Digital Storytelling App! ♥

Hi! This time I'm going to talk about story telling app. In an improving technology world, making our language lessons fun is getting easier. Well, as a student I'm tired of doing the same kind of home works and classroom activities but using technology now every teacher can create entertaining tasks for their students. Creating a digital story by using essential applications is one of the easiest ways to do it. Now let's see the app that I used. It's Animoto! ♥ 

It's an easy video maker application for Android phones. You can create simple and cute videos using pictures, adding songs and texts. Now I'll show you a tutorial about how to use this app!

First, open the application you will see the first photo then tap the play button, this time you will see second photo then tap the pencil and add photos.

 

Choose your photos and add them as you see in the photos.

 

Tap on a photo to add a caption after adding captions your photos will look like in the third photo.

 

Then tap the pencil again and change style you can choose one of them. After tap the pencil to add song. Tap pencil again to add text, write title and subtitle as you see.

 

Tap play and your video will be ready to watch!

As you see it's really easy and free to use you can use it in your classes. By using this kind of application you can make learning fun. You can your students to prepare video about their favorite singers, animals or their holidays and daily life. Rather than using traditional ways it's more entertaining. 
Keep calm and use mobile apps in your classes!

Storytelling! ♥

Hi! Today I'm going to talk about storytelling! Yep, you can use storytelling in your language classes because everybody loves stories! You can use already existing stories, there are lots stories on the internet or you can create your stories using some tools like me and my friend Seden and Sevda did. We used Microsoft's Movie Maker but you can use Microsoft's Power Point, Photo Story or other tools that you find on the internet. Now I'll give more details about our story! First we created our story then we divided the parts and characters among us then it was time to record it! Well this time it was a failure because we bursted into laughter so many times any ruined the recordings. Finally we managed to record it as two separate parts and later combined them. Second, we had to create visuals for the video we found some photos and drew something then blend them using Adobe Photoshop. ^^ Third, we found music and sound effect suitable for the story and finally created a sound rich cute story! *-* To be honest it was a bit challenging but it was fun! We collaborated and saw how things works in a team task. I might not use it my lessons because it's hard to create a story! :D But I can use already existing ones! ^^   
Let's meet our story characters!

This is Ice Cream Princess!

 This is Ice Cream Princess' unicorn Buttercup!

This is Chili Pepper Joe! 

And finally this is Mr. Turtle!

Here the story we created is! Hope you like! ♥

Once upon a time in Sugar Land, there is a little girl called Ice cream Princess. She doesn't have any friends except from her unicorn Buttercup. Everybody finds her weird because of her passion about discovering other worlds. One day Ice Cream Princess and Buttercup decide to leave the country in pursuit of realizing their dreams. They take some food with them but after 3 days,they run out of food. They are hopeless and helpless.

Suddenly, they hear a sound! It is coming from bushes. They are at the edge of screaming but a Chili Pepper boy appear in that time. Seeing that they are helpless, he comes closer to Ice Cream Princess and says: Hi! My name is Chili Pepper Joe, I am a friend who comes from Chili Pepper Land. What's your name? Ice Cream Princess replies: Hi! My name is Ice Cream Princess and this is my unicorn Buttercup. We come from Sugar Land, we are looking for a place to live happily. Why are you here?
Chili Pepper Joe replies: I left my town, everybody looks down on me because I'm so tiny and I'm also looking for a place like you.
 
Chili Pepper Joe shares his food with them and they continue to walk together. suddenly they hear a sound and see an upturned turtle. Turtle says: "Oh, please can you help me? My feet are too short to turn." Ice Cream Princess and Chili Pepper Joe immediately help the turtle and turn him to together. Mr. Turtle: " Oh, thank you so much. Without you, I wouldn't be able to turn. I want to help you,too.  Chili Pepper Joe says: "You are welcome. We are looking for a place where we can live happily. Can you help us?" Mr. Turtle replies: That's easy, here take these tickets. I'm coming from there. The train will depart in 5 minutes from that stop." Suddenly a stop made up of candies appears. Ice Cream Princess and Chili Pepper Joe thank Mr. Turtle and go to the candy stop. They get on the train and they live happily ever after in Happyland! 

EnglishClass101.com ♥

http://www.englishclass101.com/

Hi! It's been a long time, isn't it? ^.^  Well, today I'm going to talk about EnglishClass101.com. It's an online website to learn English. You can find detailed information bout the website here. But I'm going to give a brief explanation about it anyway. Everyone who wants to learn English can use this site. *thumbs up* It has a huge team including 15 members. You can see the list here. 

First, you should create an account and activate it. Then you can start learning. At the beginning when you're joining the website you have to choose a level. I chose beginner level to show the process. There are 25 lesson in this level. The very first lesson begins with a greeting as usual. 

As you see, you can download audios and materials. 





There is a vocabulary list for each lesson you can see explanations for sentences and words, listen vocabularies and record your own voice and you can even compare your pronunciation with a native one. 

You can see your progress like this.

At the end of the each lesson there is a quiz as you see. 

