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Blog of the Week #5

This week, I want to give the Blog of the Week Award to a number of teachers. These blogs belong to teachers who on several occasions complained about the fact that their computer skills were not sufficient enough even to fulfill some course requirements, let alone create a blog. However, as you will see, determination and as far as I have been told, devoting a substantial amount of time (many many hours, days, weeks) has made them some kind of blog masters. I want to thank them for their efforts and hope they keep on blogging. Here they are:

Rejin Kalvo

Serap İpekçi

Sevgi Etker

Nuşin Altınakar

Rina Eskanazi

Haldun Onuk

Alev Çil

Tomris Akşit

Gülden Tetikel

Blog of the Week #4

As you know, last week was a holiday and I couldn't choose my blog of the week. This week, I have only one winner because this blog is a great one and deserves a full review. So, let there be light in the blogosphere:

This weeks winner is (insert drum roll here):

Bengü Kağan with her fab blog Bengü Hodja and FabClass B21

This is a blog that has everything we need to make students both active and responsible learners. Bengü seems to have found the perfect balance between academic concern and leisure (which might not be leisure at all!!). She applies many strategies to attract the students to her blog and I believe she is successful. 

Not only does she share her personal choices in terms of music and cinema, she also wants the students to participate and asks their choices as well. She demonstrates this by posting her favorites (movies and songs), but also shares the favorites of her students (Didar's Favorite). 

On the right tab of the blog, you can find polls that are related to classroom issues (again in a humourous manner) and a list which is dedicated to students' favorites.

Another strategy she applies is to reflect classroom atmosphere in her blog by posting a picture of the classroom while students are working on something. Again she she shares her feelings with the classroom in a humourous way.

Bengü also manages to integrate a different piece of technology by using a speaking avatar created with Voki.  She recorded her own voice to remind her students about something important or to make an announcement. In addition, she calls that section "hear me out" which I believe is a very good title for such a series of posts.

In conclusion, this blog is definitely a very good example for a class blog. You can find everything from Powerpoint and Prezi presentations to pictures and videos. All of them are somehow related to classroom teaching points and the students' lives. Isn't that what we should be doing: making connections with their lives?

Keep on blogging Bengü...

Blog of the Week #3

Another week has passed and it is time to announce my winners of week 3. Let's see...

I want to start with Nida Arıcan's Blog. Again, it is a very simple blog with no widgets or gadgets at all. However, she has succeeded in getting her students' attention with only two posts. Using the movie "Signs" in her post together with her Crop Circles post generated some real language use without academic concerns. Finding a common interest of your students is one way to get their attention in your blog. Hope they keep on writing with you, Nida.

The next one is Gonca Ünsalan's Blog. Especially her TGIF post where she shares some personal information about herself. This kind of information attracts the students' attention and we see that it has worked here as well. Combining this strategy with music and a question about the students' choice is also cleverly handled. Don't stop, keep rockin' B27 Gonca.

The next blog that I have chosen is Gonca Türsoy's blog. This is a good example for teachers who wholeheartedly try to get their students' attention by posting material that has the potential to attract attention. Her last post is really funny and ironic in the way it shows how students might be perceiving blogs. I hope she won't lose interest and give up. Keep on blogging Gonca...

Blog of the Week #2

This week I have four blogs of the week. The reason why I have four is that each one has a different appeal. Let's take a look at them:





Blog of the Week: Effort: Birgül Kasap's Class Blog
The moment you take a look at her blog you can see that she has spent a lot of time. She has different tabs at the top of her page which help you navigate to different pages and those pages are filled with valuable information. This must have taken a lot of time and I believe she should be credited for that effort.

Blog of the Week: Less is More: Merve Sağlar, Şenay Soylu, Pelin Yurtyapan

I have chosen these blogs because of their simple layout and clever ways to stimulate student comments. I believe that less is more and that using all those widgets is just tiring to the eye. I would suggest not using 3rd party widgets because they also include Google ads which I find unnecessary for a class blog (unless you get 45.000 hits a day!). Here they are:

Merve Sağlar:

She has only two posts so far but already 10 comments for her 1st post. That is something for a C56 class.

Şenay Soylu:

Her "What is the message of this song" post not only started a little discussion about world issues but also stimulated real situation language use ("...you still dont accept me on facebook ? :D why?"), which what we are actually after.

Pelin Yurtyapan

Pelin achieved the same with her "Birds" post, where she embedded a Pixar video and asked what the birds were talking about. This made the students write funny conversations to a funny animation. (You should watch it if you haven't seen it yet)

That's it for this week.
Keep blogging...

Blog of the Week

Every week, I will choose "a Blog of the Week" by our teachers here at Yeditepe University. I will take design and effort into consideration. These factors might change from week to week depending on how you treat me that week!!!! This week my favorite is Kemal Kılıç's blog. Please visit it and leave a comment here and there...
Nice job Kemal!

Here is the link:  http://kemkilic.blogspot.com/

Enjoy...