vokie to improve students' critical thinking ability and to give homework. So students can put a production about their homework so they can feel more happy and enjoy. This app will help you to attract your students' attention. 

      Here is my Voki avatar :https://www.voki.com/site/pickup?scid=15236775&chsm=5656a75a62df3a13a167b5e8c5d57fe4

      Have fun with your students :)