Dear All,
Perhaps, the world has never seen a contagious
pandemic like this so far. When I started writing the project, I was thinking
about how to make a world of difference in my students’ lives. By the way, most
of the students met distance learning under the conditions of pandemic process.
We focused on the changes at schools, we tried to raise awareness on the
importance of wearing a mask, keeping social distance and hygiene. On the other
hand, life was going on and time was going by so fast. My students didn’t have
smart boards at school, we were all at home due to lockdowns and some of them
had just Internet access and mobile devices at home. Wasn’t it enough to start
a project? Of course, it was and we started. The next step was the partner
forums on the eTwinning page. As you know, if you find a suitable eTwinner, it
means you are nearly over the hump. All well and good. We were the living end
for the project. However, it was still dangerous out there because of the
coronavirus. It was a great occasion to have Internet access and necessary
devices at home to conduct an eTwinning project from a distance.
As the time goes by, we all accommodated
ourselves to the pandemic conditions in the world and made the distance
learning an enjoyable event via Web 2.0 tools and provided the enhancement of
the creativity of our students by doing cross-cultural activities and the
integration of web tools to online education. In the end, all students absorbed
the importance of wearing a mask, keeping social distance and hygiene. We did
cross-cultural work on foreign languages, fed the distance learning with
creativity, made our students use English actively and also, they learned about
different cultures. We all, as teachers and students, collaborated and
contributed as much as possible. When we introduced our students to their
foreign agemates, they took an active part on Twinspace enthusiastically and
enjoyed learning English more than ever.
We used some IT tools such as PNG & SVG
Avatar Generator Online, Canva, Crello, Google Forms, Powtoon, Jigsaw Planet,
Padlet, Renderforest, Story Jumper, Pixton, Face CO, Zoom, Capcut, Splendid
Flyer Maker, Splendid Logo Maker, Microsoft Movie Maker, Chatterpix and
ImageChef to make our project more interactive and visual. Perhaps, it was one
of the most enjoyable sides of the project.
We organised group activities such as webinars
for our students to make them improve their communication skills in English and
they found an opportunity to practise English in real life via this project. Now
they understand English is not a foreign language only used at school.
In sum, all expected results came true as
desired and our students really enjoyed distance learning and they all produced
creative products and now they are much more respectful about different
cultures. Ultimately, we are quite sure they will use English actively in their
lives compared to before and join lots of projects because these activities
broaden horizons.
All the best,
Senem Seda Demirtas
