Very Cool Website "Voscreen"

      Hi all, it's me again! In this post I will introduce you a website called "Voscreen". At first I want to say that this website can help you to practice your vocabulary knowledge and you can learn some new words via funny videos.
   
      The creator of the "Voscreen" is Deniz Dündar and he graduated from METU.  Here is an interview with him about the site.



      The website has a lot of short videos. The system of the website is watching videos, listening the sentences and trying to translate them in your language. This method is very useful to learn new words, for example I didn't know what "requisite" means but while I was capturing a screenshot for this post I learned it! It means "gerekli, elzem" in Turkish.

      Voscreen has videos from at the level of the kids to advanced level, so anyone can sign up and start to watch videos and practice. It aims to teach words without using a dictionary so the learner can learn and use these words fluently.

      The website doesn't have any update time written on it and the videos are all high quality and I think they appeal the target audience. For example the next screenshot is taken from kids section and the video taken from a animated film "Toy Story 3":

     How To Use?

     When you select the level, you see a video. After it finishes two button appears and the website wants you to choose one. The button on the left doesn't show the subtitle but the right one does.

With Subtitle 

Without Subtitle

      In EFL teaching, a teacher can use this website as a second vocabulary practising tool, so I recommend this website to Teachers.

Tayfun Erdoğmuş

An Amazing System! RSS!

   Hi all, it's me again! In this post I will write about "what is RSS?", "RSS readers" and "my favourite blog that I follow from a reader". Let's begin with the very first question, what is RSS?

RSS (Rich Site Summary; often called Really Simple Syndication) uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information: blog entries, news headlines, audio, video. An RSS document (called "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author's name.

      As stated at the quote that I took from Wikipedia, RSS helps us to reach blogs or any other channels easily and at that point we use "RSS readers". Using a RSS reader is the easiest way to see the newest posts that are published.
      
      I'm using FeedReader to follow a blog. It's about technology and mostly ELT teachers and its name is "Nik's Learning Technology Blog For English Language Teachers". ELT teachers may follow that blog in order to find new styles and softwares to use.

Tayfun Erdoğmuş

We Wrote a Wiki Page! Review!

      Hi all, it's me again! This is the first time that we wrote a review on a "Wiki" page and again Seda Çolak was with me.

      This week our task was creating a wiki page and writing a review of a film and we did it. It wasn't as hard as we thought and we didn't have any problem. After a long discussion we decided to write the review of the film that we watched a year ago "Life of Pi". I hope you will like it while you are reading our review.

      I want to say that using the wiki in the classroom is not very effective at all but it also has advantages too. If you want to use a wiki page, you should know that almost anyone can make changes on your wiki page. This means if you put an important information one of your students or anyone that has the access to the link can change anything on the page. But using the wiki pages for group works and doing tasks collaboratively could help you to see what your students do or write.

      Click here to go to our wiki page.

      The screenshots of our wiki page:

Tayfun Erdoğmuş

My First Podcast! (Unbelievable Dream)

      Hi all, it's me again! This is my first podcast post and I worked with Seda Çolak.

      We created a sound rich story and vocalized it together. We found the effects on the internet and edited our recordings with them. This podcast is suitable for all learners but especially young learners and beginners can benefit from this kind of stories. So the language we used is not too complicated. We didn't have any problem while recording our sounds and finding the sound effects. But creating a story was the hardest part.

      I also recommend that teachers should use podcasts for their students because they can listen podcasts over and over. This feature of podcasting can be very beneficial for students because it may improve their listening skills, improve their learning etc..

      Thank you for reading my blog and listening the podcast. I will be waiting for your comments.. :)




      You can listen it down below:

Tayfun Erdoğmuş