21st Century Style Courses / Blogging - An Evaluation

Hi everybody!

Today in this post I am going to talk about all my experiences and reviews  about my material class and my blogging process. 

Well my first thoughts about keeping a blog was not positive to be honest. It is because of I always found myself non-creative and not a writer type. Actually I was right about it for a short time. I don't think I did explain my self in a natural way in the first posts but after a few posts I began to get used to it. Blogging became like talking to a friend more than just writing some words. So I can say I liked it.

About our course. Firstly before taking the class, I thought "Oh my god we are going to waste our time by preparing some posters,handouts,papers etc." But when our teacher introduced the lesson for the first time, I got this feeling " I am going to learn something useful, something related to technology."

We were introduced to how to use technology (some websites,applications,wikis,podcasts,web-tools,etc.) in English Language Teaching.We learned  to choose appropriate tool for appropriate tasks. We learned to become not only  21st century learners but also teachers.

Actually during blogging process, sometimes I had hard times to do somethings like adding video, embedding links, creating a proper post etc. Furthermore I had some difficulties while doing my task like recording my voice for podcast, creating a story and making appropriate edits for digital story telling task, but despite all these difficulties at the end of my studies, when I look the outcome, I felt amazing,happy, enjoyed. Because I really like the feeling of achieving something. During this course, I always felt these feelings.

Only if this course has a prequel or sequel course because I think there is no limitation in

technology, there are more and more tools,websites,applications etc. So if there was one more term for this course, It would be great.

I think I will be keeping a blog for other purposes like reviewing about movies,games and TV series. For this blog I will try to find and share useful materials and information about ELT.

The picture above is taken from here.

The picture bellow is taken from here.

Thank you,

Ahmet Enes

Lingualeo - A Mobile Learning App

Hello everyone!

Today I am going to introduce you a mobile learning app. I selected English with Lingualeo. It is an interactive application aims to teach English.

Firstly when you enter the app, you have to log-in  with an account. After you log-in, It ask some personal questions about yourself like: your age, sex, how often you want to study, how do you feel about your skills in English and your interests.

After you have done giving personal information then your grammar skills are tested trough a quiz. This test is done so as to the application can determine you grammar level, your strengths and weaknesses. Later the application ask you What is your aim to learn English ? You have plenty options I can say like for an special exam ( e.g TOEFL), for business, for myself, for improve my skills or for my English level.

After you have selected your aim, you have a lot of activities,options and sections to achieve it. In My Profile section you can see and follow your progress. In Materials section you can find a lot of videos about different topics. In Grammar Courses  section you can find grammar topics, in this section you can read the courses then you will be tested if you have understood the topic. In Words and Phrases section you can find lots of words and phrases divided into sub-groups. In this section you can select the words or phrases you don't know to add your dictionary.

Lastly there is  Exercises and My Dictionary section. In Exercises section you can work with word and their meanings while in My Dictionary section you can follow which words or phrases you are to learn or you have learned and you can listen pronunciation of any word you want.

Well as a conclusion I can say I found this application very useful. It is both for children and adults.You can find a lot of material in it. As it is a mobile app, you can take it anywhere you want and you can continue your learning anytime you want. This is what mobile learning means so I like mobile learning ! The only negative thing I found about this app is that there are more contents but only if you are premium user. So if you want more contents you have to pay for it but anyway I think free contents should do good enough.

Here is the link for the application you can look and download it from here.

All pictures above are taken by me while using the application.

Thanks,
Ahmet Enes