 

 

As you see there are lots of resources you can benefit from. One of the best thing is the mobile apps *thumbs up*  It means that you can continue learning any time. 

There are also lots of videos you can benefit from. You can download and watch them again and again. There is a word list and a quiz for each video. :) 

There are also a flash cards. You can learn new word with using them. You see and listen the word given. 

Well by using sounds, videos it helps you to learn quicker also it sends you an email "word of the day" so it contributes your learning even if you don't involve in learning actively.  You learn grammar rules, daily life conversations, words with using EnglishClass101.com. I use Korean version of this website and I'm happy about it. ^^ 

Wikispaces

Hi! Today I'm going to talk about wikis. A wiki is an application, typically a web application, which allows collaborative modification, extension, or deletion of its content and structure. -Wikipedia
We use wikis in our daily life frequently, especially when searching or trying to find an information. Wikis are open sources and you can easily contribute them. But we can also use them for an educational purpose, right? For example, we can create an account for our class and add our students so that students can be active while learning. Before talking about my wiki project I want to give some links that we checked last week at the course.

https://www.wikispaces.com/
http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page (my favorite one :D)
These are the ones that I remember *sorry*
Anyway let's talk about my wiki project we use wikispaces. Our teacher create a wiki for us about our favorite book and each of us added a page and write something about the book that we chose. We also added some videos and photos too and learn how to use wiki and create an account it was fun for me and I found it really useful. I might think of using it in my course in the future. Things would be better if I wouldn't lose all the things that I write and write them from the beginning. I saved but it didn't work and also I didn't like the tools which is used for the edit the font, color etc. They are complicated. Even a little change can change the whole things and it gets worse. The simpler the better! Anyway it was fun. I like it.
So here is my book review!
https://ourfavouritebooks.wikispaces.com/Sherlock+Holmes
Have a nice day! ♥♥

Podcast ♥

Hi there! Today I'm going to talk about podcasting. First, I want to give a brief information about podcast. What is podcast?

"A podcast is a digital medium that consists of an episodic series of audio, video, digital radio, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed on-line to a computer or mobile device." -Wikipedia.

You can easily find a podcast about every topic for your English courses, or you can create one using recorder or podcasting websites like me and my friends did. Now I'm going to give some details about how we created a podcast.

First, it was a task given by our course teacher. There were 3 options and we chose creating a sound rich horror story. Well actually, it was a pair work but we were 3, me my friend Seden and Sevda. To be honest, I thought it was a burden and I wasn't enthusiastic at all but it was really fun. Me and Seden went to Sevda's home to create our story and meet Sevda's cat Kar. After playing with Kar and having lunch we decided to start our story. First, we wrote the script. Our teacher gave us the beginning of the story and we completed the rest. We created a character for each of us. Well, it had to be a sound rich story so we downloaded a lot of sound effect like storm, door knock, scream etc. Everything was ready but there was a problem 'how can we add these sound effects while recording our voice?' We thought to play them on the laptop but it might not be that easy. Then, we decided to sent the background sound to Seden's cell phone and other sound effects to my cell phone. Yep, everything was good, Sevda held the sript, I played the sound effects and Seden played the background sound and we used the voice recorder of the laptop. But in our first try the sound was not clear enough so we decided to use the microphone of the headphone. In our second try I couldn't hold my laugh and ruined the recording! :D But in our third and the last try we created a really entertaining recording. I know you wonder the recording so here it is! :D

Audio and voice recording >>

It was three o’clock in the morning and there was a storm outside. We were awake watching a horror film when suddenly the door was knocked...

Kate: Any volunteer? 

Seddy: Don't look at me no way.. 
Mel: It's your idea to watch horror film so go and open the door
Kate: you cowards OK, I'm gonna open it.
Kate: What happened? 
Mel: Someone poked me 
Seddy: It wasn't me
Kate: Me neither 
Mel: I know you're trying to scare me

Seddy: No please just calm down

Kate: Just stop it! I'm gonna open the door

...

Mel: Where is she?

Seddy: Yeah its been almost 10 minutes

Seddy: What the hell was that?

Mel: Yaa I'm scareddd. Kaaateee are you OK?

Seddy: Kateee i feel like something bad happened, I'm gonna take a look 

Mel: No Don't leave me alonee...

Seddy: It's OK, I'll be back in a second 

Mel: OK Mel calm down I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid

Mel: Kate, Seddy is that youu? heyy it's not funny you know 

Mel: Omg! what's that? Kate Seddy 

Seddy/Kate: You should have come with us

Kate: You missed a lot by not coming to panic house

Mel: It was all for just a stupid game, I could've die here

Seddy: You didn't come with us so we brought the game to you

THE END~

*Me as Mel, Sevda as Kate, Seden as Seddy

Hello! ♥

Hello! This is my first post. ^^ I started this blog for my Technology & Materials Design course. I'll share my experiences about the course and what I learned from the course. Hope we enjoy the time during the term. ^^ Please feel free to contact. 
Have a nice day!