Knock Knock Knock

We are learning techniques and principles of education in our classes. And we mentioned about disabled students. So our teacher, Professor Esra Akgül Macaroğlu, wants us to prepare a storyboard scenario to regain disabled students and motivate them in the classroom. Me and my teammates Melih Kargın, Behiç Gürsoy and Aykut Kökçe prepared thsi storyboard. While we were preparing it, we considered the teaching principles and global design principles. This assignment is our final Project for the course of Principles and Techniques of Education. Don't forget "Disorders cannot obstacle anything…"

Augmented reality is often presented as a kind of futuristic technology, but a form of it has been around for years. For example, the heads-up displays in many fighter aircraft as far back as the 1990s would show information about the attitude, direction and speed of the plane, and only a few years later they could show which objects in the field of view were targets.  In the past decade, various labs and companies have built devices that give us augmented reality. In 2009, the MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group presented SixthSense, a device that combined the use of a camera, small projector, smartphone and mirror. The device hangs from the user's chest in a lanyard fashion from the neck. Four sensor devices on the user's fingers can be used to manipulate the images projected by SixthSense.  Google rolled out Google Glass in 2013, moving augmented reality to a more wearable interface; in this case, glasses. It displays on the user's lens screen via a...

Virtual Reality (VR) is the use of computer technology to create a simulated environment. Unlike traditional user interfaces, VR places the user inside an experience. Instead of viewing a screen in front of them, users are immersed and able to interact with 3D worlds. By simulating as many senses as possible, such as vision, hearing, touch, even smell, the computer is transformed into a gatekeeper to this artificial world. The only limits to near-real VR experiences are the availability of content and cheap computing power. Virtual Reality’s most immediately-recognizable component is the head-mounted display (HMD). Human beings are visual creatures, and display technology is often the single biggest difference between immersive Virtual Reality systems and traditional user interfaces. For instance, CAVE automatic virtual environments actively display virtual content onto room-sized screens. While they are fun f...

EDpuzzle is an incredible-easy-to-use video platform that helps teachers save time, boost classroom engagement and improve student learning through video lessons. EDpuzzle also collects data as students watch and interact with the video.  Best of all, it’s completely free!

Duolingo is the most popular language-learning platform and the most downloaded education app in the world, with more than 300 million users. The company’s mission is to make education free, fun and accessible to all. Duolingo is designed to feel like a game and scientifically proven to be effective. In addition to its core platform, the company created the Duolingo English Test (DET), an affordable and convenient language certification option that is accepted by over 200 universities. Duolingo expanded beyond language learning with Tinycards , a reinvention of flashcards designed to make studying fun. The company has raised more than $108 million in venture capital from investors including Google Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Union Square Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Drive Capital, Ashton Kutcher and Tim Ferriss.

Nearpod is a fascinating solution to an “all-in-one” presentation for classrooms. The app provides the ability to upload existing presentations as well as create new ones from scratch. Adding interactive features such as question/answer surveys, and drawings are easy and the pacing of presentation is controlled by the teacher.

Seesaw is a student-driven digital portfolio. Teachers can empower students to create, reflect, share, and collaborate. Students “show what they know” using photos, videos, drawings, text, PDFs, and links. It’s simple to get student work in one place and share with families, and nothing is shared without teacher approval .

Edmodo is an educational website that takes the ideas of a social network and refines them and makes it appropriate for a classroom. Using Edmodo, students and teachers can reach out to one another and connect by sharing ideas, problems, and helpful tips. A teacher can assign and grade work on Edmodo; students can get help from the entire class on Edmodo. It is a safe environment. There is no bullying or inappropriate content, because the teacher can see everything that is posted on Edmodo. Also parents can join the class to bring a level of transparency that is difficult to achieve without technology. All in all Edmodo is a grat companion to just about any class. You can find my edmodo post by clicking here. (it can be private…)

Padlet is an application to create an online bulletin board that you can use to display information for any topic. Easily create an account and build a new board. You can add images, links, videos, and more. You can return to add more later. Installing Padlet Mini in your browser allows you to add the page you are browsing to your Padlet and gives you a shortcut to view your Padlets. Settings allow you to make your wall completely open for public contributions, completely private, or moderated by you (you approve all contributions before they show). Free accounts allow you to make 11 Padlets that include search, themes, stats, premium wallpapers, and cross-device support for uploaded videos. You can always delete an old Padlet to make a new one. This is a device-agnostic tool, available on the web but also available for free as both an Android and iOS app. Use it from any device or move between several devices and still access your work. App and web versions vary slightly. ...

