ELT Z Website | Final Product of our Training Program

    Hello dears! How have you been? I have great news for you. We had the last presentation meeting with all the groups and our instructors. As you know, I have been working at my dear instructor Melda YILMAZ's PhD research project, 21st century Skills Training and Project Based Learning, for 11 weeks. After our intensive 6-week theory-based training program, we had a 5-week practice and product creation section. In the first section, we worked on various skills and topics such as global language, critical thinking skills, digital literacy skills, information literacy skills and in the second section, we designed a website as a product. You can learn about the whole process by reading my previous blog posts. Today, I will briefly explain our website, also mention about my friends' products and I'd like to talk about my overall opinions about the program.

    We created our website on 'English As a Global Language and Its Pedagogical Implications' topic by using different tools. We had already worked on this issue in the training sessions, we were all interested in this controversial topic and we realized there wasn't enough content in terms of implications. Thanks to our sessions, I learned that English doesn't belong to any nations but to the whole world. Then, I questioned 'So, why do we teach only these two accents and cultures?' I revised my learning experience and realized I was exposed to British/American accent during my foreign language education as well. The topic choice was excellent for me so that I was always motivated while doing researches and creating activities. I thank all my ELT Z group members for their hard work. We managed to work collaboratively, we were always in contact and covering each other when needed. We have written lots of articles, reviewed the previous projects on this topic and we wrote research papers in four different subtopics, which were the idea of a global language, ELT practices all over the world, ELT practices in Turkey, and nativism and its drawbacks. Then, we created four different activities to present how to apply this global language idea in the classroom. You can click on the link below to visit our website and see our amazing product. ELT Z gururla sunar :)

https://eltz.weebly.com/

Many thanks to dear Musa BAYTUR for their collages.

Now, I'd like to introduce my friends' websites briefly.

• https://nongenderedelt.weebly.com/

This website is wonderful! They aim to create a change in ELT practices in order to dethrone patriarchy, andercentrism and heteronormativity and to crown gender inclusivity and diversity. They explain the reasons of the problems, the Queer Theory and Feminist Theory. After the identification of problems, they offer solutions to the problems such as gender inclusive language teaching and they present different tasks and activities. I highly suggest you to visit their website!

• https://syncinedu.weebly.com/
  

In this excellent website, you will get informed about a popular topic in today's world, synchonous online distance learning in ELT. Because of the pandemic situations, there has been a great shift to technology integration and synchronous learning in education. And teachers who are inexperienced in the use of instructional technologies have had many problems since the start of distance education.  They have researches on this topic, present a survey they made with students about their perceptions and opinions about technology use and they offer plenty of different digital tools. Go and check it!

• https://newvisionelt.weebly.com/
  

This amazing website offers you a very detailed information about the technology use in language learning. They explain the advantages of it, latest trends in language teaching and future directions and they also give examples of activities with digital tools. If you are interested in creating fun and interactive lessons, this website is a great opportunity for you!

    Just WOW! I feel so proud even while writing this post. I won't be humble at this point, we all have created amazing products. I am looking back on the very first day of our training program and revising the whole process now. We have been through a delightful journey. I feel myself cultivated and equipped at the end of it. I feel content whenever I use the tools or apply whatever I learned in the sessions. Meanwhile, I am upset to write my last blog post about this program. It was a great joy to work with such a team. I feel myself lucky and I am very grateful for our dear instructor Melda YILMAZ and our dear teacher Assist. Prof. Dilek INAL to give us a chance to participate in this project. Thank you, my dear readers, for being with me in this journey. I am looking forward to sharing my work and meeting you. Until then, take care and stay healthy. Love.

Zey.