Website Evaluation: ESLgold

 This week’s task is to write a post about an ELT website specifically designed for English learners. My choice of a website is ESLgold. At first, the website did not seem that appealing but when I went over it, I saw that it actually offered plenty of materials and resources for both learners and teachers of English. Materials include teaching ideas, lesson plans, worksheets, quizzes, flashcards, audio and videos of various topics. Sections are well organized by topic, skill and level thus everything is just so easy to find. Learners can improve their English language skills with fun activities. They can test themselves, listen to podcasts, watch videos of their preferred topic and even find a tutor online to practice their speaking skills. Teachers can as well benefit from the website through easy-to-reach lesson plans, worksheets and teaching tips to improve their classroom practice. They can use games at the end of their lesson. They can also give homework to be done online through the website. 

  Even though the website provides effective materials to learn and teach English, it also has some downsides. Firs of all, the website lacks of appealing visuals to attract learners. I actually did not like the overall layout of the website. It could have been designed in a much better way. I also did not like the fact that the website has advertisements and I think they surely need to be taken down. I could not come across to any errors or broken links on the website besides some minor mistakes like using capital letters wrong.  I really like the vast amount of materials and resources the website provides. I recommend teachers to pay a visit to this website mostly because it helps save their time with lesson plans and worksheets, offers useful teaching tips as well as easy-to-use various teaching materials. 

About RSS Feed

  This week’s task is to write a post about RSS feed and the blogs we follow. We are supposed to choose one of the blogs we follow and explain what it is about and why we recommend teachers to follow that blog.

  It is beneficial to start off with explaining what exactly RSS is and for what purpose it is used. RSS is an abbreviation for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. It is basically a feeding format to which internet users subscribe in order to keep track of their favorite websites including blogs. RSS feed allows users to see summaries of the latest feeds from their favorite websites in one place instead of checking each website separately to see if there is a new feed or a content uploaded. My personal preference of a software is RSS Feedreader as it is quite simple and free. I currently follow fifteen educational blogs for English Language Teaching. My favorite, however, is ELT Resourceful by Rachael Roberts. The blog mostly provides teaching ideas and tips for English teachers to improve themselves. Rachael Roberts, as a professional materials writer, gives advice on creating effective lesson plans as well as sharing her own lesson materials, activities and plans that can be downloaded. Her blog also provides different aspects of methodology for teachers interested in that area. I strongly recommend her blog for teachers who can use some help on improving their teaching, developing their own materials and producing practical lesson plans for their students. 

Wiki Project – PK Film Review

 This week’s project is Wiki. My partner Elçin Çepni and I worked together on this project again. Our assignment was to review a film we both watched. We were supposed to imagine as if we were writing a film review for a school magazine. We decided to review the movie “PK”.

I found this project much easier than the previous podcasting project mostly because my partner and I had no difficulty finding a movie. I guess I am lucky to have similar interests with her. We just had a bit of difficulty at the beginning of our writing process as we did not know what points of the movie to include exactly. But eventually we had our way around and we ended up with a long review. We managed to shorten it as much as possible, though.

To be honest, I had fun with this project. I had a chance to have a long and a really nice talk about the movie with my partner. We talked about the important aspects of the movie and we found ourselves discussing philosophy. It made me realized that PK is a movie worth watching more than once!

I think wikis can be used in a classroom setting for the purpose of making students more creative and active in the learning process. Wikis are easy to use and they also encourage collaborative work so that students can improve their communication skills while doing their task. 

Anyway, here is our wiki project: Direct link to Wiki

Podcast Project – Volunteer to install a green wall in hospitals

This week's project is podcasting. My partner Elçin Çepni and I worked together on this project. Our assignment was to find a creative idea to improve the world and make it a better place to live in. We had only 60 seconds to talk about the idea. It seemed rather short to me but it was kind of what made the task challenging. Trying to find an inspiring idea was also not easy as we usually came up with some basic or simple ideas that could not be used. But we at last managed to come up with an inspiring idea. We had to discuss a bit to improve our idea, though.. as we wanted to make the best out of it. Our idea is to encourage people to volunteer to help install a living green wall at least in one hospital. As green walls are increasingly becoming popular both on the outside and inside of houses or apartments -especially- in Europe, we thought that they can actually be used to serve a greater purpose and that’s how we came up with the idea of installing them in hospitals. We also thought of installing them in schools but it looked like a tough task for children to do as it is not as simple as planting a flower in a pot. 

After we had our idea, we spent some time to write everything down in an elaborate way but it turned out to be too long. We had to shorten it multiple times until it perfectly fit in 60 seconds. Even then we had to speak a bit fast when we recorded our voices.

I think this task would be suitable for high school students and I would recommend it to teachers to implement it in their classes because it enables students to interact with each other while doing the task. They can exchange ideas and improve their speaking skills at the same time. 

Anyway, here is our podcast project: