This is a guest post by Çağla Usta, one of my students from Foreign Languages Education Department at METU... Çağla is a born teacher with great ideas, that's why I asked her to contribute to my blog and she kindly accepted... This is what she would like to share with us: 

In recent years, visual presentation tools have become quite popular and indispensible, especially in education. The most popular one is undoubtedly Power Point Presentations. However, because of their extensive and perfunctory usage, it is clear that PowerPoint presentations are not able to appeal to people that much anymore.

Therefore, we need other alternative presentation tools to grab our audience’s attention, especially for the younger ones. Very recent and amazing one of these alternatives is provided by a company named “Powtoon”. The company works through an internet site: www.powtoon.com. Here we can create free, colorful and visually engaging presentations in just a few minutes. The fantastic thing about it is the fact that Powtoon enables us to create animated presentations as well, which certainly appeals to both kids and adults. Moreover, Powtoon presentations are not common, thus still quite attractive for most of the people.

After you sign up for free, you can start to create your presentation either by using the ready-made templates or a blank page. The free version of Powtoon includes 10 different themes. Each theme contains various different backgrounds, icons, objects, songs, sounds, transitions, and both animated and stable characters. In addition to these default themes, it is also possible to upload and embed any image, video or sound, including your own voice. Also, it enables the user to save the presentation either as a slideshow or a video clip which can be also uploaded to your Youtube channel.

Different from the free version, the paid version of Powtoon also provides 11 more themes which involve far more appealing and animated characters. Further, it allows users to download their presentations to their computers unlike the free version. (A tip for free users: You do not have to buy the full version of Powtoon just to be able to download your presentation. After you upload your Powtoon presentation to your Youtube channel, which is free, there are several easy methods to download a video from Youtube to your computer; you can google it :) )

If you are used to preparing PowerPoint presentations, it may seem a bit harder to use Powtoon at first. But actually Powtoon is among the most user friendly softwares with clear instructions and a plain format.  You have everything you need in a single page. After you learn the basics, the rest is up to your creativity...

Here is the link to a Powtoon presentation I created for you: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPd_yn_kfAA)

Enjoy...

A Need for Renewal...

In their inspiring book, “Resonant Leadership”, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee highlight the importance of renewal in one’s life. Although the book discussess the strategies needed to become a resonant leader, it gives insight into managing one’s own and others’ emotions in ways that drive success. And to this end, renewal is one of the techniques suggested by the writers.

The inevitable result of constantly running headlong into the stiff winds of life is to be in need of renewal. This renewal might be in any form: physical, mental or emotional...

Preoccupied with workplace demands (teaching, reading papers, writing our latest book, “The Compass: Route to Academic English 1”) for a long time, I’ve realized that I needed a new challenge which would renew me by taking me away from my routines.  

That is why when I was asked to teach a methodology course to a group of pre-service English teachers, I accepted it... 

Although I had experience in in-service teaching training, I did not have the opportunity to work with pre-service teachers before. This teaching experience reminded me, once again, of why I wanted to become a teacher.  Meet these inspiring people: 

We inspired each other throughout the semester, and as Boyatzis suggests, I was renewed physically, mentally and emotionally thanks to my lovely students.  Some of you might wonder how one can be renewed physically while teaching? Dodds (2013) claims “successful renewal invokes brain patterns and hormones change our mood, while returning our body to a healthy state.”