A new online course :Achieving writing expertise

The following is our warm-up :) activity:

Hello everyone,
It feels great to be here surrounded by all those fond of  writing :)
Actually, before watching the video I wouldn't have called myself "a writer since - to me - it was an attribute to be found in the ones with a published book accompanied by a prize or so. Having watched the video and completed the activity with timeline, I now understand that I have always preferred to express myself on paper or something readable.
While doing the timeline activity, I remembered the little me writing pages of letters to the pen pals living away, keeping a diary or writing notes on friends' memory notebooks.. then in secondary and highshool all those notebooks full of poems or half-finished stories.....
I can never forget the time when I was a freshman because it was then  when I started to understand what writing in academic context meant since I had to struggle to get a passing grade in my composition class.It was rather complicated to adapt to the style of academic thinking and scripting it on paper in an organized way. I tried hard very hard to transform my so called "stream of conscious" into a coherent and unified body. That's one of those periods in life, the one the value of which you understand only years  later, to be exact when I started teaching academic writing at university level.      
I shouldn't forget to include all the essays, research papers I submitted as course requirements during my both graduate and postgraduate education as well as the master's thesis.
Before putting down my last words, my electronic writing journey is also worth mentioning, with the urge of reflecting on anything readable I started blogging first to keep the memorable moments of my daughter constantly fresh and then to stay updated professionally. I am now the writer of these two blogs too.
Why have I decided to take this online course? 
To achieve writing expertise :) and motivate myself to write more since I believe, I better understand myself as a teacher and an individual through writing, and contribute a lot to my professional and personal life.

Mindmap

Here 's what I am planning to create  for my e-textbook project: a mindmap for my e-textbook

About e-textbooks

Week 2: Discussion questions
1)Which visual elements do you think are important for your learners?
colorful pictures & images
tables & graphic organizers & flow charts
2)What are your thoughts about the future of textbooks?
I agree with the idea that they will be more prevalent.In my institution we are using a coursebook supplemented by an itool and most days I teach with the itool without referring to the printed book (even though I am a traditional reader who adore the touch and smell of paper :)) But the itool eases my life in the class extraordinarily- no more file opennigs to search for a track, just one click for an answer key or scripts) I believe in the near future students will be buying those itools but not the books. Once in my classroom, a student had forgotten to bring one of his books that day, he just took the picture of certain pages from his friend's book with his smart phone and  read from his phone and did all the task.Nothing is impossible for them :) I couldn't even get angry for his irresponsibility as he was that creative :) lol 
3)How do you believe digital textbooks should be designed to best match learner's needs?
I believe everyone can benefit a lot from etextbooks if they ......
*are user friendly (not all the learners are digital  natives)
*have simple icons to lead through the pages
 *have direct links to appropriate websites (be it an online dictionary, wikipedia or any relevant website)
*direct links to audio/ audio-visual materials (difficult to search through a huge list of tracks)
*downloadable
*have interactive exercises for self-study
*enable students to communicate with the instructor via instant messaging or emailing
*allow file sharing (for writing/speaking assignments) and feedback

Again

That's for sure now...I need to be taking an online course to reflect here on this blog. Anyway, the course is on EVO again.It's titled "Creating e-perfect textbook".I'm doing much better this time because I've been able to complete the tasks of first two weeks. The following presentation is for second week's task: outlining the principles of our prospective e-book.I enjoyed using the tool (prezi) a lot :)

a new electronic journey

Hi ...  again..:) I've mentioned the online course I'm taking before. It is EVO Digital Story Telling for YLs 2013. I've been interested in teaching English to very young learners since my daughter's birth. The course has started today. It seems to be really fun and the idea of getting acquainted with new tools to create digital stories is exciting. I've played with photopeach, x-tranormal and storybird so far and enjoyed them all a lot.

I'll be learning about Digital Storytelling through another online course starting on 14th January and continuing five weeks onwards. Really excited I am... the following is how I've started ...ooopss captions are Turkish ... :) bir demet Asya on PhotoPeach

the new term

It's been ages since I last wrote here..
The new term has already started. Midterms are ahead of us, in two weeks time, to be precise.
This term there is only one course I am teaching- English 1 / 2 hours per week, but to 11 different classes, the sizes of which range from XXL to XL :) - maximum 120 students to minimum 60. wow.. what an experience with large classes ha ??
It is technology but nothing which saves my life. Otherwise it would really be difficult to draw the attention of such large groups and keep them quiet. I shouldn't forget to say that to be a bit flexible with attendance also helps :)

Compared to last year, there is little variety in the use of online materials in my classes. Unfortunately, no virtual class platforms, online assignments or webquests.... just the pages of book always projected on the board or wall, a few supplementary videos from popular ESL websites. Nevertheless, even these help a lot because the students attending regulary have poor English backgrounds and aren't used to being exposed to such visuals.They really appreciate them. Of course lots of things could be tried with these groups, but the low frequency of our weekly meetings and the limited class hours are the obstacles in front of me now. Hopefully, next term, as I 'll have the broad picture in my mind, I might try out some other online tools with at least a few of these groups.