AI in ELT

 It's Time to Be A Fashion Designer!

      Hello and welcome again, everyone! I am back with the final assignment of the fall term. For this task, we created AI-integrated teaching material for EFL high school preparatory students, aiming to enhance learning through AI tools.

      Our target learners are high school preparatory students, and we designed a fun, fashion-design related activity supported by AI tools. Our focus is writing, and the activity is based on Theme 3: Personal Life. It includes three sections: Pre-task, Target-task, and Post-task, and can be used to integrate AI use into lessons. We also prepared an ASSURE lesson plan.

      The process went smoothly from start to finish. The part we spent most time on was deciding the skill focus and theme. My partner, Yasemin, and I shared responsibilities equally and worked well together. I especially liked our ideas for various tasks: Generating AI fashion model images, getting feedback for the created fashion models, then commenting on them like fashion designers. It made the assignment really fun for me.

See you!

My Peer: Yasemin Sağır

Our AI-Integrated Teaching Material:

• https://www.canva.com/design/DAG8tepm2XQ/-MsMtqnmnmkDrEw5zqO7mA/view?utm_content=DAG8tepm2XQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h4e2e78c3c5
  

The ASSURE Lesson Plan: 

• https://marmaraedutr-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/yasemin_sagir_marun_edu_tr/IQDze2qo5KG2TbW5iTvn6K8BAXJKC8m0qST6-jG-U4gTjnk?e=0u7cC0

FEEDBACK SESSION:

     After the feeedback session, we made some minor changes with my peer Yasemin. We added the general title on the first page, deleted the style names under the pictures and numbered the instructions.

2nd Draft:

• https://www.canva.com/design/DAG9qWyKfNI/yeZsNhpzyiJS5ksy58WShA/view?utm_content=DAG9qWyKfNI&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=hbf8bccf978
  

AR/VR Integration into ELT

 Exploring Shanghai, China without Going There

    Yes, you have read it right. Thanks to this assignment and AR/VR technology, even with a limited sources, we were able to take a short virtual trip to Shanghai, China.

    For this assignment, we were supposed to create an augmented/virtual reality integrated teaching material for high school English preparatory class students. As a group of four, we chose Shanghai as the city to integrate into our material. First, we selected two landmarks to introduce: the Oriental Pearl Tower and Yu Yuan Garden. Then, we chose the Shanghai Natural History Museum for the museum introduction section. Later, to include a cultural aspect, we decided to add the Spring Festival. After each VR trip, we added various questions for the students to answer in order to help them practice and check their comprehension. At the end of the material, students need to write a letter to either their best friend or a family member, describing their trip to Shanghai and their overall experience.

   The process of this particular assignment was quite smooth for me. From the beginning, we shared each task equally and communicated clearly with each another. Whenever something was unclear, we asked our teammates for clarification and this helped us to avoid any possible problem during the preparation process. Working with my team mates made the assignment both productive and enjoyable for me.

     I believe that integrating AR/VR into education, especially into language classrooms, is quite beneficial. Many people learn best by doing things and experiencing them in natural or realistic environments, and virtual reality provides this opportunity. It allows students to feel more engaged and motivated while learning a new language. Therefore, I believe that AR/VR technologies should be integrated into our current education system more actively to create a more immersive and effective language learning experience.

My teammates are:

• Aslı Özyıldırım
• Beyza Zabun
• Yasemin Sağır

This is our teaching material:

• https://www.canva.com/design/DAG7fCrQ9ZI/M8WcYBKjmp_82uswT__vgw/edit?utm_content=DAG7fCrQ9ZI&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

This is the ASSURE lesson plan:

• https://marmaraedutr-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/yasemin_sagir_marun_edu_tr/IQCxR_Erz9wnRIfJnB6NCKNBASSQlSg4xe52SckNXn24blw?e=KX7JaH

FEEDBACK SESSION:

       After the feedback session, we made some minor changes in our material and the lesson plan. We changed the instructions of the first part: The Oriental  Pearl Tower and also added one more question (question number three).

      For the second part: Yu Yuan Garden, the instructions were revised as well. Also question number three is changed from "What can you tell about the history of Yu Yuan Garden?" to "What have you learned about the history of Yu Yuan Garden?".

         For the last part, we added two guinding questions and changed the placement of the question number three and four to include factual questions first and then the personal questions. 

      We changed and edited the lesson plan based on the second draft of our teaching material. 

This is the 2nd draft of our teaching material:

• https://www.canva.com/design/DAG8ImgfqS4/HLnKGK6Pi6aDj28j8AAtXg/edit?utm_content=DAG8ImgfqS4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

This is the 2nd draft of the ASSURE lesson plan:

• https://marmaraedutr-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/hilalyildirim23_marun_edu_tr/IQB39XK8oIWUTJ9P9MqbB0wwAdRyWFSqaH7OcxSXyxFIuh8?e=HVKubt
  

Flipped Classroom Approach

 Flipping a Classroom: An Innovative Way of Teaching

 When I first heard about the flipping classroom approach, I was really surprised and tought "How can you even flip a classroom? What an interesting consept!". Do not worry if it is your first time encontering this concept, because I will explain it right now. It is basically an approach that enables teachers to pre teach the lesson before coming to the physical classroom so that students can actually have time to practice and actively engage with the relevant material in the classroom. 

  When it comes to the advantages and disadvantages, with the help of this approach, time constraints and limited practice would be minimized. Teachers could detect what students have learned and what they are lacking. Also, more practice could ensure a more permanent learning.

 Unfortunately, nothing comes without its downsides. The inaccesibility to the internet or technological devices can hinder the process. Also, if the students do not fullfill their responsibilities on time, such as watching the pre-recorded lesson videos, in class activities could be meanigless for them. 

 For our task, we were supposed to create a flipped teaching video for 5th grade public school students. We chose to teach them some vocabulary items and our topic is "Animals".

  Finding and deciding on a video creating tool was not easy. However, all of us did some research and lastly decided to use "Powtoon" as our tool. Powtoon is a nice platform that has various elements such as animations, visual effects and editing tools. It helped us a lot while creating our video however, not being able to work at the same time was a huge problem for us and we had to take turns to edit the video. That's why, while two of us edited the video other two found the materials to use in it such as the pictures, audio etc. Everyone took a part in the creation process and we divided the voiceover into equal parts. At the end, we managed to create the video together! :)

My teammates are: Aslı Özyıldırım, Beyza Zabun and Yasemin Sağır 

You can watch the the video from this link:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc7Q5eKNWUM
  

This is the ASSURE lesson plan:

• https://marmaraedutr-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/hilalyildirim23_marun_edu_tr/IQD-mQFRotlyRaw48HvMCwG4AWM-jpy05wCsFALxy75rdDE?e=nQG0AY

This is the link of the tool we used:

• https://www.powtoon.com/

 For the second draft, we added the voiceover and made some small changes such as adding 

new visual elements etc. Also, we finished some parts of the ASSURE lesson plan that were not complete before.