Dear all,

Please find the updates and news for this week below:

1. ‘A More Sustainable ScOLa’ Session by Khosro Vahabi

One of our colleagues, Khosro Vahabi, gave a session on the plastic pollution and the ways of being more sustainable at ScOLa. Since our students might also benefit from this session, Khosro kindly accepted to give it as a SEC101 seminar to OZU students in the upcoming weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Justin Quin’s Session

Justin Quinn, the Managing Director of CES Centre of English Studies and the current chair of EAQUALS, gave a session on how a successful language school in 2025 will differ from today.

3. H5P Activity Module on LMS Session by Ervin Ostos & Jose Cruz

Our colleagues Ervin Ostos and Jose Cruz will give a session on The H5P activity module in Moodle 3.5. You can find the details below:

DATE/TIME: 31st January 9:00-10:30

VENUE: ScOLa 326

THE H5P ACTIVITY MODULE:

The H5P activity module in Moodle 3.5* enables you to create interactive content such as Interactive Videos, Question Sets, Drag and Drop Questions, Multi-Choice Questions, Presentations and much more. It is much easier than the LMS Quiz activities and involves more interaction and gamification.

In addition to being an authoring tool for rich content, H5P enables you to import and export H5P files for effective reuse and sharing of content.

User interactions and scores are tracked using xAPI and are available through the LMS Gradebook.

* The H5P activity module was added to Moodle with the request of MLP SPA instructor Ervin Ostos in Fall 2018.

**Instructors are requested to bring their laptops to the session.

4. Common Time Professional Development Sessions

You can find the list of the sessions that are going to be held in the Spring Semester below:

WEEK(S) PRESENTERS  TITLE BRIEF INFORMATION
 2  Deniz Bağcı  A Research on Effects of Reflective Writing on Critical Thinking Skills and Success in Writing Exams  In this session, participants will be informed about a detailed research on the effects of reflective writing. They will be informed about the starting point of the research, the methodology of it, how qualitative and quantitative data were collected and how those data were analyzed. The results of the research might give different ideas to English teachers who want to employ reflective writing in their classes. Besides, this session might be useful for the ones wanting to conduct research in the future.
 4  Eray Sevingil Bilici  The Fight is between Two Wolves: Self-Regulation  In this session, the participants will have the opportunity to discuss how to keep their learners self-regulated. The presenter will briefly talk about the theories and touch on some tips to foster self-regulation.
 6  Sultan Zeydan  Six Thinking Hats in the Classroom  The session aims at providing a general insight into using Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats concepts to improve students’ problem-solving abilities. During the session, the participants will gain an understanding of parallel thinking using the Six Thinking Hats method and learn about some sample classroom activities I used with my students.
 9  Meltem Yılmaz  Spolin Improvisational Techniques in the Classroom  In this session, the participants will have the opportunity to explore the improvisation techniques of Viola Spolin as a teaching and communication tool through social interaction and collaboration. Spolin’s approach focuses on fostering creativity through sense of spontaneity and game playing.
 12  Wioleta Wenclawek  Personalization- a tool boosting university students’ motivation  This session aims at showing practical activities that the teachers could use in the classroom and their implications to boost their students’ motivation. In this session, we will touch upon some theory connected to motivation as well as reflect on how much we do to boost our students’ motivation.
 14  Tuğba Yıldırım  At the Intersection of Technology and Pedagogy: Enhancing Learners’ Motivation  In this session, the presenter aims to clarify how instruction at the intersection of technology and pedagogy boosts learners’ motivation to learn English, sharing the knowledge base necessary for the technology integration and applicable examples of classroom practices.
 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 & 15  Kezban Altuntas  Reading Club  Reading club aims to allow participant instructors to become a community of learners by reading and discussing professional literature on the dynamics of classroom communication. Through reflective dialogues, participants will have opportunities to think about and reflect on their current practices and tendencies. They will also have the chance to interact with one another to hear different perspectives on effective classroom communication conducive to creating partnership within their classrooms. Sessions will be held biweekly starting from week 3 and the method of post-reading-idea-sharing will be decided together with the participants.

5. Meeting of Change Agents (MOCA) 2019 Application

Meeting of Change Agents (MOCA) 2019 will be held at Sabancı University to discuss the theme “Creativity and Challenge in Learning”. If you would like to participate in this meeting with one of your students, please contact TLDU by 16.30, 15.02.2019.

For further information, please refer to their website: https://mocaturkey.wordpress.com/.

You can also refer to the reflection of our colleague, Saadet Sahin, who attended this meeting last year with one of her students.

The link for the reflection

6. Cambridge University Press Webinar: Teens together: collaborative learning and project work by Daniel Vincent

Well-structured collaboration in class, especially project work, is an ideal way for teachers to help their teenage students develop a range of life competencies. In this webinar we’ll look at the benefits of collaborative projects, the best ways to set them up and run them, and how to avoid the problems that might arise when doing them. We’ll also look at a number of examples of projects that you can use with your own students.

DATE: 4 February 2019

TIME: 12:00 GMT

REGISTRATION LINK

 

Wish all of us a great new module!