Let’s start with clarifying what Second Life is. Second Life is a 3-D online virtual world where avatars do the kind of stuff real people do in real life: Buy stuff. Sell stuff. Gamble. Listen to music. Buy property. Flirt. Play games. Watch movies. But is it a game? The mainstream press has struggled with how to characterize Second Life. The term “3-D online virtual world” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily as the term “game.” And it’s a whole lot harder to get in a headline. But what is it, really? Linden Lab, the company that created the platform that is Second Life, is emphatic that their creation is not a game. “There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective,” says spokesperson Catherine Smith. “It’s an entirely open-ended experience.” Second Life does bear some resemblance to the “Sim City” and “Sims” franchises from Maxis and Electronic Arts. Players build and design a city in “Sim City,” and in “The Sims,” players control characters in day...

Pixton is a cartoon creation tool that allows its users to create awesome comics. Pixton has also a growing community that anyone can access to contribute with their own comics. This tool is very easy to use and does not require any artistic skills to work on it. You can introduce it to your students and let them create their own comics and share them with each other. Here is the one I made.

What is Voki? Voki is an educational tool that allows users to create their very own talking character. Voki is created by Oddcast and is located in New York City. Voki characters can be customized to look like historical figures, cartoons, animals, and even yourself! Give your Voki a voice by recording with a microphone, using our dial-in number, or uploading an audio file. Voki characters can be emailed, shared on social media, and embedded on websites!  You can visit my voki character by clicking here .

Storybird is a language arts tool. We use illustrations to inspire Members to write stories, and encourage ongoing writing practice with badges and other rewards. Storybird is free to use for everyone. Purchases such as memberships (not sold to students) and printed copies of your own story are optional and not necessary to use the Site. All stories in the public library are fully moderated by humans, and public comments are tightly filtered through a combination of human and machine moderation to remove PII, and to foster a positive environment suitable for all ages. Stories written by students are not allowed in the public library. Educators onboard students directly by creating accounts or inviting them via class code. They may create and issue assignments, moderate comments, review student work, apply a grade or comment. Educators may choose to run a fundraiser where family members may purchase a copy of their child’s story.  Students have access to our curated illustr...

You can think of Pinterest like a web-based pinboard or bulletin board—but with greater organizational functionality. You can also think of it as a bookmarking tool. People typically pin or save images they found on the web (or on Pinterest itself) to different boards (used to categorize their image collections). Many of the images saved on Pinterest are clickable, and open up in a new tab to the original web page where they were found, For example, Pinterest is a very popular tool for recipes. People can browse through images of delicious looking food, click on an image that looks good and be taken straight to the recipe instructions when they click on it. They can also save it to their own recipe board so they can access it later. Pinterest is also a social network. Users interact with each other through liking, commenting, re-saving each other’s stuff and private messaging each other. If you're ready to get started with Pinterest, follow the slides belo...

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to your own desktop to use as you wish. Because the Wordle web toy no longer works for most people, you might want to try installing a desktop version of it on your Mac or Windows computer. The desktop version is exactly the same as the old web version. You'll have to work around various scary security warnings, because the app installers aren't signed.

Hot Potatoes is shareware from Half-Baked Software which is based at the University of Victoria in Canada. It is a program that allows you to make six different types of self-test exercises. These exercises can also quite easily be imported into an LMS like Moodle to be used for assessment of learning content. Hot Potatoes was originally meant to create language exercises, and some HotPot exercises (like jumbled sentence) have little use otherwise. However, most exercises can be used for any subject. Hot Potatoes is shareware. That means you can freely download the program from the Internet General description of the program  Exercises are made in two steps. First, you create the so-called ‘data file’ which has a Hot Potato XML extension (like .jcw or .jcl). This file is useless without the Hot Potatoes program but is used to edit the exercises later.  The exercises are exported to web-based exercises (which have the HTML extension .htm) which can be displayed anywhere on th...

Blackboard Learn is an application for online teaching, learning, community building, and knowledge sharing. You can use any theory or model for teaching your online course because Blackboard Learn is open, flexible, and centered on student achievement. At Blackboard, we nurture learners and support those who make education possible, from K-12 and higher education to adult learning and workplace training. As you get started with Blackboard Learn, you'll find that teaching online shares many similarities with teaching in the face-to-face classroom.

Moodle is a learning platform designed to provide educators, administrators and learners with a single robust, secure and integrated system to create personalised learning environments.  Moodle is trusted by institutions and organisations large and small, including Shell, London School of Economics, State University of New York, Microsoft and the Open University. Moodle’s worldwide numbers of more tha 90 million users across both academic and enterprise level usage makes it the world’s most widely used learning platform. With over 10 years of development guided by social constructionist pedagogy , Moodle delivers a powerful set of learner-centric tools and collaborative learning environments that empower both teaching and learning. A simple interface, drag-and-drop features, and well-documented resources along with ongoing usability improvements make Moodle easy to learn and use.  The Moodle project’s open-source approach means that Moodle is continually being reviewed and ...