Using apps for education

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Hi!

We all know that in the near future we all have students who cannot think even a minute without mobile phones. Why don't we use this for good? If they integrate mobile phones into their lifes then let us do it for lessons too.

Today I am going to introduce you a useful app for young learners "Fun English." This app is available in googleplay and appstore. Now let us look at how it works.

This app is easy to use actually, when you download it you see instructions part and explains the steps. As you can see here there is an order and if learners do lessons regularly then 2 lessons and a game are added.

At the beginning you have two categories (colors and animals). For better understanding there are lots of exercises. I tried all of them and I liked seeing different kind of activities because they improve students’ listening skills and by recording their voices they can learn pronunciation. Furthermore there is a song for colors and animals with subtitles . Let us look at colors' activities:

   In this exercise, first
   you hear the color's name
     and choose the correct
ball.

First you hear the pronunciation 
then click the first consonant or vowel,
then hear its pronunciation.

After click on a card, you learn what
it is and try to find the same color.

 In the animals activities I saw nearly same exercises. Listening and understanding was the goal. Again a song was there. It was really memorable. Leaning in this way is easier and better I guess.

You listen the voice,
 then record your voice

Here is the spelling section

As you see these different categories, generally you first listen, then do what is wanted. Differently in this part you can see that there are exercises to better understanding of "plurals."

Here the song about animals like
 colors you have choices
(with subtitles or not)

I should mention that there is a section for parents and teachers in the app. If you want to contact with the writers you can and there are steps and explanations for better understanding and guide how to give the students.

With this app, 
- We can give them homework to gain a new lesson,

- Because they listen some songs about what they learn, we can ask them to create a new one,
In fact I would not use in the classroom because students progress would be different, so better if they use on their own maybe at home but we should check their progress.

Finally we should get the idea that teachers should aware of this kind of apps and use appropriately.

See you soon...

Let us sing this song together!

Audio recording software >>

Hello! I am here with my first assignment. The topic of my assignment is podcasting. In this assignment I worked with Neslihan Civelek and we used the song we wrote about “The Little Red Riding Hood”. I think this song will be useful for young learners and fun. There are two characters, one is The Wolf and the other is The Little Red Riding Hood. We wrote this song as a dialog and in my opinion listening to this song after reading the story is better for children. They will remember the sequences and have a listening activity. This song can be used with lyrics. Maybe the teacher can choose two students and want them to sing this song as characters do. They will love this activity. Lots of activities can be created for an enjoyable lesson. I share the lyrics of the song with you.

There is a little girl over there among trees.
I can make her believe that I am trustworthy.

I am Little Red Riding Hood among the trees.
I love singing in lovely days with these birdies.

Hey little girl what are you doing here alone?
I can help you if you tell me where are you going?

Sorry Mr. I don't have time I need to hurry.
Grandma waits me and she is really hungry.

Better if you pick some flowers to give her.
Your grandma will be happy ever you can see.

Flowers smell good and my grandma will be happy.
I'll ask the wolf maybe he can help to me.

This girl is naive enough, and she has believed me.
Now I go home before her and wait my little girl!

-Nock Nock! Grandmaaa! I bring you something to eattt!

Hello my little girl welcome to my home.

The door is open come in and bring them to me.

I miss you Grandma I am coming now.

-Hiii! What happened to your teeth? I can't believe!

My teeth are maybe long and sharp.

To chew you better darling when I eat you! Wrrrr! 

I think that teachers can use podcasting in the classroom. They can record their voice and also want students to prepare their own podcast. But when we prepared this podcasting we had some difficulties:

-Recording our voices was not an easy task because we recorded again and again until we liked our voice. This took time.

-We used a melody through internet connection. Sometimes it didn’t work so this took time too.

-Because we recorded again and again, our voice became tired.

-Writing the song’s lyrics was not easy for us.

I hope this is useful for you. See you soon!